2023年经济学人 内向者如何社交

（单词翻译）

Business

商业版块

Bartleby

巴托比专栏

Stranger things

关于陌生人

How to make networking marginally less awful for introverts².

如何让内向者在社交时稍微不那么难受。

Corporate³ life throws up some stressful moments.

职场生活中会出现一些充满压力的时刻。

Bringing bad news to your boss; facing an interview panel; making a big presentation.

给你的老板带去坏消息，面对好几个面试官，做一个重要的展示。

But few things are worse than networking if you are an introvert¹.

但如果你是一个性格内向的人，那就没有什么比社交更糟糕的了。

You arrive at an event to find that everyone there apparently⁴ knows each other already.

你来到一个活动现场，发现那里的每个人显然都已经认识对方了。

And then you look more closely and spot the fellow-sufferers.

然后你更仔细地观察他们，并发现了和你一样备受折磨的人。

They are the people who are actually reading the conference blurb⁵.

他们会真的去阅读会议简介。

They look at email on their phones with greater intensity⁶ than ever happens at the office.

他们在手机上查看电子邮件比在办公室里看得更勤。

They endlessly circulate the room, like bits of plastic in the ocean waiting to be snagged on something.

他们一遍遍地绕着房间走来走去，像漂浮在海洋中的一块塑料，等着被什么东西钩住。

They take a seat in the main hall while the sound engineers are still testing the microphones.

音响师们还在测试麦克风，他们就已经去大厅里找个位置坐下了。

Fortunately, there is advice out there on how to break the ice with strangers.

幸运的是，有一些建议可以帮助你与陌生人破冰。

Unfortunately, it’s abysmal⁷.

不幸的是，这些建议糟糕透顶。

One sage⁸ counsels making contact in queues, because it is easier to talk to the person in front of you and behind you.

一位智者建议在排队时与人搭话，因为你会更自然地与你前面和后面的人交谈。

You are meant to ambush⁹ people on the escalator, in the toilets and in the queue to get your name tag.

这意味着你应该伏击手扶电梯上的人、厕所里的人和排队领取名牌的人。

In the line for coffee, open the door to jobs and sales by saying six incomprehensible words: “Juicing up for the big keynote?”

在排队买咖啡时，说出六个令人费解的词“给演讲加点料？”就能打开工作和销量的大门。

On it goes.

这还不算完。

Don’t be afraid to laugh, because nothing drains the tension from a room like someone who cannot stop chuckling¹⁰.

不要不敢笑，因为最能消除房间里的紧张气氛的就是一个不停咯咯笑的人。

Bring personal information into the conversation, lest people think you are at a conference on treasury-management software only for commercial gain.

聊天时透露一点个人信息，以免人们认为你参加这个关于财产管理软件的会议只是为了获取商业利益。

Use the other person’s name twice, to appear truly engaged.

叫对方的名字两次，从而让自己看起来很投入。

And take notes on conversations afterwards so you can follow up with them.

并在聊天结束后记下笔记，这样之后还可以继续和他们聊。

Add these ingredients together, and you have the recipe for success:

把所有这些建议融会贯通，你就有了成功的秘诀：

“Juicing up for the big keynote?”

“给演讲加点料？”

“What?”

“什么？”

“Juicing up for the big keynote?”

“给演讲加点料？”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“我不知道你在说什么。”

[Scan name badge] “Keith, is it?”

[扫一眼对方的名牌]“你叫基思，是吗？”

“Er, yes.”

“呃，是的。”

[Laughing] “I’m having a baby, Keith.”

[笑着说]“我孩子要出生了，基思。”

“Keith?”

“基思，你怎么走了？”

[Take out notepad]

[拿出记事本]

If this is how to network, no wonder people go to the main hall early.

如果要这样社交，难怪人们提前就去大厅了。

Making contacts on a site like LinkedIn is a lot less stressful.

在领英这样的网站上建立人脉，压力要小得多。

There is no eye contact, after all, and the rules of the road are agreed.

毕竟网上没有眼神交流，道路规则也是一致的。

And all those connection requests do appear to help with careers.

而且那些加好友的请求也似乎确实对职业生涯有所帮助。

A paper published last year by Karthik Rajkumar of LinkedIn and co-authors from academia found empirical evidence for the insight that underpins¹¹ all kinds of networking—that, because they bring you new information, more infrequent and distant relationships (or “weak ties”) are more useful than close contacts.

来自领英的卡蒂克·拉杰库马尔和来自学术界的合著者去年发表了一篇论文，为支持进行各种社交的洞见找到了实证证据，这一洞见就是因为更不频繁和更远的关系能给你带来新信息，所以这些关系(或称“弱关系”)比亲密的关系更有用。

The researchers randomly¹² changed the “People You May Know” recommendations algorithm that LinkedIn shows its users, so that the prevalence of weaker and stronger connections varied¹³ among people on the site.

研究人员随机改变了领英向用户展示的“你可能认识的人”的推荐算法，从而让网站上不同用户的强关系和弱关系的数量各不相同。

The experiment showed that weaker ties (where a pair of users had only one mutual¹⁴ friend, say) were more likely to lead to job applications and job moves than those where people had 25 mutual friends or more.

实验表明，较弱的关系(比如一对用户只有一个共同的朋友)比那些有25个及以上共同朋友的人更有可能促成工作申请和工作调动。

This sounds like nirvana for introverts: start spamming everyone with connection requests, close the office door and wait for job offers.

对于内向的人来说，这听起来像是极乐世界：开始广撒网地向每个人发送好友请求，然后关上办公室的门，等待工作机会到来。

But it is not that easy.

但这并不是那么容易。

Even weak ties need tending.

即使是弱关系也需要维护。

Even online, interacting with people is easier if you find it energising; a survey-based study of LinkedIn, by Joanna Davis of Augustana College and her co-authors, found that extroversion¹⁵ was a predictor of networking ability.

即使是在网上，如果你觉得与人互动让你感到很有劲儿，那么与人互动就会变得更容易。奥古斯塔纳学院的乔安娜·戴维斯和她的合著者对领英进行了一项基于调查的研究，发现外向性格能预测一个人的社交能力。

There isn’t a genuinely painless way for introverts to network.

对于内向的人来说，没有哪种社交方法是真的完全轻松的。

Still, methods to do it exist that are wiser than standing¹⁶ in a queue and hoping the guy who doesn’t know how to get coffee out of the machine is your ticket to career success.

尽管如此，还是有一些方法要好过排队时和人搭话，并希望那个不知道怎样从机器上接咖啡的人会成为你通向事业成功的敲门砖。

The real secret is to save your energy for the people who are most likely to be interesting to you.

真正的秘诀是把你的精力留给那些最有可能让你感兴趣的人。

In the online realm, for instance, Dr Rajkumar’s study does not find that the weaker the tie, the better.

例如，在网上，拉杰库马尔博士的研究并没有发现关系越弱越好。

The sweet spot in networking on LinkedIn is someone with moderately weak ties to you: connecting with a person with ten mutual friends markedly increases the probability of changing jobs compared with someone with just one shared friend.

在领英上建立人脉的最理想情况是某人与你有适当的弱关系：与一个有十个共同好友的人联系，比与只有一个共同好友的人联系，换工作的可能性会显著增加。

In other words, networking pays off if you can identify people who can bring you new information but are close enough to your world that this information is useful.

换句话说，如果你能找到那些能为你带来新信息，又足够接近你的世界，因此这些新信息对你有用的人，那么社交就会带来回报。

In the offline world, a tool like ChatGPT should make it easier to find useful prospects¹⁷ in a list of event attendees.

在线下世界中，像ChatGPT这样的工具应该可以让你更轻松地在活动参与者列表中找到有用的潜在人脉。

But you still need to overcome all your instincts and approach them.

但你仍然需要克服自己的内向本能，并去主动接近他们。