Chapter 37 Initiate "face" to generate power

In a production meeting, a product quality director of a company once questioned a quality inspector sharply in front of everyone at the meeting about the quality of a certain material.It wasn't a very serious matter, but his tone and attitude were very aggressive, and his words were extremely harsh.In fact, the director just wanted to remind the quality inspectors to be more serious and serious in their work. This quality inspector was known for his good temper in the company, but this time he quarreled with the director in order not to lose face in front of his colleagues, leaders, and subordinates.The two had a very tense fight at the meeting, and in the end the matter was settled in the director's embarrassment.

After this incident, this honest quality inspector was often inactive in his future work, and left the company two months later to go to another similar company.It is said that he was a very good quality inspector there. Saving face is everyone's nature.Sometimes others are wrong, but they don't think so, because they want to save face and don't want to admit their mistakes; or, although he realizes that he is wrong, but in order to get enough respect, he is embarrassed to admit his mistakes.Therefore, don't accuse others easily, especially in front of everyone, and try to save their face even if the other party is wrong.If you save the employee's face, you will save the heart of a dedicated employee; if you save the friend's face, you will save the long-term friendship.

In 1953, Premier Zhou Enlai led a Chinese government delegation to visit Soviet officials stationed in Luda (now Dalian).At the reception banquet held by our side, when a Soviet lieutenant translated the prime minister's speech, he mistranslated a place.One of our comrades made a correction on the spot.This surprised the prime minister and greatly annoyed the commander of the Soviet garrison present.Because the subordinate's mistakes on this occasion made the commander feel a little embarrassed, he immediately walked over to tear off the lieutenant's epaulettes and collar.The atmosphere in the banquet hall suddenly became very tense.At this time, Premier Zhou provided a "step" for the other party in a timely manner, and said gently: "It is not easy to translate the two languages ​​accurately, and it may also be that I am not perfect enough." Let the translator listen carefully to the mistranslated passage, and then the Soviet lieutenant translated it accurately, relieving the tense atmosphere.After the Prime Minister finished his speech, when he toasted the Soviet generals and heroes, he specially toasted the interpreter alone.Soviet officials and other generals shed tears for this, and the translator was so moved that he held his glass for a long time.

Premier Zhou's actions restored the self-esteem of the Soviet generals and won the deep touch of the Soviet officers.This approach is worth learning from: in social interactions, we should not only try to avoid causing others to step down due to our own carelessness, but also learn to provide them with a "step" skillfully and timely when it is difficult for them to step down. This paved a ladder for our deeper exchanges in the future. This story also enlightens us: there are two ways to point out mistakes, one is to use "correctness" as the criterion, and directly point out "you are wrong";The former is a means of coercion, which is effective but hard to convince people; the latter is the art of communication, which may not be effective quickly, but has a long-lasting effect.To make a person truly responsible for his own actions depends on his self-esteem and the awakening of his conscience. In this, maintaining his self-esteem is very important.Wise people put other people's self-esteem first, and then try to steer things in a good direction.

One day at noon, when a boss went to the factory for a routine inspection, he saw some employees smoking under a sign that said "No Smoking".There is nothing more infuriating than knowingly committing a crime, which is the psychology of most people.But this boss is not as sensitive as most people.He walked up to the workers, handed each of them a cigarette, and said, "Boys, I'd really appreciate it if you could go out and smoke." The boys knew they had violated the factory rules.But instead of blaming them, the boss gave each of them a cigarette.Their ego is respected, and the person is the boss, so of course they have to act like it.Since then, there have been no more people who openly smoked in the factory.

The boss in this story is the wise man.Put other people's face first, so that things can be resolved perfectly. Hurting someone's face will result in pain, so how valuable is maintaining "face"? At one national truck service company in the United States, management discovered that 6 out of 10,000 deliveries they made were going to the wrong place, costing the company an additional $250,000 a year in losses.For this reason, the company specially hired Dr. Deming to give them a "diagnosis and treatment".Based on observation, Dr. Deming found that 50% of these wrong delivery cases were caused by the company's drivers misreading the delivery contract.In order to eliminate such mistakes once and for all, so that the company can do good service, Dr. Deming suggested that it is best to change the title of these workers or drivers to technicians.

At first, the company felt that Dr. Deming's suggestion was a bit strange: Could changing the job title solve the problem?Is it possible to do such a simple action?But it didn't take long for the performance to appear. Less than 30 days after the titles of those drivers were changed to technicians, the previous delivery error rate of 6/10,000 dropped to less than 1/10,000. Annual savings of $250,000. In fact, after changing to "technician", the nature of workers' work has not changed.But because "technician" sounds more "face", so the enthusiasm of the staff was mobilized!It can be seen that "face" is still "productivity".