单选题
Ten years ago, I got a call from a reporter at a
big-city daily paper. "I'm writing a story on communication skills," she said.
"Are communication skills important in business?" I assumed I had misheard her
question, and after she repeated it for me I still didn't know how to respond.
Are communication skills important? "Er, they are very important," I managed to
squeak out. My brain said: Are breathing skills important? The reporter
explained: "The people I've spoken with so far have been mixed on the
subject." Ten years ago, we were trapped even deeper in the Age
of Left-Brain Business. We were way into Six Sigma and ISO 9000 and spreadsheets
and regulations and policies. We thought we could line-item budget our way to
greatness, create shareholder value by tracking our employees' every keystroke,
and employ a dress-code policy to win in the marketplace. And lots of us
believed that order and uniformity could save the world-the business world,
anyway. We had to go pretty far down that path before we caught onto the limits
of process, technology, and linear thinking. The right brain is
coming back into style in the business world, and {{U}}not a moment too soon{{/U}}.
Smart salespeople say, "We've got compelling story that meshes with our
customer's values and history." Strong leaders say, "We're creating a context
for our team members that weaves their passions into ours." Consultants get big
money for providing perspective on the "user experience." That's not a linear,
analytical process. These days, we're talking about emotion again, and context
and meaning. Thank goodness we are. I was about to choke on the
death-by-spreadsheet diet, and I wasn't the only one. Job
seekers get great jobs today by avoiding the Black Hole of Keyword-Searching
Algorithms and going straight to a human decision-maker to share a story that
links the job seeker's powerful history with the decision-maker's present pain.
Leadership teams spend their off-site weekends talking about not the next 400
strategic initiatives on somebody's list but rather a story-type road map to
keep the troops philosophically on board while they take the next
hill. The right brain's return is coming just at the right
time, when employees are sick of not only their jobs but also the cynical,
hypocritical, and obsessively left-brain behaviors they see all around them in
corporate life. Smart employers will grab this opportunity to lose the
three-inch-thick policy manuals and enforcement mentality. There's no leverage
in those, no spark, and no aha. We've seen where the left- brain mentality has
gotten us: to the land of spreadsheets, with PowerPoints and burned-out shells
where our workforce used to be.
单选题
According to paragraph 1, the author believes that communication skills
are ______.
A. doubtlessly significant.
B. to some extent important.
C. inferior to breathing skills.
D. a concern of the left-brain age.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】[解析] 文章第一段讲到，当作者被问到“交流技巧在商界里重要吗”这个问题时，他刚开始反应不过来，当说完“嗯，它们很重要”后，他的脑海冒出另一个问题“呼吸技巧重要吗？”可见，作者认为交流技巧和呼吸一样，是至关重要的，选A项。
B项在重要性的表述上(to some extent)有所保留，不符合文意。作者只是拿呼吸与交流技巧做类比、打比方，并没有实际比较哪个更重要，故C项错误。D项内容在第一段并未提及，而且根据下文内容可知，交流技巧是“右脑”时代注重的东西。
单选题
The phrase "not a moment too soon" (Line 1, Para. 3) indicates the
return of the right brain is ______.
A. very timely.
B. undesirable.
C. too late.
D. unexpected.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】[解析] not a moment too soon意为“差点晚了”。第三段首句指出右脑思维的回归是not a moment too soon，接着引用了多人的言语，这些言论都是正面的。该段倒数第2句又讲到，谢天谢地(Thank goodness)我们又开始讨论感情、环境和意义。可见，右脑思维的回归是非常及时的。最后一段也再次提到右脑思维的回归coming just at the right time，故选A项。
C项与A项意思正好相反，右脑思维的回归是恰是时候的，故排除C项。文章也指出很多人深受左脑思维伤害，欢迎右脑思维的回归，故B项错误。文章并未提及这一思维的转变是否是预料之中，故D项错误。
单选题
According to the text, under the influence of right-brain thinking, the
leadership strives to ______.