In the last article we looked at personal effectiveness by looking at Habits 1, 2, and 3 of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Today we examine how we can be effective with other people. Cultivate the following habits and change your life for the better!

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

Covey outlines the various ways we can approach a disagreement or negotiation. We can think win/lose where one side wins and the other loses. We can think lose/win where one side gives in and loses by choice, allowing the other side to win. We can think just win, where one side will try to win and doesn’t care if the other side wins or loses, as long as they win. We can think lose/lose where one side will give in to losing as long as the other side loses too.

And we can think win/win. A win/win mindset seeks to find the best alternative, the third alternative. If each side has a preferred solution, the win/win solution might be an entirely new solution that suits both parties better than either of the original preferred solutions. To think win/win there must be trust, open-mindedness, and a desire to find the best solution, even if it wasn’t your initial idea.

There is so much power in win/win but it does take work to make it a habit. At first it feels disempowering because, let’s face it, we want to be right. But once we experience win/win we realize that giving up the desire to be right all the time yields solutions that are more powerful and effective than we can imagine.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Typically, we start formulating an answer while another person is talking to us. When we do this, we are not able to understand what the other person is really trying to tell us. How could we? We’re half-listening and half-generating our response before we even hear all what they have to say.

Covey encourages us to seek first to understand before we reply, before we seek to be understood. To do this we must put aside our assumptions and our need to reply immediately and listen with the intent to understand the other person’s perspective. That is, we need to listen with empathy. We need to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and do our best to understand where they are coming from and what they are really trying to communicate.

Cultivating this habit builds trust and allows us to be open to more ideas. We can solve more problems because we are listening for the real issue, not what we assume to be this issue to be. And we can provide genuine care for the actual concerns people have. Powerful.

Habit 6: Synergize

I’ve always had a difficult time explaining how to make “synergize” a habit. Synergy happens when 1 + 1 = way more than 2. It’s when 1 + 1 equates to 100 or more. When two or more people get together, share ideas, build off each other’s ideas, and come up with an incredible innovation, solution, or idea that none of them could have come up with on their own, you have synergy.

Putting habits 1 through 5 into place pave the way for synergy to occur. Synergy occurs in high trust environments, where the participants are willing to be open-minded and not have the “right” answer at the start. It’s magic when it happens but I find it difficult to say how to cultivate this as a habit, other than to be on the lookout for opportunities where synergy might manifest.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

We need to take time out to “sharpen the saw,” meaning we need to take a break from the whirlwind of life and activity to renew our mind, body, and spirit. Through this renewal we are able to be more effective and get more done than if we had not taken the time to do it.

This seems counterintuitive perhaps. We must take a break go faster or to be more effective. But if we do not take care of our fitness level and health, if we don’t learn new things, and if we don’t connect with nature, art, or a higher power, we will not be able to be more effective than we are now. Take the time and sharpen the saw.

Summary

Cultivating these 7 habits will not only make you more effective, but you may find you are more fulfilled by life. The habits are not always easy to practice, but it’s worth the effort. I know in my life these habits have made a tremendous difference and I’m a better person for having put in the time and practice.

There is so much in the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People you will want to read or re-read it!

Miss the first article? Check it out! 114: Being Effective Through Transition (And All Other Times) – Q2 Leader