Habit 4: Think Win-Win

Competition is something everyone has been exposed to at one time or another because just about everyone has played some kind of sport. Sports is all about competition, and it has some benefits. It motivates you to succeed, you get an emotional rush when you "win," you improve your skills.

Business is also about competition--with other companies. Unfortunately, competition seems to occur within a business. People "compete" for having the best idea for something, "compete" for a promotion, "compete" for the attention of the boss. We also complete outside of business, for example with your spouse over any little thing, or with your children over everything. :)

All of this comes from a mentality that the things are scarse. Namely, that the more someone else has, the less you can have. While for a few things this is true, the fact of the matter is most things we seek are not scarce, but rather abundant. Everyone can get attention and praise, everyone can contribute and profit from a situation. It takes approaching things with a Win-Win mindset.

A Win-Win mindset seeks mutual benefit and is designed to be cooperative. Also, to have a cooperative mindset, you must listen to what the other people want and be honest about what you want. This last part takes courage.

Some other mindsets that permeate our life include Win-Lose, where winning at the expense of the other is the goal, Lose-Win, where you give up what you want to the other person despite your feelings to the contrary, Lose-Lose, where you actively try and bring other people down, and Win, which basically means you are focused on winning and don't particularly care if the other person wins or loses too, and finally Win-Win or No Deal where you either come to a mutually beneficial agreement or "agree to disagree" amecibly.

So how do to you have a Win-Win mindset? You have the the courage to express your thoughts and feelings, and the willingness and ability to seek to understand the thoughts and feelings of others.

When you have a Win-Win mindset, you can begin to build Win-Win agreeements with others. Win-Win agreements have five elements:

Desired Results: What end you have in mind.
Guidelines: The rules that govern pursuing the desired results.
Resources: What tools you have to use to meet the guidelines.
Accountability: What will be used to measure that the desired results are obtained.
Consequences: What will happen if the desired results are (not) achieved?

To give an example of this, I recently took my kids to a large playground. The big problem I have with this playground is that my son, almost 6, wants to go all over the place and I feel he is still too small to be out of my sight. I, of course, have to watch my daughter, who is only 2. I decided to give into my son and take him to this playground, however I made an agreement with him about what I expected. I had him repeat the agreement back to me to confirm his understanding. It looked something like this:

Desired Results: We need to be able to see each other at all times. If you want to move out of my sight, to a different part of the playground, you must ask me first.
Guidelines: Can I see you? Can you see me?
Resources: Eyes and ears.
Accountability: Did he dissapear or not?
Consequences: If the Desired Results aren't obtained, son would be forbidden from going to this playground for several weeks.

As I am thinking about this, a large part of thinking Win-Win is embdedded in the next habit, which is "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." To be truly Win-Win, you must understand the other particiants.

tags: 7 habits, self improvement