This post is part of habits Tuesdays.

The
first three habits are part of what Covey calls the Private Victory.
They are about you, about reaching a state of independence. The next
three habits are part of the Public Victory, which brings your from
independence to interdependence. The Private Victory alone brings forth individual producers, the Public Victory creates leaders and teamplayers.

Habit 4 is called Think Win-Win. If you work in large companies you
probably heard that expression a lot of times already, maybe even so
often that it landed on your bullshit bingo cards.
Win-win is misused very often and comes down to a win-lose proposition
in a pretty package. Think Win-Win is about adopting a new paradigm,
the paradigm of creation instead of the paradigm of competition.

Covey sums up seven different paradigms of interpersonal interaction:

• Win / Win
  I win and you win. This is looking for an
  alternative solution that creates value for all parties involved. This
  is based on the premises of abundance.
• Win / Lose
  I win, you lose. This is a highly competitive mindset, based on the premises of limited rewards.
• Lose / Win
  I lose, you win. This is where someone
  accepts a loss, just to make the other feel good. Sounds strange? Ever
  caved in to an apparantly pointless argument, saying "Allright, if it’s
  that important to you, we’ll do it your way". That’s a typical Lose /
  Win situation.
• Lose / Lose
  This happens when people are too competitive and need to win at all cost. This ultimately ends up in a lose / lose situation.
• Win
  This is a mindset that’s only focused on
  winning, regardless of what it brings to others. The others are not in
  the equation here. This in effect is the mindset of someone who hasn’t
  gotten out of the private victory yet.
• Win / Win or no agreement
  This is a mindset where
  people want to agree to a win / win solution, and if not possible,
  decide to do no business at all. "Let’s agree to disagree agreeably."
• Compromise
  This is not in the original list of
  Covey, yet he mentions it in the text as a viable option, albeit
  undesirable at most times. A compromise is where both win and both lose
  a little.

Abundance or limited rewards?
The paradigm of
abundance is critical as a basis for the habit Think Win Win. If
rewards are limited, win/win is hard, if not impossible. If you believe
in abundance however, than there’s enough for everybody to go
around. Or as Covey puts it, it’s not about getting a bigger piece of
the pie, it’s about making the pie bigger!

The mindset of abundance is also a central theme in the movie The
Secret. However they don’t make it very clear that this is not about
the resources. Resources are limited in a lot of ways. The mindset of
abundance is about the rewards! The rewards are abundant, the resources
are only a means to an end. If the resources you have in mind are not
available, what other ways are there to get to the rewards. That’s the
central theme of the mindset of abundance.

Look for the third alternative
Imagine two people interacting and both have a solution that the
other does not regard as a win. Anything other than a win/win attitude
would defend their solution, as this brings them the biggest win. A lot
of energy will be wasted in a competitive process of negotiating
and arguing, and at best will result in a Compromise (limited rewards
are divided among them). Or as a cliché: 1 + 1 = 1.5

Now the win/win attitude says to believe in abundant rewards, so if
the original solutions don’t provide enough rewards for either, the
energy will go into a creative process where the focus is to look for a
third alternative, where the total reward is bigger. As a cliché again:
1 + 1 > 2

I’m thinking win/win, but HE/SHE IS NOT!
Sounds nice and all this win/win attitude, but I’m the only one
doing the win/win part. If only the other one… That’s the trick isn’t
it? How can you successfully use win/win, when the other isn’t?

Well first of all, this isn’t a trick. Win/win is a paradigm, a
mindset. You have to genuinely want to achieve a win/win solution, not
aim for win/win but settle for win/lose if it proves too difficult.
Covey calls this the character dimension. Character is built on
integrity, maturity and the mentality of abundance. Maturity (as
defined by Hrand Saxenian) is the ability to express one’s own feelings
and convictions balanced with consideration for the thoughts and
feelings of others.

To do this in a relationship, you have to show respect for the
other. When it comes down to achieving your goals through this
relationship, the win/win mindset calls for seeing it from the others
side, trying to understand what the other is wanting to achieve, for
the sake of finding a way to get both wants fulfilled. And in the end,
if you want win/win to succeed, you have to make agreements that
support it, reward systems that reward it, and processes that support
it. However in this article I’m not going to elaborate on these
aspects.

A short recap
Habit 4 Think Win Win is the first of three, that form the Public
Victory. It brings you from independence to interdependence. The Public
Victory needs the basis of the Private Victory, that consists of the
first three habits. The posts about these habits can be found here:

Habit 1   Be Proactive
Habit 2   Begin With The End In Mind
Habit 3   First Things First

Next week I’ll cover habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood

Can’t wait? You can buy Covey’s book The 7 habits of highly effective people at Amazon, or as an audiobook here. There’s also an audiobook on this habit alone.

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