Emerson: “That which we persist in doing becomes easier—not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.”

Our tendency is to project out of our own autobiographies what we think other people want or need. We project our intentions on the behavior of others. We interpret what constitutes a deposit based on our own needs and desires, either now or when we were at a similar age or stage in life. If they don’t interpret our effort as a deposit, our tendency is to take it as a rejection of our well intentioned effort and to give up.

Really seeking to understand another person is probably one of the most important deposits you can make, and it is the key to every other deposit. You simply don’t know what constitutes a deposit to another person until you understand that individual.

The little kindnesses and courtesies are so important. Small discourtesies, little unkindnesses, little forms of disrespect make large withdrawals. In relationships, the little things are the big things

Keeping a commitment or a promise is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal. In fact, there’s probably not a more massive withdrawal than to make a promise that’s important to someone and then not to come through. The next time a promise is made, they won’t believe it. People tend to build their hopes around promises, particularly promises about their basic livelihood.

The cause of almost all relationship difficulties is rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations around roles and goals. Whether we are dealing with the question of who does what at work, how you communicate with your daughter when you tell her to clean her room, or who feeds the fish and takes out the garbage, we can be certain that unclear expectations will lead to misunderstanding, disappointment, and withdrawals of trust.

Personal Integrity generates trust and is the basis of many different kinds of deposits. Lack of integrity can undermine almost any other effort to create high trust accounts. People can seek to understand, remember the little things, keep their promises, clarify and fulfill expectations, and still fail to build reserves of trust if they are inwardly duplicitous.

When we make deposits of unconditional love, when we live the primary laws of love, we encourage others to live the primary laws of life. In other words, when we truly love others without condition, without strings, we help them feel secure and safe and validated and affirmed in their essential worth, identity, and integrity.

I suggest that in an interdependent situation, every P problem is a PC opportunity—a chance to build the Emotional Bank Accounts that significantly affect interdependent production.

When parents see their children’s problems as opportunities to build the relationship instead of as negative, burdensome irritations, it totally changes the nature of parent-child interaction. Parents become more willing, even excited, about deeply understanding and helping their children. When a child comes to them with a problem, instead of thinking, “Oh, no! Not another problem!” their paradigm is, “Here is a great opportunity for me to really help my child and to invest in our relationship.”

Win/Win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win/Win means that agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial, mutually satisfying

In leadership style, Win/Lose is the authoritarian approach: “I get my way; you don’t get yours.” Win/Lose people are prone to use position, power, credentials, possessions, or personality to get their way

Lose/Win is worse than Win/Lose because it has no standards—no demands, no expectations, no vision. People who think Lose/Win are usually quick to please or appease. They seek strength from popularity or acceptance. They have little courage to express their own feelings and convictions and are easily intimidated by the ego strength of others.

When two Win/Lose people get together—that is, when two determined, stubborn, ego-invested individuals interact—the result will be Lose/Lose. Both will lose. Both will become vindictive and want to “get back” or “get even,” blind to the fact that murder is suicide, that revenge is a two-edged sword.

Another common alternative is simply to think Win. People with the Win mentality don’t necessarily want someone else to lose. That’s irrelevant. What matters is that they get what they want. When there is no sense of contest or competition, Win is probably the most common approach in everyday negotiation. A person with the Win mentality thinks in terms of securing his own ends—and leaving it to others to secure theirs.

If these individuals had not come up with a synergistic solution—one that was agreeable to both—they could have gone for an even higher expression of Win/Win—Win/Win or No Deal.

No Deal basically means that if we can’t find a solution that would benefit us both, we agree to disagree agreeably—No Deal. No expectations have been created, no performance contracts established. I don’t hire you or we don’t take on a particular assignment together because it’s obvious that our values or our goals are going in opposite directions. It is so much better to realize this up front instead of downstream when expectations have been created and both parties have been disillusioned.

Think Win/Win is the habit of interpersonal leadership. It involves the exercise of each of the unique human endowments—self awareness, imagination, conscience, and independent will—in our relationships with others.

Character is the foundation of Win/Win, and everything else builds
on that foundation. There are three character traits essential to the Win/Win paradigm.

We’ve already defined integrity as the value we place on ourselves. Habits 1, 2, and 3 help us develop and maintain integrity. As we clearly identify our values and proactively organize and execute around those values on a daily basis, we develop self awareness and independent will by making and keeping meaningful promises and commitments.

The third character trait essential to Win/Win is the Abundance Mentality, the paradigm that there is plenty out there for everybody. Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the Scarcity Mentality. They see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else. The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life.

From the foundation of character, we build and maintain Win/Win relationships. The trust, the Emotional Bank Account, is the essence of Win/Win. Without trust, the best we can do is compromise; without trust, we lack the credibility for open, mutual learning and communication and real creativity.

But if our Emotional Bank Account is high, credibility is no longer an issue. Enough deposits have been made so that you know and I know that we deeply respect each other. We’re focused on the issues, not on personalities or positions

Win/Win is a principle people can validate in their own lives, you will be able to bring most people to a realization that they will win more of what they want by going for what you both want.

From relationships flow the agreements that give definition and direction to Win/Win. They are sometimes called performance agreements or partnership agreements, shifting the paradigm of productive interaction from vertical to horizontal, from hovering supervision to self-supervision, from positioning to being partners in success.

Desired results (not methods) identify what is to be done and when.

Guidelines specify the parameters (principles, policies, etc.) within which results are to be accomplished.

Resources identify the human, financial, technical, or organizational support available to help accomplish the results.

Accountability sets up the standards of performance and the time of evaluation.

Consequences specify—good and bad, natural and logical—what does and will happen as a result of the evaluation.

Creating Win/Win performance agreements requires vital paradigm shifts. The focus is on results, not methods. Most of us tend to supervise methods. We use the gofer delegation discussed in Habit 3, the methods management I used with Sandra when I asked her to take pictures of our son as he was water skiing. But Win/Win agreements focus on results, releasing tremendous individual human potential and creating greater synergy, building PC in the process instead of focusing exclusively on P.

With Win/Win accountability, people evaluate themselves. The traditional evaluation games people play are awkward and emotionally exhausting. In Win/Win, people evaluate themselves,
using the criteria that they themselves helped to create up front. And if you set it up correctly, people can do that. With a Win/Win delegation agreement, even a seven-year-old boy can tell for himself how well he’s keeping the yard “green and clean.”

In Win/Win performance agreements, consequences become the natural or logical result of performance rather than a reward or punishment arbitrarily handed out by the person in charge

There are basically four kinds of consequences (rewards and penalties) that management or parents can control—financial, psychic, opportunity, and responsibility. Financial consequences include such things as income, stock options, allowances, or penalties. Psychic or psychological consequences include recognition, approval, respect, credibility, or the loss of them. Unless people are in a survival mode, psychic compensation is often more motivating than financial compensation. Opportunity includes training, development, perks, and other benefits. Responsibility has to do with scope and authority, either of which can be enlarged or diminished. Win/Win agreements specify consequences in one or more of those areas and the people involved know it up front. So you don’t play games. Everything is clear from the beginning.

In addition to these logical, personal consequences, it is also important to clearly identify what the natural organizational consequences are. For example, what will happen if I’m late to work, if I refuse to cooperate with others, if I don’t develop good Win/Win performance agreements with my subordinates, if I don’t hold them accountable for desired results, or if I don’t promote their professional growth and career development?

Win/Win can only survive in an organization when the systems support it. If you talk Win/Win but reward Win/Lose, you’ve got a losing program on your hands.

You basically get what you reward. If you want to achieve the goals and reflect the values in your mission statement, then you need to align the reward system with these goals and values. If it isn’t aligned systematically, you won’t be walking your talk. You’ll be in the situation of the manager I mentioned earlier who talked cooperation but practiced competition by creating a “Race to Bermuda” contest

Focus on interests and not positions-
to invent options for mutual gain, and to insist on objective criteria—some external standard or principle that both parties can buy into.

Second, identify the key issues and concerns (not positions) involved.

Third, determine what results would constitute a fully acceptable solution.

First, see the problem from the other point of view. Really seek to understand and to give expression to the needs and concerns of the other party as well as or better than they can themselves

“Seek first to understand” involves a very deep shift in paradigm. We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They’re either speaking or preparing to speak. They’re filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.

We’re filled with our own rightness, our own autobiography. We want to be understood. Our conversations become collective monologues, and we never really understand what’s going on inside another human being.

When another person speaks, we’re usually “listening” at one of four levels. We may be ignoring another person, not really listening at all. We may practicepretending. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Right.” We may practice selective listening, hearing only certain parts of the conversation. We often do this when we’re listening to the constant chatter of a preschool child. Or we may even practice attentive listening, paying attention and focusing energy on the words that are being said. But very few of us ever practice the fifth level, the highest form of listening,empathic listening.

When I say empathic listening, I mean listening with intent to understand. I mean seeking first to understand, to really understand. It’s an entirely different paradigm.

Although it’s risky and hard, seek first to understand, or diagnose before you prescribe, is a correct principle manifest in many areas of life.

It’s the mark of all true professionals. It’s critical for the optometrist, it’s critical for the physician. You wouldn’t have any confidence in a doctor’s prescription unless you had confidence in the diagnosis.

This principle is also true in sales. An effective sales person first seeks to understand the needs, the concerns, the situation of the customer. The amateur salesman sells products; the professional sells solutions to needs and problems. It’s a totally different approach. The professional learns how to diagnose, how to understand. He also learns how to relate people’s needs to his products and services. And he has to have the integrity to say, “My product or service will not meet that need” if it will not.

we try to figure people out, to explain their motives, their behavior, based on our own motives and behavior

Can you see how limited we are when we try to understand another person on the basis of words alone, especially when we’re looking at that person through our own glasses? Can you see how limiting our autobiographical responses are to a person who is genuinely trying to get us to understand his autobiography?

You will never be able to truly step inside another person, to see the world as he sees it, until you develop the pure desire, the strength of personal character, and the positive Emotional Bank Account, as well as the empathic listening skills to do it.

The second stage of empathic listening is to rephrase the content. It’s a little more effective, but it’s still limited to the verbal communication.

The third stage brings your right brain into operation. You reflect feeling.

The first and least effective is to mimic content. This is the skill taught in “active” or “reflective” listening. Without the character and relationship base, it is often insulting to people and causes them to close up. It is, however, a first stage skill because it at least causes you to listen to what’s being said.

Ethos is your personal credibility, the faith people have in your integrity and competency. It’s the trust that you inspire, your Emotional Bank Account.

Pathosis the empathic side—it’s the feeling. It means that you are in alignment with the emotional thrust of another person’s communication.

Notice the sequence: ethos, pathos, logos—your character, and your relationships, and then the logic of your presentation. This represents another major paradigm shift. Most people, in making presentations, go straight to the logos, the left brain logic, of their ideas. They try to convince other people of the validity of that logic without first taking ethos and pathos into consideration.

The highest forms of synergy focus the four unique human endowments, the motive of Win/Win, and the skills of empathic communication on the toughest challenges we face in life. What results is almost miraculous. We create new alternatives—something that wasn’t there before.

Synergy is the essence of principle-centered leadership. It is the essence of principle-centered parenting. It catalyzes, unifies, and unleashes the greatest powers within people. All the habits we have covered prepare us to create the miracle of synergy.

What is synergy? Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It means that the relationship which the parts have to each other is a part in and of itself. It is not only a part, but the most catalytic, the most empowering, the most unifying, and the most exciting part

When you communicate synergistically, you are simply opening your mind and heart and expressions to new possibilities, new alternatives, new options. It may seem as if you are casting aside Habit 2 (to begin with the end in mind); but, in fact, you’re doing the opposite—you’re fulfilling it. You’re not sure when you engage in synergistic communication how things will work out or what the end will look like, but you do have an inward sense of excitement and security and adventure, believing that it will be significantly better than it was before. And that is the end that you have in mind.

You begin with the belief that parties involved will gain more insight, and that the excitement of that mutual learning and insight will create a momentum toward more and more insights, learnings, and growth.

As a teacher, I have come to believe that many truly great classes teeter on the very edge of chaos. Synergy tests whether teachers and students are really open to the principle of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Once people have experienced real synergy, they are never quite the same again. They know the possibility of having other such mind-expanding adventures in the future

Synergy is exciting. Creativity is exciting. It’s phenomenal what openness and communication can produce. The possibilities of truly significant gain, of significant improvement are so real that it’s worth the risk such openness entails.

The lowest level of communication coming out of low-trust situations would be characterized by defensiveness, protectiveness, and often legalistic language, which covers all the bases and spells out qualifiers and the escape clauses in the event things go sour. Such communication produces only Win/Lose or Lose/Lose. It isn’t effective—there’s no P/PC balance—and it creates further reasons to defend and protect

Respectful communication works in independent situations and even in interdependent situations, but the creative possibilities are not opened up. In interdependent situations compromise is the position usually taken. Compromise means that 1 + 1 = 1½. Both give and take. The communication isn’t defensive or protective or angry or manipulative; it is honest and genuine and respectful. But it isn’t creative or synergistic. It produces a low form of Win/Win.

Synergy means that 1 + 1 may equal 8, 16, or even 1,600. The synergistic position of high trust produces solutions better than any originally proposed, and all parties know it. Furthermore, they genuinely enjoy the creative enterprise. A miniculture is formed to satisfy in and of itself. Even if it is short lived, the P/PC balance is there.

They synergize. They communicate back and forth until they come up with a solution they both feel good about. It’s better than the solutions either of them originally proposed. It’s better than compromise. It’s a synergistic solution that builds P and PC.

the high Emotional Bank Account, thinking Win/Win, and seeking first to understand—creates the ideal environment for synergy.

Buddhism calls this “the middle way.” Middle in this sense does not mean compromise; it means higher, like the apex of the triangle.

The problem is that highly dependent people are trying to succeed in an interdependent reality. They’re either dependent on borrowing strength from position power and they go for Win/Lose, or they’re dependent on being popular with others and they go for Lose/Win. They may talk Win/Win technique, but they don’t really want to listen; they want to manipulate. And synergy can’t thrive in that environment.

Insecure people think that all reality should be amenable to their paradigms. They have a high need to clone others, to mold them over into their own thinking. They don’t realize that the very strength of the relationship is in having another point of view. Sameness is not oneness; uniformity is not unity. Unity, or oneness, is complementariness, not sameness. Sameness is uncreative… and boring. The essence of synergy is to value the differences

I’ve come to believe that the key to interpersonal synergy is intrapersonal synergy, that is synergy within ourselves. The heart of intrapersonal synergy is embodied in the principles in the first three habits, which give the internal security sufficient to handle the risks of being open and vulnerable. By internalizing those principles, we develop the abundance mentality of Win/Win and the authenticity ofHabit 5.

One of the very practical results of being principle-centered is that it makes us whole—truly integrated. People who are scripted deeply in logical, verbal, left-brain thinking will discover how totally inadequate that thinking is in solving problems which require a great deal of creativity. They become aware and begin to open up a new script inside their right brain. It’s not that the right brain wasn’t there; it just lay dormant. The muscles had not been developed, or perhaps they had atrophied after early childhood because of the heavy left-brain emphasis of formal education or social scripting.

When a person has access to both the intuitive, creative, and visual right brain, and the analytical, logical, verbal left brain, then the whole brain is working. In other words, there is psychic synergy taking place in our own head. And this tool is best suited to the reality of what life is, because life is not just logical—it is also EMOTIONAL

Valuing the differences is the essence of synergy—the mental, the emotional, the psychological differences between people. And the key to valuing those differences is to realize that all people see the world, not as it is, but as they are

If I think I see the world as it is, why would I want to value the differences? Why would I even want to bother with someone who’s “off track”? My paradigm is that I am objective; I see the world as it is. Everyone else is buried by the minutiae, but I see the larger picture. That’s why they call me a supervisor—I have super vision.

If that’s my paradigm, then I will never be effectively interdependent, or even effectively independent, for that matter. I will be limited by the paradigms of my own conditioning.

The person who is truly effective has the humility and reverence to recognize his own perceptual limitations and to appreciate the rich resources available through interaction with the hearts and minds of other human beings. That person values the differences because those differences add to his knowledge, to his understanding of reality. When we’re left to our own experiences, we constantly suffer from a shortage of data.

If two people have the same opinion, one is unnecessary. It’s not going to do me any good at all to communicate with someone else who sees only the old woman also. I don’t want to talk, to communicate, with someone who agrees with me; I want to communicate with you because you see it differently. I value that difference.

In an interdependent situation, synergy is particularly powerful in dealing with negative forces that work against growth and change.

Sociologist Kurt Lewin developed a “Force Field Analysis” model in which he described any current level of performance or being as a state of equilibrium between the driving forces that encourage upward movement and the restraining forces that discourage it.

Driving forces generally are positive, reasonable, logical, conscious, and economic. In juxtaposition, restraining forces are often negative, emotional, illogical, unconscious, and social/psychological. Both sets of forces are very real and must be taken into account in dealing with change.

4: Clarifying expectations
imagine the difficulty you might encounter if you and your boss had different assumptions regarding whose role it was to create your job description.
The cause of almost all relationship problems is rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations around roles and goals

5: Showing personal integrity
personal integrity generates trust and is the basis of many different kinds of deposits.
Lack of integrity can undermine almost any other effort to create high trust accounts. People can seek to understand remember the little things keep their promises clarify and fulfill their expectations and still fail to build reserves of trust if they are inwardly duplicitous.

3: Keeping commitments
keeping a commitment or a promise is a mojor deposit, breaking one is a major withdrawal.

2: Attending to the little things
the little kindnesses and courtesies are so important. small discourtesies little unkindness's little forms of disrespect make large withdrawals. In relationships the little things are the big things

1: Understanding the individual
really seeking to understand another person is probably one of the most important deposits you can make and is the key to every other deposit

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things… I am tempted to think… there are no little things.

BRUCE BARTON

Habit 7 is taking time to sharpen the saw. It surrounds the other habits on the Seven Habits paradigm because it is the habit that makes all the others possible.

This is the single most powerful investment we can ever make in life—investment in ourselves, in the only instrument we have with which to deal with life and to contribute. We are the instruments of our own performance, and to be effective, we need to recognize the importance of taking time regularly to sharpen the saw in all four ways.

The physical dimension involves caring effectively for our physical body—eating the right kinds of foods, getting sufficient rest and relaxation, and exercising on a regular basis.

The spiritual dimension is your core, your center, your commitment to your value system. It’s a very private area of life and a supremely important one. It draws upon the sources that inspire and uplift you and tie you to the timeless truths of all humanity. And people do it very, very differently

The greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the silent chambers of the soul.” If you win the battles there, if you settle the issues that inwardly conflict, you feel a sense of peace, a sense of knowing what you’re about

It is extremely valuable to train the mind to stand apart and examine its own program. That, to me, is the definition of a liberal education —the ability to examine the programs of life against larger questions and purposes and other paradigms. Training, without such education, narrows and closes the mind so that the assumptions underlying the training are never examined. That’s why it is so valuable to read broadly and to expose yourself to great minds.

n the words of Phillips Brooks: Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.

Renewing our social/emotional dimension does not take time in the same sense that renewing the other dimensions does. We can do it in our normal everyday interactions with other people. But it definitely requires exercise. We may have to push ourselves because many of us have not achieved the level of Private Victory and the skills of Public Victory necessary for Habits 4, 5, and 6 to come naturally to us in all our interactions.

I believe that a life of integrity is the most fundamental source of personal worth. I do not agree with the popular success literature that says that self-esteem is primarily a matter of mind set, of attitude—that you can psych yourself into peace of mind.

Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way.

Most people are a function of the social mirror, scripted by the opinions, the perceptions, the paradigms of the people around them. As interdependent people, you and I come from a paradigm which includes the realization that we are a part of that social mirror.

We can choose to reflect back to others a clear, undistorted vision of themselves. We can affirm their proactive nature and treat them as responsible people. We can help script them as principle-centered, value-based, independent, worthwhile individuals. And, with the Abundance Mentality, we realize that giving a positive reflection to others in no way diminishes us. It increases us because it increases the opportunities for effective interaction with other proactive people.

The self-renewal process must include balanced renewal in all four dimensions of our nature: the physical, the spiritual, the mental, and the social/emotional.

Although renewal in each dimension is important, it only becomes optimally effective as we deal with all four dimensions in a wise and balanced way. To neglect any one area negatively impacts the rest.

When an organization neglects any one or more of these areas, it negatively impacts the entire organization. The creative energies that could result in tremendous, positive synergy are instead used to fight against the organization and become restraining forces to growth and productivity.

Balanced renewal is optimally synergetic. The things you do to sharpen the saw in any one dimension have positive impact in other dimensions because they are so highly interrelated. Your physical health affects your mental health; your spiritual strength affects your social/emotional strength. As you improve in one dimension, you increase your ability in other dimensions as well.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People create optimum synergy among these dimensions. Renewal in any dimension increases your ability to live at least one of the Seven Habits. And although the habits are sequential, improvement in one habit synergetically increases your ability to live the rest.

The Daily Private Victory—a minimum of one hour a day in renewal of the physical, spiritual, and mental dimensions—is the key to the development of the Seven Habits and it’s completely within your Circle of Influence. It is the Quadrant II focus time necessary to integrate these habits into your life, to become principle-centered.

Renewal is the principle—and the process—that empowers us to move on an upward spiral of growth and change, of continuous improvement.

To make meaningful and consistent progress along that spiral, we need to consider one other aspect of renewal as it applies to the unique human endowment that directs this upward movement—our conscience. In the words of Madame de Staël, “The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it: but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.”

You can pretty well summarize the first three habits with the expression “make and keep a promise.” And you can pretty well summarize the next three habits with the expression “involve others in the problem and work out the solution together.”