Habit 6 – Synergy, Leveraging Our Differences
Have you ever been in a situation where you strongly disagree with another person in your team? You wish they would just “get on board”? It turns out that differences of perspective are actually a massive asset to teams, if they are harnessed in an effective way.
Habit 6 from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is about how our differences, when used effectively, allow us to do amazing things.
We see things differently, its normal, and really awesome
We all see the world through our own lens. The lens through which we see the world is created from our experiences and values.
The book talks about a simple experiment which demonstrates this. Half the class is told they are going to see a picture of an old woman. Look at the picture below, can you see the old woman?
The other half of the class is told they are going to see a picture of young woman. The above picture is flashed on the screen for a few seconds and then people are asked what they saw. Do you see the young woman?
Based on the suggestion of young versus old, the different groups pretty much see what they were told they would see. Then it is revealed to them that the picture actually has both young and old woman. The different groups initially have a hard time seeing this. They talk to each other and a person who saw the young woman is shown how there is an old woman and vice versa. Because they know that there is another way to see this, and they trust the teacher and their colleagues, they can eventually see the other picture.
This example is so powerful because it shows us how there can be facts, lines and spaces, yet we can see different things. That is, reality is based on our interpretation of the facts, so two people can be right about reality, even though they see the exact same thing, differently. The other thing to notice is how much a simple suggestion of what we are going to see affects what we actually see. Finally, because we trust the other person who is trying to help us see their perspective, we can eventually see it and learn that there is more than one way to see something.
Why is this hard in practice?
The above example is so simple and powerful, yet we find it really hard to do in practice, mainly because we typically take differences of opinion as “that person is crazy”, or “they obviously don’t get it”. We think that what we see is the truth. We discount differences of opinion because we think the truth is plainly obvious. Also, when someone disagrees with us, and we are insecure, it can triggers a fight or flight response.
If we can leverage our differences, and use that to see a situations from different sides, then we can be so much more effective.
How do we leverage our differences?
In order to really take advantage of our differences it requires us to use some skills and habits which we have already discussed in previous blog articles.
A high balance in our account
The first thing we must have is trust. The book talks about the concept of the relationship bank account. I.e. whenever we do something for another person, which that person values, we make a deposit in a relationship bank account. Whenever we do something opposite or get a favor, we make a withdrawal.
For example, most people make deposits in a relationship account when they keep their promises. Alternatively, they make big withdrawals when they do not.
Building the relationship account as a team
In one story, a team was being put together to work on something that was really important to the country. The leader of the team recognized the importance of having a high relationship bank account so they took the entire team on vacation together for 2-3 weeks before starting any work. This was a controversial choice because the work they needed to do was urgent.
During that vacation, the people on the team got to know each other, build relationships, and learn how talented each person was. When they started doing work, and saw things differently, they genuinely wanted to understand. They thought a person of such high caliber who they had a good relationship with must see something they did not and they wanted to understand.
Seek to understand, before being understood
Having a high relationship bank account is critical to Synergy. When we build a high relationship bank account, we trust each other more. We get to a situation where we respect the other person greatly, we value them and their intelligence, so if they tell us they see it differently, we think there must be something there and we want to understand.
Emphatic listening
Once we want to understand then using our emphatic listening skills, i.e. listening for content and emotion, can help us really understand the different perspective and at the same time continue to make deposits in our relationship bank account.
See this previous blog article about habit 5, seek to understand, before being understood.
Nirvana
When we have synergy, we get really excited because we see other peoples perspectives. We start being able to finish each other’s sentences, we discover new things that we could not see by ourselves. One plus one is no longer 2, it is 5 or 10 because these differences build on each other.
The key
As you can see from the above, we can foster Synergetic experiences and put in place conditions that make it more likely to happen. At the end of the day it requires people who have high trust with each other, have self confidence, listening skills, and understand that the same thing can be seen differently, and that those differences are a powerful asset to them and the team.
Together they can do greater things then they could alone. They can have joyful discovery together and some of the most rewarding experiences that bind people together and that bond can last a lifetime.
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