The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

PRINCIPLES OF INTERPERSONAL LEADERSHIP

We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to

life.

EDWIN MARKHAM

One time I was asked to work with a company whose president was very concerned about the

lack of cooperation among his people.

“Our basic problem, Stephen, is that they’re selfish,” he said. “They just won’t cooperate. I

know if they would cooperate, we could produce so much more. Can you help us develop a

human relations program that will solve the problem?”

“Is your problem the people or the paradigm?” I asked.

“Look for yourself,” he replied.

So I did. And I found that there was a real selfishness, an unwillingness to cooperate, a

resistance to authority, defensive communication. I could see that overdrawn Emotional Bank

Accounts had created a culture of low trust. But I pressed the question.

“Let’s look at it deeper,” I suggested. “Why don’t your people cooperate? What is the reward

for not cooperating?”

“There’s no reward for not cooperating,” he assured me. “The rewards are much greater if

they do cooperate.”

“Are they?” I asked. Behind a curtain on one wall of this man’s office was a chart. On the

chart were a number of racehorses all lined up on a track. Superimposed on the face of each

horse was the face of one of his managers. At the end of the track was a beautiful travel poster of

Bermuda, an idyllic picture of blue skies and fleecy clouds and a romantic couple walking hand

in hand down a white sandy beach.

Once a week, this man would bring all his people into this office and talk cooperation. “Let’s

all work together. We’ll all make more money if we do.” Then he would pull the curtain and

show them the chart. “Now which of you is going to win the trip to Bermuda?”

It was like telling one flower to grow and watering another, like saying “firings will continue

until morale improves.” He wanted cooperation. He wanted his people to work together, to share

ideas, to all benefit from the effort. But he was setting them up in competition with each other.

One manager’s success meant failure for the other managers.

As with many, many problems between people in business, family, and other relationships,

the problem in this company was the result of a flawed paradigm. The president was trying to get

the fruits of cooperation from a paradigm of competition. And when it didn’t work, he wanted a

technique, a program, a quick fix antidote to make his people cooperate.

But you can’t change the fruit without changing the root. Working on the attitudes and

behaviors would have been hacking at the leaves. So we focused instead on producing personal

and organizational excellence in an entirely different way by developing information and reward

systems which reinforced the value of cooperation.

Whether you are the president of a company or the janitor, the moment you step from

independence into interdependence in any capacity, you step into a leadership role. You are in a

position of influencing other people. And the habit of effective interpersonal leadership is Think

Win/Win.

SIX PARADIGMS OF HUMAN INTERACTION

Win/Win is not a technique; it’s a total philosophy of human interaction. In fact, it is one of

six paradigms of interaction. The alternative paradigms are Win/Lose, Lose/Win, Lose/Lose,

Win, and Win/Win or No Deal.

• Win/Win

• Win/Lose

• Lose/Win

• Lose/Lose

• Win

• Win/Win or No Deal

Win/Win

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. With a Win/Win solution, all parties feel good about the decision and feel committed

to the action plan. Win/Win sees life as a cooperative, not a competitive arena. Most people tend

to think in terms of dichotomies: strong or weak, hardball or softball, win or lose. But that kind

of thinking is fundamentally flawed. It’s based on power and position rather than on principle.

Win/Win is based on the paradigm that there is plenty for everybody, that one person’s success is

not achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others.

Win/Win is a belief in the Third Alternative. It’s not your way or my way; it’s a better way, a

higher way.

Win/Lose

One alternative to Win/Win is Win/Lose, the paradigm of the race to Bermuda. It says “If I

win, you lose.”

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.

Most people have been deeply scripted in the Win/Lose mentality since birth. First and most

important of the powerful forces at work is the family. When one child is compared with another

—when patience, understanding or love is given or withdrawn on the basis of such comparisons

—people are into Win/Lose thinking. Whenever love is given on a conditional basis, when

someone has to earn love, what’s being communicated to them is that they are not intrinsically

valuable or lovable. Value does not lie inside them, it lies outside. It’s in comparison with

somebody else or against some expectation.

And what happens to a young mind and heart, highly vulnerable, highly dependent upon the

support and emotional affirmation of the parents, in the face of conditional love? The child is

molded, shaped, and programmed in the Win/Lose mentality.

“If I’m better than my brother, my parents will love me more.”

“My parents don’t love me as much as they love my sister. I must not be as valuable.”

Another powerful scripting agency is the peer group. A child first wants acceptance from his

parents and then from his peers, whether they be siblings or friends. And we all know how cruel

peers sometimes can be. They often accept or reject totally on the basis of conformity to their

expectations and norms, providing additional scripting toward Win/Lose.

The academic world reinforces Win/Lose scripting. The “normal distribution curve” basically

says that you got an “A” because someone else got a “C.” It interprets an individual’s value by

comparing him or her to everyone else. No recognition is given to intrinsic value; everyone is

extrinsically defined.

“Oh, how nice to see you here at our PTA meeting. You ought to be really proud of your

daughter, Caroline. She’s in the upper 10 percent.”

“That makes me feel good.”

“But your son, Johnny, is in trouble. He’s in the lower quartile.”

“Really? Oh, that’s terrible! What can we do about it?”

What this kind of comparative information doesn’t tell you is that perhaps Johnny is going on

all eight cylinders while Caroline is coasting on four of her eight. But people are not graded

against their potential or against the full use of their present capacity. They are graded in relation

to other people. And grades are carriers of social value; they open doors of opportunity or they

close them. Competition, not cooperation, lies at the core of the educational process.

Cooperation, in fact, is usually associated with cheating.

Another powerful programming agent is athletics, particularly for young men in their high

school or college years. Often they develop the basic paradigm that life is a big game, a zero sum

game where some win and some lose. “Winning” is “beating” in the athletic arena.

Another agent is law. We live in a litigious society. The first thing many people think about

when they get into trouble is suing someone, taking them to court, “winning” at someone else’s

expense. But defensive minds are neither creative nor cooperative.

Certainly we need law or else society will deteriorate. It provides survival, but it doesn’t

create synergy. At best it results in compromise. Law is based on an adversarial concept. The

recent trend of encouraging lawyers and law schools to focus on peaceable negotiation, the

techniques of Win/Win, and the use of private courts, may not provide the ultimate solution, but

it does reflect a growing awareness of the problem.

Certainly there is a place for Win/Lose thinking in truly competitive and low-trust situations.

But most of life is not a competition. We don’t have to live each day competing with our spouse,

our children, our coworkers, our neighbors, and our friends. “Who’s winning in your marriage?”

is a ridiculous question. If both people aren’t winning, both are losing.

Most of life is an interdependent, not an independent, reality. Most results you want depend

on cooperation between you and others. And the Win/Lose mentality is dysfunctional to that

cooperation.

Lose/Win

Some people are programmed the other way—Lose/Win.

“I lose, you win.”

“Go ahead. Have your way with me.”

“Step on me again. Everyone does.”

“I’m a loser. I’ve always been a loser.”

“I’m a peacemaker. I’ll do anything to keep peace.”

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.

In negotiation, Lose/Win is seen as capitulation—giving in or giving up. In leadership style,

it’s permissiveness or indulgence. Lose/Win means being a nice guy, even if “nice guys finish

last.” Win/Lose people love Lose/Win people because they can feed on them. They love their

weaknesses—they take advantage of them. Such weaknesses complement their strengths.

But the problem is that Lose/Win people bury a lot of feelings. And unexpressed feelings

never die: they’re buried alive and come forth later in uglier ways. Psychosomatic illnesses,

particularly of the respiratory, nervous, and circulatory systems, often are the reincarnation of

cumulative resentment, deep disappointment and disillusionment repressed by the Lose/Win

mentality. Disproportionate rage or anger, overreaction to minor provocation, and cynicism are

other embodiments of suppressed emotion.

People who are constantly repressing, not transcending feelings toward a higher meaning find

that it affects the quality of their self-esteem and eventually the quality of their relationships with

others.

Both Win/Lose and Lose/Win are weak positions, based in personal insecurities. In the short

run, Win/Lose will produce more results because it draws on the often considerable strengths and

talents of the people at the top. Lose/Win is weak and chaotic from the outset.

Many executives, managers, and parents swing back and forth, as if on a pendulum, from

Win/Lose inconsideration to Lose/Win indulgence. When they can’t stand confusion and lack of

structure, direction, expectation, and discipline any longer, they swing back to Win/Lose—until

guilt undermines their resolve and drives them back to Lose/Win—until anger and frustration

drive them back to Win/Lose again.

Lose/Lose

When two Win/Lose people get together—that is, when two determined, stubborn, egoinvested

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.

I know of a divorce in which the husband was directed by the judge to sell the assets and turn

over half the proceeds to his ex-wife. In compliance, he sold a car worth over $10,000 for $50

and gave $25 to the wife. When the wife protested, the court clerk checked on the situation and

discovered that the husband was proceeding in the same manner systematically through all of the

assets.

Some people become so centered on an enemy, so totally obsessed with the behavior of

another person that they become blind to everything except their desire for that person to lose,

even if it means losing themselves. Lose/Lose is the philosophy of adversarial conflict, the

philosophy of war.

Lose/Lose is also the philosophy of the highly dependent person without inner direction who

is miserable and thinks everyone else should be, too. “If nobody ever wins, perhaps being a loser

isn’t so bad.”

Win 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.

Which Option Is Best?

Of these five philosophies discussed so far—Win/Win, Win/Lose, Lose/Win, Lose/Lose, and

Win—which is the most effective? The answer is, “It depends.” If you win a football game, that

means the other team loses. If you work in a regional office that is miles away from another

regional office, and you don’t have any functional relationship between the offices, you may

want to compete in a Win/Lose situation to stimulate business. However, you would not want to

set up a Win/Lose situation like the “Race to Bermuda” contest within a company or in a

situation where you need cooperation among people or groups of people to achieve maximum

success.

If you value a relationship and the issue isn’t really that important, you may want to go for

Lose/Win in some circumstances to genuinely affirm the other person. “What I want isn’t as

important to me as my relationship with you. Let’s do it your way this time.” You might also go

for Lose/Win if you feel the expense of time and effort to achieve a win of any kind would

violate other higher values. Maybe it just isn’t worth it.

There are circumstances in which you would want to Win, and you wouldn’t be highly

concerned with the relationship of that win to others. If your child’s life were in danger, for

example, you might be peripherally concerned about other people and circumstances. But saving

that life would be supremely important.

The best choice, then, depends on reality. The challenge is to read that reality accurately and

not to translate Win/Lose or other scripting into every situation.

Most situations, in fact, are part of an interdependent reality, and then Win/Win is really the

only viable alternative of the five.

Win/Lose is not viable because, although I appear to win in a confrontation with you, your

feelings, your attitudes toward me and our relationship have been affected. If I am a supplier to

your company, for example, and I win on my terms in a particular negotiation, I may get what I

want now. But will you come to me again? My short-term Win will really be a long-term Lose if

I don’t get your repeat business. So an interdependent Win/Lose is really Lose/Lose in the long

run.

If we come up with a Lose/Win, you may appear to get what you want for the moment. But

how will that affect my attitude about working with you, about fulfilling the contract? I may not

feel as anxious to please you. I may carry battle scars with me into any future negotiations. My

attitude about you and your company may be spread as I associate with others in the industry. So

we’re into Lose/Lose again. Lose/Lose obviously isn’t viable in any context.

And if I focus on my own Win and don’t even consider your point of view, there’s no basis

for any kind of productive relationship.

In the long run, if it isn’t a win for both of us, we both lose. That’s why Win/Win is the only

real alternative in interdependent realities.

***

I worked with a client once, the president of a large chain of retail stores, who said, “Stephen,

this Win/Win idea sounds good, but it is so idealistic. The tough, realistic business world isn’t

like that. There’s Win/Lose everywhere, and if you’re not out there playing the game, you just

can’t make it.”

“All right,” I said, “try going for Win/Lose with your customers. Is that realistic?”

“Well, no,” he replied.

“Why not?”

“I’d lose my customers.”

“Then, go for Lose/Win—give the store away. Is that realistic?”

“No. No margin, no mission.”

As we considered the various alternatives, Win/Win appeared to be the only truly realistic

approach.

“I guess that’s true with customers,” he admitted, “but not with suppliers.”

“You are the customer of the supplier,” I said. “Why doesn’t the same principle apply?”

“Well, we recently renegotiated our lease agreements with the mall operators and owners,” he

said. “We went in with a Win/Win attitude. We were open, reasonable, conciliatory. But they

saw that position as being soft and weak, and they took us to the cleaners.”

“Well, why did you go for Lose/Win?” I asked.

“We didn’t. We went for Win/Win.”

“I thought you said they took you to the cleaners.”

“They did.”

“In other words, you lost.”

“That’s right.”

“And they won.”

“That’s right.”

“So what’s that called?”

When he realized that what he had called Win/Win was really Lose/Win, he was shocked.

And as we examined the long-term impact of that Lose/Win, the suppressed feelings, the

trampled values, the resentment that seethed under the surface of the relationship, we agreed that

it was really a loss for both parties in the end.

If this man had had a real Win/Win attitude, he would have stayed longer in the

communication process, listened to the mall owner more, then expressed his point of view with

more courage. He would have continued in the Win/Win spirit until a solution was reached they

both felt good about. And that solution, that Third Alternative, would have been synergistic—

probably something neither of them had thought of on his own.