Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey (29 page)

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.

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
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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?"

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"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 and they both felt good about it. And that solution, that Third Alternative, would have been synergistic -- probably something neither of them had thought of on his own.

Win-Win or No Deal TM

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.

When you have no deal as an option in your mind, you feel liberated because you have no need to manipulate people, to push your own agenda, to drive for what you want. You can be open. You can really try to understand the deeper issues underlying the positions.

With no deal as an option, you can honestly say, "I only want to go for win-win. I want to win, and I want you to win. I wouldn't want to get my way and have you not feel good about it, because downstream it would eventually surface and create a withdrawal. On the other hand, I don't think you would feel good if you got your way and I gave in. So let's work for a win-win. Let's really hammer it out. And if we can't find it, then let's agree that we won't make a deal at all. It would be better not to deal than to live with a decision that wasn't right for us both. Then maybe another time we might be able to get together."

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Some time after learning the concept of Win-Win or No Deal, the president of a small computer software company shared with me the following experience:

"We had developed new software which we sold on a five-year contract to a particular bank. The bank president was excited about it, but his people weren't really behind the decision.

"About a month later, that bank changed presidents. The new president came to me and said, 'I am uncomfortable with these software conversions. I have a mess on my hands. My people are all saying that they can't go through this and I really feel I just can't push it at this point in time.'

"My own company was in deep financial trouble. I knew I had every legal right to enforce the contract. But I had become convinced of the value of the principle of win-win.

"So I told him 'We have a contract. Your bank has secured our products and our services to convert you to this program. But we understand that you're not happy about it. So what we'd like to do is give you back the contract, give you back your deposit, and if you are ever looking for a software solution in the future, come back and see us.'

"I literally walked away from an $84,000 contract. It was close to financial suicide. But I felt that, in the long run, if the principle were true, it would come back and pay dividends.

"Three months later, the new president called me. 'I'm now going to make changes in my date processing,' he said, 'and I want to do business with you.' He signed a contract for $240,000."

Anything less than win-win in an interdependent reality is a poor second best that will have impact in the long-term relationship. The cost of the impact needs to be carefully considered. If you can't reach a true win-win, you're very often better off to go for no deal.

Win-Win or No Deal provides tremendous emotional freedom in the family relationship. If family members can't agree on a video that everyone will enjoy, they can simply decide to do something else --

no deal -- rather than having some enjoy the evening at the expense of others.

I have a friend whose family has been involved in singing together for several years. When they were young, she arranged the music, made the costumes, accompanied them on the piano, and directed the performances.

As the children grew older, their taste in music began to change and they wanted to have more say in what they performed and what they wore. They became less responsive to direction.

Because she had years of experience in performing herself and felt closer to the needs of the older people at the rest homes where they planned to perform, she didn't feel that many of the ideas they were suggesting would be appropriate. At the same time, however, she recognized their need to express themselves and to be part of the decision-making process.

So she set up a Win-Win or No Deal. She told them she wanted to arrive at an agreement that everyone felt good about -- or they would simply find other ways to enjoy their talents. As a result, everyone felt free to express his or her feelings and ideas as they worked to set up a Win-Win Agreement, knowing that whether or not they could agree, there would be no emotional strings.

The Win-Win or No Deal approach is most realistic at the beginning of a business relationship or enterprise. In a continuing business relationship, no deal may not be a viable option, which can create serious problems, especially for family businesses or businesses that are begun initially on the basis of friendship.

In an effort to preserve the relationship, people sometimes go on for years making one compromise after another, thinking win-lose or lose-win even while talking win-win. This creates serious problems for the people and for the business, particularly if the competition operates on win-win and synergy.

Without no deal, many such businesses simply deteriorate and either fail or have to be turned over to professional managers. Experience shows that it is often better in setting up a family business or a business between friends to acknowledge the possibility of no deal downstream and to establish some kind of buy/sell agreement so that the business can prosper without permanently damaging the relationship.

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Of course there are some relationships where no deal is not viable. I wouldn't abandon my child or my spouse and go for no deal (it would be better, if necessary, to go for compromise -- a low form of win-win). But in many cases, it is possible to go into negotiation with a full Win-Win or No Deal attitude. And the freedom in the attitude is incredible.

Five Dimensions of Win-Win

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. It involves mutual learning, mutual influence, mutual benefits.

It takes great courage as well as consideration to create these mutual benefits, particularly if we're interacting with others who are deeply scripted in win-los.

That is why this habit involves principles of interpersonal leadership. Effective interpersonal leadership requires the vision, the proactive initiative, and the security, guidance, wisdom, and power that come from principle-centered personal leadership.

The principle of win-win is fundamental to success in all our interactions, and it embraces five interdependent dimensions of life. It begins with character and moves toward relationships, out of which flow agreements. It is nurtured in an environment where structure and systems are based on win-win. And it involves process; we cannot achieve win-win ends with win-lose or lose-win means.

The following diagram shows how these five dimensions relate to each other.

Now let's consider each of the five dimensions in turn.

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.

INTEGRITY. 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.