Summary Of Habit 6 of 7 Habits

Covey’s Habit 6 revolves around synergy. According to him, the best way of finding a solution to the problems is by creating an environment where everyone can share their ideas concerning using their experience and expertise so that one best possible solution can be picked out from the pool of ideas. Valuing differences and open-mindedness are what drives synergy and enhances creative cooperation. This synergy leads to innovative solutions that cater to the needs of all stakeholders. It will be a far better approach because it helps to produce quality results with a combined effort instead of an individual giving the solution.

In this habit, he discusses the detail regarding the path of synergy and shows how one can reap all the benefits that come with synergy because he believes that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

From the 7 habits of highly effective people, the sixth habit is synergizing. Synergy is quite necessary to become a successful leader because it provides the capability to merge multiple forces like companies, people, etc. to work collectively by overpowering all the challenges. Open-mindedness is essential in fostering this cooperative environment.

To understand the concept of synergy, let suppose that there are two similar manufacturing companies A and B. Company A is equipped with cutting-edge technology that produces top-quality products that the other company lacks. Company B has an outstanding logistical system which is far better than Company A. They can get synergies by merging because they are compatible with each other.

The biggest advantage both these companies can have after synergizing together is that they can enhance their revenue and decrease their expenses, which is simply not possible if they work separately.

Essential Elements that are Necessary for Synergizing

To achieve synergy, there are some essential elements that both parties must have are listed below:

  • They must have similar goals

  • They have a sense of self

  • They stay open to new ideas

  • They embrace trust

  • They should understand that the best to do things is by working together

  • They show respect to each other

  • They must have the courage to apologize

  • They should have the aspiration to comprehend others

  • They should be capable of controlling the negative judgment

  • They must have trust in win/win instead of win / lose

  • They should recognize and value psychological differences to enhance collaboration and creative problem-solving

Key Points Discussed By Covey in Habit 6

Covey, in his book, discusses many important things to obtain synergy mentioned below:

1 - Give Importance to the Opinion of Others

Covey highlights the importance of valuing differences by giving value to the opinions of the people you oppose because everyone has a different frame of mind. To gain synergy, it is necessary to give importance to the views of others. It helps to control your emotions and allows you to find an accurate solution to the problem because when you listen to the opinions of different people, then there is a strong possibility of getting closer to the perfect solution.

2 - Take Criticism with Patience

It’s quite hard to take criticism of people patiently because it needs a lot of practice to master this skill. Many people get embraced by the criticism of others, which is not a good habit. In this book, Covey gives importance to handle criticism patiently because it helps you to identify some of your weaknesses in the eyes of others.

3 - Listen to the Ideas of Others

Everyone has a different perspective regarding a problem. Sometimes, other people have a good idea to handle a situation compared to what you thought. That’s why it’s better to listen to the idea of all so that you can discover the most creative idea or make adjustments to your ideas after listening to the reviews of others. Listening to others’ ideas can help uncover new solutions and foster innovative thinking.

4 - Creating Change

Many people don’t want to change because it’s quite frustrating. Sometimes, you know that your argument is awesome, but still, you see that nobody wants to change because they want to stick to their solution.

Synergy means achieving greater outcomes through collaboration and mutual respect. It involves the collaboration of individuals to create results that exceed the capabilities of working separately, valuing differences, and open communication to enhance problem-solving.

Covey, in this book spotlight, that the forces that motivate you for the change are logical and the forces that push you away are emotional. According to him, the best way is to encourage logical forces. It can be done by creating an atmosphere that weakens the emotional forces. Doing this will not only decrease the negative forces but also provides a helping hand to the increasing local forces.

By creating that sort of atmosphere, you can effortlessly find the reason why they don’t want to change so that you can entirely focus on resolving their concerns. Once their worries are resolved, then you will be able to work collectively with them to create the winning solutions.

5 - Look for Challenging People

Synergy will come when you work with people who have a different mindset than you. These people are a bit difficult because they think out of the box. Working with them will not be that easy; that’s why Covey emphasizes listening to them carefully so that you can work together with them and discover a must-win solution.

Major Benefits of Synergy

Synergy brings many remarkable benefits listed below:

1 - Trust

One of the key benefits that synergy provides is trust because it helps to create a collaborative atmosphere using which both parties can work together.

2 - Focus

As you know that “The more you focus on something, the bigger it gets.” Using synergy, it becomes easy to create focus because it provides a platform using which two similar parties think together towards the same objective with more concentration. It helps them notice every single aspect of the problem to get the perfect solution.

3 - Diversity

Diversity is also an important benefit that comes with synergy because it allows you to work with different people from different geographies. When you work in a multicultural environment, then it brings you the opportunity to get the benefit from a wide range of ideas which the people have in their mind.

4 - Creativity

With the help of synergy, a safe environment is created in which people have the freedom to share their ideas without having a fear of criticism. This environment is quite helpful to get benefited from the creativity of other people, which they don’t show because of the distress of embarrassment.

5 - Better Solution

By means of synergy, it becomes quite easy to get the best possible solution to the problem because it allows multiple talented minds to provide their opinion on the problems. Unlike compromise, which yields only a half of the potential gains, synergy leverages the full potential of collaborative efforts. Achieving synergy requires the integration of all the other habits to foster a cooperative environment where diverse perspectives can merge to create innovative solutions.

Conclusion

Synergy plays a major role in helping you work collectively as a group because by doing this, you will be able to share your ideas with other talented people. This way of working helps you to explore more options for a problem instead of working alone with a limited skill set.

Synergy allows people to gain new insights because of the influence of different people. So, start synergizing and enhance the proficiency of discovering new techniques for your business to achieve better results.

Key Takeaways Of Habit 6

One of the key takeaways of synergy is that when you work together, then you can get the chance to share ideas that others cannot think of. It ultimately helps you to find the best solution to the problem, which would never have been possible without synergy.

  • Every person is different in their way and can only be leveraged only if the work environment is collaborative. When you synergize, you become more creative because you can take the best part of each of the team member’s expertise to bring something more unique and innovative.

  • Synergy helps you to get things done faster because you are working as a team. If one lacks any skill, the other team member is there to cover it up, instead of working individually with a limited skill set.

  • Synergy also enables you to gather a pool of different ideas to work with. As your entire team is on the same page and working in the same direction you are at the luxury to choose the best solution to get the problem fixed.

  • Synergy helps you build an environment of a 360-degree feedback system, where everybody has an equal opportunity to contribute and recommend. It also helps in building a healthy relationship among the team. This atmosphere brings trust and lets others be open with you discussing things.

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