The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Social Media — Think Win/Win

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

Think Win/Win is the first of 3 out­wardly focused habit Covey presents in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effec­tive Peo­ple.  These are known as habits of inter­de­pen­dence.  These habits are designed to build last­ing and mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with other peo­ple — rela­tion­ships that are mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial, based on prin­ci­ples, and that result in the cre­ation of new ways of think­ing and under­stand­ing our world.

Think Win/Win is a habit that requires trust.  It requres self trust, which is build through the first 3 habits, and trust of oth­ers which is built through com­mu­ni­ca­tion, inter­ac­tion, and expe­ri­ence.  With trust in place, solu­tions to prob­lems can be approached in new and excit­ing ways.  Rather than the idea of Win / Lose or I am right and you are wrong, think win/win seeks to find cre­ative new solu­tions to prob­lems.  This “third alter­na­tive” as described by Covey is the belief that it is “not your way or my way; it’s a bet­ter way, a higher way.”

With ongo­ing rela­tion­ships in your life, you can’t truly win, unless all par­ties ben­e­fit.  Oth­er­wise trust erodes, and the foun­da­tion of the rela­tion­ship crum­bles with it.  Covey sum­ma­rizes this idea with the state­ment that “if both peo­ple aren’t win­ning, both are los­ing.”  Results in life depend on peo­ple work­ing with one another.  Win/Win is the men­tal­ity that life is not about the power that comes from being right or prov­ing your point, but rather it should be about a will­ing­ness to address the needs of all par­ties involved.

Covey then pro­ceeds to describe win/win in the con­text of 5 dimen­sions, which are listed as follows:

1. Char­ac­ter — The foun­da­tion of the habit of win/win.  This involves integrity, matu­rity, and an abun­dance mentality.
2. Rela­tion­ships — The idea that because there is high trust and high value placed in an main­tain­ing an ongo­ing rela­tion­ship, there can be open discussion.
3. Agree­ments — The cre­ation of shared expec­ta­tions by iden­ti­fy­ing desired results, guide­lines, resources, account­abil­ity, and consequences.
4. Sys­tems — You get what you reward.
5. Processes — Using a prin­ci­pled approach rather than a posi­tional approach.  Try­ing to use empa­thy to under­stand the other side of the story, iden­ti­fy­ing key con­cerns, and then agree­ing to exam­ine new solu­tions collaboratively.

Think win/win is a mind­set.  It is a new way of approach­ing human inter­ac­tion, with a belief that our uniquely human gift of cre­ativ­ity can be lev­ered to cre­ate new ways of doing things — ways that are thought­ful, mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial, and sustainable.

So how does this apply to social media?

I view much of the inter­ac­tions that take place in com­ments or threaded dis­cus­sions as the per­fect exam­ple of how a win/win men­tal­ity can be uti­lized.  Sup­pose one of your cus­tomers com­ments about a prob­lem they would like you or your com­pany to address.  It may not be as easy as just say­ing “OK.”  You may have finan­cial con­sid­er­a­tions, per­sonal philo­soph­i­cal dif­fer­ences, or poli­cies and pro­ce­dures in place that deter­mine your actions.  Alter­na­tively it is prob­a­bly not a good idea to sim­ply dis­miss the request with a firm “no” response.  This would alien­ate the cus­tomer and erode the trust you have with them.  It might also wind up on the customer’s blog, or Jeff Jarvis’ blog,  or youtube, or Face­book, or Twit­ter or all of the above — cre­at­ing much larger prob­lems for you.

A win-win men­tal­ity would seek a deeper dis­cus­sion with the cus­tomer — one that was trans­par­ent and hon­est.  One that sought to solve the issue at hand and the root cause of the prob­lem, with­out com­pro­mis­ing prin­ci­ples on either side.  Social media enables this dis­cus­sion.  In fact it can engage exter­nal actors to assist in the devel­op­ment of new solu­tions.  If the cus­tomer trusts that you have their best inter­sts at heart, and you trust that they are tyring to help you improve your value propo­si­tion, you can col­lab­o­ra­tively seek new ways of doing busi­ness.  This is at the heart of innovation.

Apple does this mas­ter­fully with their forum sites.  Com­cast and Dell are doing it through Twit­ter and blogs.  By seek­ing out com­mu­ni­ca­tion through the par­a­digm of win/win, these com­pa­nies are con­vert­ing prob­lems into oppor­tu­ni­ties.  They are seek­ing to cre­ate wins.  They are not just surf­ing the web to “give the store away” but rather try­ing to col­lab­o­ra­tively solve prob­lems.  They are buld­ing trust. Social media enables this trust to be built on a large scale.

By fol­low­ing the dimen­sions out­lined by Covey as to how to approach win/win employ­ees can act with con­fi­dence, and freely work to build trust.  The alter­na­tive to this is the dreaded “I’m sorry sir but our pol­icy clearly states… (insert some­thing illog­i­cal).  The pol­icy may have been writ­ten for good rea­son, but might not always make sense.  Win/win rec­og­nizes that peo­ple might see things dif­fer­ently.  It is the belief that peo­ple and their ideas are valu­able.      Using social media as a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion brings these ideas into the fold, builds trust. cre­ates loy­alty, and fos­ters inno­va­tion.  But to do it right, requires you to think win/win.