The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

APPLICATION SUGGESTIONS:
1. Select a relationship in which you sense the Emotional Bank Account
is in the red. Try to understand and write down the situation from the
other person’s point of view. In your next interaction, listen for
understanding, comparing what you are hearing with what you wrote
down. How valid were your assumptions? Did you really understand
that individual’s per spective?
2. Share the concept of empathy with someone close to you. Tell him or
her you want to work on really listening to others and ask for feedback
in a week. How did you do? How did it make that person feel?
3. The next time you have an opportunity to watch people commu nicate,
cover your ears for a few minutes and just watch. What emotions are
being communicated that may not come across in words alone?
4. Next time you catch yourself inappropriately using one of the
autobiographical responses—probing, evaluating, advising, or
interpreting—try to turn the situation into a deposit by acknowl -
edgment and apology. (
“I’m sorry, I just realized I’m not really trying
to understand. Could we start again?”
)
5. Base your next presentation on empathy. Describe the other point of
view as well as or better than its proponents; then seek to have your
point understood from their frame of reference.

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HABIT 6 
SYNERGIZE

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W
PRINCIPLES OF CREATIVE
COOPERATION
I take as my guide the hope of a saint: 
in crucial things, unity— 
in important things, diversity— 
in all things, generosity.
Inaugural address of President George Bush
HEN SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL WAS CALLED
to head up the war effort
for Great Britain, he remarked that all his life had prepared him
for this hour. In a similar sense, the exercise of all of the other
habits prepares us for the habit of synergy.
When properly understood, synergy is the highest activity in all life—the
true test and manifestation of all of the other habits put together.
The highest forms of synergy focus the four unique human endowments,
the motive of Win/Win, and the skills of empathic communication on the
toughest challenges we face in life. What results is almost miraculous. We
create new alternatives—something that wasn’t there before.
Synergy is the essence of principle-centered leadership. It is the essence
of principle-centered parenting. It catalyzes, unifies, and unleashes the
greatest powers within people. All the habits we have covered prepare us to
create the miracle of synergy.
What is synergy? Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than
the sum of its parts. It means that the relationship which the parts have to
each other is a part in and of itself. It is not only a part, but the most
catalytic, the most empowering, the most unifying, and the most exciting
part.
The creative process is also the most terrifying part because you don’t
know exactly what’s going to happen or where it is going to lead. You don’t
know what new dangers and challenges you’ll find. It takes an enormous
amount of internal security to begin with the spirit of adventure, the spirit of
discovery, the spirit of creativity. Without doubt, you have to leave the
comfort zone of base camp and confront an entirely new and unknown
wilderness. You become a trailblazer, a pathfinder. You open new
possibilities, new territories, new continents, so that others can follow.

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Synergy is everywhere in nature. If you plant two plants close together,
the roots comingle and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants
will grow better than if they were separated. If you put two pieces of wood
together, they will hold much more than the total of the weight held by each
separately. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one
equals three or more.
The challenge is to apply the principles of creative cooperation, which we
learn from nature, in our social interactions. Family life provides many
opportunities to observe synergy and to practice it.
The very way that a man and a woman bring a child into the world is
synergistic. The essence of synergy is to value differences—to respect
them, to build on strengths, to compensate for weaknesses.
We obviously value the physical differences between men and women,
husbands and wives. But what about the social, mental, and emotional
differences? Could these differences not also be sources of creating new,
exciting forms of life—creating an environment that is truly fulfilling for
each person, that nurtures the self-esteem and self-worth of each, that
creates opportunities for each to mature into independence and then
gradually into inter dependence? Could synergy not create a new script for
the next generation—one that is more geared to service and contribution,
and is less protective, less adversarial, less selfish; one that is more open,
more trusting, more giving, and is less defensive, protective, and political;
one that is more loving, more caring, and is less possessive and judgmental?