SPA - Spread Positive Awareness: EP-53 – அது ஒரு கனா காலம் – Creating The Third Alternative - Habit-6 – Zero to Hero 100 days Personal Transformation Journey

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I keep Steven covey
as a general theme. Individual episode can be viewed separately for any new comer
to this channel. Common Theme for the week (til today (29^th Nov)) -
Synergise (Courtesy: Stephen Covey).

Synergise
- The Habit of Creative Cooperation

Courtesy: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People –
Signature Program

Paradigm:

Ineffective:
It’s either your way or my way, or a compromise.

Effective: Together we can create a
better way, a higher way (Illayara’s Orchestra or Bono / U2 Music Band).

Priniciple:

The whole is
greater than the sum of its parts.

Behaviour

·
Value and
celebrate the differences.

·
Practice
creative cooperation.

Result:

·
Innovation
and invention

·
New and
better solutions

·
Transformed relationships

·
Appreciation
of diverse perspectives

Today’s topic is Creating The Third
Alternative

There was one of colleagues. He got
double graduation from premier institutes. He was good in analytical thinking,
lateral thinking and an excellent leader like Aaruchi swami in Swamy movie (ஆறுச் சாமி). He was the
extremely smart guy.

What generally happens in corporates
is other colleagues either ignore him or nullify his accolades. It was either win-lose
or compromise.

My manager mentored me and suggested me
whether I could work with him. He always thinks in binaries. It was either 1 or
zero. He was a hard worker. He always pushed his envelope and others. He worked
12-16 hours every day.

By working with him, I was challenged
every day. I had to expose my vulnerable state. He worked in binary whereas I
had many grey areas to address. I always worried for the team. I was a person
with bleeding heart because of that I was not challenging my team enough. I was
making some hiring mistakes which he helped to identify and correct. He helped
me in identifying and overcoming weak areas like Public speaking and leadership
aspect. In a nutshell, he won’t allow anyone to stay in comfort zone. He pushed
everyone envelope in the team.

We created a common mission
statement. We wanted to create the best of best team in company. That was our purpose
as per Habit 2 Begin with the end in mind.

Purpose: Create the best team in our
company wherein everyone is challenged to bring the best of the best.

It was not compromise. It was not my
way or his way and it was our way.

He took me and few of my colleagues
to Abdul kalam event that held in IIT,Chennai. We went to Tedx events. Our
working relationships and combination became a lethal combination.

Yes I was challenged in a day basis.
That is when, I brought the best in myself.

Even in the team level, we never
allowed to have groups. We created teams in such a way that everyone brought
their best to the table. We never allowed groupism and adversarial ISM.

After two years of hard work, our
dream of becoming the best team in the company got materialized and our team
was awarded the best team of the company. Every one of us celebrated the moment
in a beach resort in Mahabs.

We had openness in the team. We
followed win-win attitude every day. We had a longer discussion to find the
best solution keeping in common purpose in mind. We never allowed anyone to
stay in comfort zone. We were pushing the envelope on a daily basis. It was the
classic example of third alternatives.

Not only my friend and I got
benefited from this. Along with us around 50 other team members got benefited.
Our company got benefited. It was a golden era in 25 years of experience.

Let me go back to Stephen covey on
creating 3^rd alternatives.

Today’s
cheat sheet:-

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EDpVoC3evrifyUCzlT3PfGMzd8S2Dilz/view?usp=sharing

What is synergizing?

Synergizing is a process of interacting that highly
effective people use to get to synergy, or the Third Alternative.

Synergizing is:	Synergizing is not:
Results-oriented, positive energy.	A brainstorming free-for-all that leads nowhere.
Examining, exploring, and seeking different perspectives openly enough to alter or complete your paradigm.	Accepting others’ ideas as full truth.
Win-win cooperation.	Win-lose competition
Having a mutually agreed-upon end in mind.	Groupthink (giving in to peer pressure).
Worth the effort and highly effective.	Always easy.
A disciplined process.	Just a negotiation technique.

Types of Interaction	Outcome
Synergy – Third Alternative 1+1 = 3,10,100	Transformation
Compromise 1+1 = 1 ½	Transaction
Defensiveness 1+1 = ½	Contention (Divorce deal story)
Hostility 1+1 = -1, -10, -100	Contention (Divorce deal story)

Today’s video:-

40 Habit 6: Synergize - Part B: Creating The Third
Alternative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aijqDiw0iyE&list=PLBcoHkB-HjG-9fXnrU6uwnw1ZoGzoVEcB&index=39

Lessons learnt from the video:- Part B:
Creating The Third Alternative

·
People who have very strong feelings

·
Tend to be really strongly identified with kind
of the purist approach to certain things like environment

·
Some are on the other side of this continuum

·
Are you prepared to look for a solution that is
better than the one you have in your head / better than the one you’re thinking
right now

·
We generally have strong feelings with our own
belief systems / arguments

·
Are we open-minded?

·
Before synergy – need to have a common purpose
which is what synergy

·
The purpose is to find a solution that is better
than the one the other person is going to recommend

·
Usually It takes about an hour to 2 hours. It
can’t be achieved in short period of time.

·
What is the common goal here?

·
Both persons have to think deeply win-win
towards the purpose of synergy.

·
Synergy is the fruit. The purpose is to go for
synergy.

·
Unless they’re anchored sufficiently inside
themselves that the security lies primarily not in their positions and views
but in their integrity to principles

·
Covey really question whether people can
practice habits four, five and six

·
One person feels deep and strong to our views

·
We have to be careful that we don’t judge the
other person for his/her views

·
To judge the other person because of their deep convictions
would put us into kind of a win-lose attitude towards the other person

·
At times, maybe the other person hasn’t
articulated the depth of their feelings

·
Both parties in any conversation have at least a
tentative attitude towards win-win

·
Tentative win-win – they don’t know what is it
going to be and that usually happens you don’t know what’s going to happen – a
third mind has to be created (Nettri
Kann)

·
Convey guarantees us once we get that you’re on
your way to third alternatives now.

·
Seek to understand first

·
Bring humour wherever possible to lighten up the
mood.

·
Habit 5 – Seek first to understand, then to be
understood.

·
We generally help the other person to
understand.

·
What is our initial tendency here – to help the
other person to understand

·
Let’s establish a ground rule you cannot make
your point until you restate the others point to his or her satisfaction (need to be insisted in habit 6).

·
The other has to feel understood – this is where
the magic thing happening in conversations

·
Restate the other person’s point.

·
You can’t ask questions. Because in a sense
Questions are rhetorical statements. You cannot ask questions.

·
You have to restate the other person’s point of
view until he feels understood and we can’t do anything until that’s been done

·
It is always a difficult balance to get.

·
To testify this – you listen with the intent to
reply or with the intent to understand

·
Collective wisdom

·
It is not about agreeing or disagreeing

·
It is not about taking either / or positions

·
Only seeking to understand

·
Mimicking is only form of empathic listening

·
The other person needs to feel he was
understood.

·
Understand the other persons feeling and
convictions

·
Not the deepest understanding

·
While listening to the other person – we need to
question ourselves

o
are we preparing our reply in our head?.

o
Are we judging what the other person’s saying

o
Or are we truly listening

o
We can all try our best to listen / trying very
hard to listen to other person’s perspective.

o
We can all try very hard to understand

o
Listening and understanding are two different
things

o
Listening for understanding, not listening to
reply

o
Not listening to judge

o
Listening for understanding which means you have
to get into his frame of reference how the other person sees it

o
Until the other person feels understood what
first of all you notice between the spirit between the two of you right now
compared to before.

o
Truly listening to the other person’s view

o
Less adversarial, a lot less adversarial

o
Adversarial ISM is a seedbed to all kinds of
other things

o
We are generally avoiding that seedbed

o
Be patient

o
My day in court will come

o
My job now is to only understand

o
Have the use of more self-knowledge and
self-awareness is so vital

o
I am not to judge

o
I am not to agree

o
I am not to disagree

o
I am going to persist

o
Make the other person’s point as well as she
made it and express the depth of the conviction

o
Were you genuinely empathic in understanding
well

o
See the validity of the other person point

o
What about the total openness of just seeking to
understand with no intent to judge at all.

o
No compromising

o
You are seeking to understand in order to judge
later or to take position later

o
A higher understanding and a solution that is
better than the one you’re recommending and better than the one see that you

o
What is the quality of the relationship with
each other.

o
Perception of each other has changed in deeper
conversations / communications.

o
Real sincere effort of openness and wanting to
be influenced and then of having influence

o
and how synergy resulted well, we can sense more
of the spirit of reverence and respect than we saw earlier.

Application
suggestions:

·
Make a list of people who irritate you. Do they
represent different views that could lead to synergy if you had greater
intrinsic security and valued the difference?

·
The next time you have a disagreement or
confrontation with someone; attempt to understand the concerns underlying that
person’s position. Address those concerns in a creative and mutually beneficial
way.

Jack Ma videos

Jack Ma career advice: You don’t have to be smart to be
successful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwixREUJOI0

Jack Ma: I always try to find people smarter than I am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbltrCAbPWY

Tips:- Use Talking Stick while having one to one discussion
either in personal or professional setting. This can be used in our daily
conversation with our spouses, teenage daughters/sons, brothers/sisters or with
our mom. This can be used in our team meeting as well.

Foundation of any relationship is deeper level of
understanding. Let’s understand, then to be understood.

We have winner’s from our contest:

Contest Details:-

Take one personal or professional relationship.

Follow 5 levels of listening – Empathetic listening

Other person has to give the certificate or you can give
self-certificate

Top 3 winners will get books –

1.
First Prize : Lights from many lamps goes to : Sudha
Rajesh & A.Ramesh

2.
2^nd
Prize               : Alchemist goes
to                             Priya

3.
3^rd
Prize                : Monk who sold his
Ferrari goes     JayaPriya

Congrats to the winners and viewers

Conclusion:-

Try to incorporate
third alternatives at home. We were not raised to value and celebrate
differences. Let us practice synergy at home to celebrate synergy.

You are average of 5 people you are
with.

By working with different set of
challenging people, not only we grow, we grow with others as well.

Reference:-

Theme for the week: Synergize
– Habit 6 – Courtesy:
Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of highly effective people.