The late great motivation speaker, Zig Ziglar once said, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” Ziglar’s quote is the heart of what Win/Win is all about. Motivational author and speaker Stephen Covey is the one who popularized the phrase Win/Win in his blockbuster book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Both Ziglar and Covey hit the nail on the head with this timeless philosophy. Win/Win should be posted on the walls of every business, school, church, and political establishment because it’s not only a powerful message, but it breeds unification and mutual success.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a business situation or otherwise where the opposing party feels the need to win at all cost and in a lopsidedly discrepant manner. However, if both parties don’t feel whole at the end of the negotiations, then nobody wins. Of course, the idea of winning can be very subjective and alluring. One key is to create interdependencies between each party—where my winning is contingent upon your winning. By helping you, I’m helping me and vice versa, by hurting you, I’m hurting me.
Another key is to shift the way we think in terms of what winning represents. I’m not talking about “Participation Trophies” here. I’m talking about fair and equitable arrangements where all parties thrive. The idea of WIN/WIN is founded on shared winning. Not where one of us wins with the other walking away feeling disrespected or disillusioned. When someone is determined to have a singular winning strategy, they are opting for a shorter, smaller view of what the relationship could be.
As you can imagine there have been plenty of opportunities to take the shorter path during our twenty plus years as GlobalStar Consulting. The main flaw in those situations is that they normally entailed one or more of the parties losing. Whenever we are presented with those type scenarios, I can’t help but think about the movie Top Gun, where Tom Cruise says, “I won’t leave my wingman!” That’s our mentality when it comes to all parties winning. At GlobalStar our perspective is one of having a smaller piece of a bigger pie instead of the whole pie.
