Habit 6: Synergize
Chapter summary from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.
Synergy is the result you get when two people, working together, produce something neither could have produced alone. It depends on the previous five habits — proactivity (you can act), end-in-mind (you know what you want), first-things-first (you've made time), Win/Win (you're not undermining each other), and seek-first-to-understand (you've actually heard each other) — and it produces the third alternative that wasn't on the table when you started.
Synergy is rarer than it should be because most collaboration defaults to compromise, where each party gives up something to settle in the middle. Compromise produces solutions that no one is excited about. Synergy produces solutions that surprise everyone.
The condition for synergy is genuinely valuing differences. If you go into a conversation already certain that your view is the right one and the other person's view is wrong, you'll negotiate compromise at best. If you go in curious about what the other person can see that you can't, you create the space where synergy lives.
The habit is to actively look for the third alternative when you find yourself stuck between two positions. It's usually closer than you think.
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