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004 - Are you an effective English listener?

Hello! Welcome to the fourth habit in the book, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. In this lesson, we’re going to talk about the people you work with, the people you deal with in your life, how to better react and better act with this people in order to manage our relationships in a positive, productive way.

And this isn’t just a technique that you can apply to everyday situations in relationships. It’s more of a philosophy, a whole way of thinking and being.

In the book, he talks about six paradigms or six patterns of relationships. I’m not going to talk about each one here. But we’ll talk about a specific one “win-win,” where your relationships at work and in your personal life are mutually beneficial and cooperative where all parties involved, all people involved, come out a winner.

I’m going to talk about how you can do this, how you could create these. I’m going to talk about how you could create these relationships and also the benefit of creating win-win situations for Habit 4/7 work, for your personal life as well.

If you want to get into more of the paradigms, more of these patterns of relationships, I suggest you look at the book. Read the book, it’ll talk about each one because there are certain situations where each one might be the most effective. But again, this episode, let’s talk about win-win situations, so we can get farther, be happier, and be more liked. Let’s go!

Creating valuable, strong, positive relationships is very important in life. We’re talking about business life and personal life. In my opinion, to be happy, we need strong relationships. And these relationships could be at home, could be with friends, could be at work. It doesn’t matter where. In all the different aspects of your life, strong relationships make your days better.

And in this habit (it’s the fourth habit in the book), it’s called Think Win-Win. I’m talking about win-win relationships. In summarizing this,the ability to form good relationships with others is a real asset and the basis of true effectiveness.

How do we build win-win relationships? What is a win-win relationship? How do we build these positive relationships in our life? And what do we do to avoid the negative, the competitive relationships in our lives?

Nobody likes to fight with people. I guess some people like to fight with people, but most people don’t like to feel angry and upset with others, right?

So, in his book, Stephen Covey, the author, talks about how to create positive win-win relationships. Let’s get into that.

Most people in life have a scarcity mentality. They think that there’s only so much to go around. And that if somebody wins, somebody else has to lose. If somebody else makes more money, somebody else will lose money. If somebody gets the promotion at work, somebody else will lose. He refers to it as the whole cake or the whole pie. You think there’s a pie and there’s only so much pieces of that pie to go around. So, you’re trying to get your own piece of the pie. This would not be a win-win relationship.

A win-win relationship, summarizing this, is knowing that working together with other people, working towards common things, cooperating, helping others, being of service to others is how we form positive relationships. And these positive relationships bring us the most success and happiness.

So,a big difference here are two types of thinking. There’s scarcity thing (there’s not enough for everybody) or abundance thinking (it means there’s plenty to go around, there’s plenty for everybody).

Having an abundance mentality is important to build strong relationships that last. And we’re talking about what’s going to affect your future. In the future, what’s going to help you continue to progress and succeed and to be happy?

If you’re thinking about now and you’re competing and you’re trying to win certain situations, a win/lose mentality, where you’re trying to win now, you’re trying to get your piece of the pie because there’s not enough to go around, you’re following the scarcity mentality, then okay,you might win for now, but in the future, when you encounter this person again or this person is involved in something that you might be involved in, you may not win. You’re creating negative relationships and this can come back to haunt you. This can come back to hurt you.

So, having an abundance mentality, of thinking there’s enough to go around, my job, my objective should be to help others get their piece of the pie as well as me get my piece of the pie. This will be creating positive relationships which will help you build a better future.

Something that I noticed from past experiences, whenever I would meet a manager or a supervisor or a vice president of a company, people that are not quite at the top, but very close to the top, often, these people are very competitive. They’re not very nice.

They’re always seeming like they’re trying to get ahead and trying to push ahead. They don’t care what happens to other people.

Their job is to get to where they need to be. They need to win.

And you can see why they would be put in their place. You’ve got the president or the CEO of the company, he wants people to be fighting for their company.

And then, interestingly enough, what I notice is the CEO’s, the presidents, the people at the top are often very, very friendly, very nice and very open even with people that don’t have a lot of significance to them or don’t mean a lot. They listen to them, they give them attention, they’re friendly.

And it makes sense. They know how to create relationships. They know the importance of relationships. They know the importance of these win-win relationships versus the managers, the supervisors, the people under them, always thinking that life is a competition and they need to get ahead, they need to work hard, they need to undercut other people, so they could move up above them. They win, somebody else loses. Eventually, they’ll win everything. They’ll be happy and they’ll stand on top of the mountain. They’ll be the king, and they’ll say, “Yehey! I won!” And that’s just a complete ridiculous fantasy.

So, relationships are important. Knowign that there’s enough for anybody, helping others, others helping you, working as a team, being cooperative, thinking future, thinking long-term, the relationships you create now will help you in the long-term is what Stephen Covey says is the fourth habit of think win-win.

So, let’s think of a few ways you can apply this. Think about an upcoming interaction where you’ll be attempting to reach an agreement or a solution at work, at school or in your life, something that’s going to come up, something that’s coming up where you need to agree or solve something.

Write down a list of what the other person is looking for, what do you think this person will want from this situation. Next to that, write a list of how you make an offer to meet those needs. So, what can you do to help this person get what they want? Don’t go in there thinking, “What do I need?” Go in there thinking, “What do they need? How can I help them get what they need?” Action step two, think about three relationships in your life. Think about how the balance is in that relationship. Do you give more, do you take more, is it even? Write down 10 ways that you could always give more than you take. Thinking about your relationships, what can you do to give more?

I definitely need to work on this. This is important to me. And it’s not because I’m selfish or mean or whatever, but sometimes, I just don’t make this a priority. I just have so much other things going on. Relationships aren’t priority, and that’s not good.

Connecting with others, making relationships a priority, putting time in, giving to others is a very valuable asset in business and in life. And I think if we make this a priority and we put this into our to-do list and actually make it so we are feeling obligated to give to others, the rewards in the future from those relationships will come.

Action step three, think about your tendencies and interacting with others. Do you usually feel that it’s competitive? Is life competitive in general? Are you trying to win? Other people lose if you win. And vice versa, if you lose, they’re going to win. Where does that come from? Is this approach serving your relationships?

Time to discuss some vocab from this lesson. One is scarcity which is the opposite of abundance. Scarcity is when you do not have an excess of things. You have a very limited amount, a very limited number. Do you have a scarcity mentality? Mentality meaning your mindset, the way that you think, you have a scarcity mentality. You don’t think there is a lot of resources or things to be shared. There’s a very limited number.

When you’re buying something, you’ll see companies and marketers use the tactic of scarcity. They’ll say, “Oh, there’s only two days left to buy this” or, “There’s only one spot left. Buy it before it’s too late.” This is using a tactic of scarcity, creating the idea, either real or perceived idea, that there is a limited amount of time or spaces left, so it forces you to desperately buy something. It’s a good tactic.

Another expression here is to go around. There’s only so much to go around. To be spread, to go around means to be shared. “I only have six beers. That’s not enough to go rouand. That’s not enough to be shared with everybody.” Actually, six beers would probably be just for myself. I would need a lot more beers if I wanted to have enough beers to go around. “I don’t have enough to go around.” I dont have enough to be shared.

Another one, undercut. To undercut somebody can mean a couple of different things. It could mean to charge a lower price.

“The company undercut me. I was selling something for $10. They undercut me and sold it for $8. So they sold a lot more.” That’s to undercut.

Also, it can mean to undermine or weaken, impair somebody else, to undercut somebody. Somebody was weakening my power.

They were undercutting my power. In this episode, I used it in this case just to try to sabotage, to weaken, to destabilize somebody else.

And lastly, come up with. To come up with something is to invent or to create. It’s a phrasal verb, to come up with. “We need to come up with a plan. We need to come up with a solution to this problem.” So, it’s to invent, create something out of nothing. It’s to come up with.

Is this helping others? So, I hope this helps. Building positive relationships is important, so important, and having the courage to do so. It takes courage. Stephen Covey talks about this too in the book. It’s not easy to do this. You have to be courageous.

So, here’s to you and your courage. And here’s to myself and my courage to be able to know that there’s an abundance in life and we all should help each other achieve what we want. And if we do, we’ll get back good things.

And the joke of the day, why did the cookie go to the hospital?

Why did the cookie go to the hospital? Because he felt crummy.

Don’t know what crummy means? Well, you’ll have to go to FeelGoodEnglish.com to find out. Bye bye.