How to Actually 'Do' Win-Win
Last week, a client had a good question for me. They had been reading Stephen Covey's leadership classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and were wondering about the chapter titled "Think Win-Win". The concept made sense to them, but they were curious on my thoughts on how to actually get to win-win outcomes in a group with competing interests.
Win-win doesn't always feel like it's possible when multiple departments like sales, engineering, and operations come together with competing interests. But underneath the tensions their various goals create, there is (hopefully) a common mission. So how do we stop having it feel like a competition and starting having it be a collaboration?
I'm afraid the answer I gave my client did not fully satisfy because there's no specific plan for this. The key is: it's a mindset. The parties have to come to the table 1) believing that a win-win outcome is possible and 2) willing to put the time and effort into finding it.
In order to find the best outcome for all parties, a group of stakeholders has to be looking for it. It's like when my husband is looking for an object around the house. He often comes up short because he doesn't believe he will find it. I usually find it because my belief that I will succeed drives my effort.
Playing win-win is an optimization problem. You are committing to exploring and finding the outcome that results in the best cumulative gains for all stakeholders. It's working toward a result that would leave all parties with the belief that they didn't have to give up what they needed.
And all you have, really, is the collective intelligence in the room at that moment. So the only way you're going to get to a win-win outcome is if all the conditions and criteria from each party are laid out, and the thinking in the room is able to merge those ideas and conditions in the best possible way. This is a highly creative exercise. (And a skill that can be honed.)
It goes a long way for the leader to start by simply stating that they believe win-win is possible and that they have the commitment and patience to find it.
So once the mindset is in place, there are a couple other conditions for win-win you can work at developing.
Empathy: Do you care about a win for the other as much as you care about a win for yourself? Are you conscious of when you might be making a win-lose move?
Trust: Is there enough trust for the parties to lay out their preconditions and define what they need to 'win'? An underrated component in trust is benevolence: do you feel the parties have your best interests at heart? Are you demonstrating through your words and actions that you have theirs?
Facilitative Process: Is there enough facilitative skill and group discipline to do the exploratory thinking together via true dialogue? (The creative thinking can also be done offline, but there will still be much dialogue needed in meetings).
How to build trust and how to execute clean facilitative processes are admittedly big topics, so I'm not saying this is easy. But the number one thing you need in order to get to win-win is the belief that it is possible.
