Habit 6 Synergize

This was the hardest habit for me to understand. I think this is because synergy is not a common practice today, but also because I felt his examples in this chapter were more abstract. A lot of his examples did not have a clear solution in which the people used synergy. For example, when the husband and the wife were having problems he ended the story with himself saying, "You must have valued the differences." That is more the definition of synergy, not showing how the husband and wife used synergy to solve their problem.

The one part of this chapter I really liked was the story about the animals. I thought it was a good representation of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts because each animal had its own unique talents or parts. However, they did not take advantage of these talents and the end result was negative. This can be related to the Army because every soldier has their own strengths and as a leader if you recognize these strengths and capitalize upon them your group will have a stronger whole.

Reflection on Mission Statement

The process of writing my mission statement took much longer than I originally thought it would because I did not realize how much thought needed to go into it. I had to take time to figure out not only my mission statement, but also what my main roles and values are. This mission statement really made me think about how I want others to see me and how I want to see myself. I realized many of my strengths, but also my weaknesses. For each role I tried to pinpoint a value which would help me to mature in that identity. I think this mission statement will be useful for me because I do better when I have something concrete to look at. I am much more likely to succeed at a goal if I write it down. I will be able to change my mission statement as my roles evolve, but this is a good starting place.

Habit 5 Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

This section focused a lot on empathic listening in order to understand someone. The part I found the most interesting was autobiographical response vs. the empathic listening conversation. You could really see how much better empathic listening skills are during the second conversation because the son was able to figure out his own solutions to his problems, rather than just getting frusterated with his father.

I was kind of surprised that was the second habit on the road to interdependence because I feel like it should come before Think Win/Win. I mean how can you try and reach a Win/Win agreement without understanding the other person and then being understood by them. Seeking First to Understand... is almost like a step in the process of creating a Win/Win situation.

Habit 4 Think Win/Win

This section began by talking about competition vs. cooperation and I thought this was interesting because we already talked about this in one of my classes. In America we value competition and are taught it from a young age with sports and so on. Not every country is like this though and when cooperation is valued there is a higher productivity.

The one idea from this chapter that took me a while to grasp was No Deal. At first I thought of this as the easy way out, like you were just giving up on the problem. However, after Covey explained it more No Deal makes sense because in these situations no one would win at the expense of another. I could see this relating to the Army because you want to make sure the needs of your people are being met without sacrificing your own needs or the needs of the mission.