Effective people don't skip the stepping stones of success. The principles taught in "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" build on each other.

Habit 4 and 5 are critical to habit #6: Synergy. For creative cooperation to work, we need to develop an abundance mentality. We need to become empathetic listeners who seek to understand people through conversations. Synergy is the habit of opening your mind and heart to different ideas and perspectives. It allows for effective teamwork, innovation and problem-solving.

People who welcome synergy believe they can gather meaningful insights from others. They are willing to learn and grow to improve themselves. When we start accepting differences — there are fewer mental blocks to overcome. We collaborate, interact and begin working with experts faster. Acceptance leads to quicker results, transformative experiences and positive relationships.

While regular people argue whose idea is better, effective people take the best qualities of many approaches to create improved solutions.

Here are two things to help you synergize within your circle of influence:

1. Think about the people who annoy you the most. Do their beliefs, values or views contradict yours? Try to understand where they are coming from so you can accept or respect their differences.
2. Think about close friends. Try to remember times when you didn't agree on something but still managed to be cordial. Remember what made this possible and recreate these conditions with people who annoy you.

Synergy is about learning to cooperate with others. Through cooperation, we meet our team and individual goals faster for optimal effectiveness.

Want to know more? Delve deeper into this topic by reading Stephen Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Submit

---