“The Synergy of Creating Agreement” - The Seven Levels – Part 4

By Action Coach Dave Beam

If you’ve been following the series, we’ve laid the groundwork for creating some amazing outcomes.  Once you have debunked myth and dispelled expectations through rapport and empathetic understanding, you are ready to create some fantastic results.  Together Everyone Achieves More = TEAM.  Most people mentally assent to the team concept, but often fall short of the actual experience.  The key to team synergy is truly being together.  Win:Win agreements can only be created and sustained when there is full and deep understanding.  Significant and powerful agreements are built on a deep foundation of complete understanding.

So once you have that understanding in place, how do you build great agreements?  Stephen Covey in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People shares the concept of WIN:WIN or NO DEAL.  This is a high level of agreement that excludes compromise.  It is a creative process that starts by each participant fully disclosing their desired outcome.  Each person must also agree to set aside all pre-conceived ideas and thinking and be willing to consider all possibilities from diverse directions.  Once the team defines a common goal that fully satisfies and benefits every member, then they enter into a stimulating and creative process offering, defining, and clarifying all possible strategies and plans that could potentially create the desired outcome.  The only ideas rejected are those that would violate the common values held by the group.  If you embrace the WIN:WIN concept, it is unacceptable for anyone on the team to lose.  If you cannot create an outcome where everyone wins, then you accept the NO DEAL option as superior to any option where any member loses.

When a team commits to this level of relationship, the possibilities are truly unlimited.  The synergistic energy created by the combined creative ideas and brainstorming is phenomenal.  Once the team creates a full written agreement that fulfills each team member’s desired outcome, commitment and accountability are easily embraced by every member and are a joy rather than a chore.