What attitude delivers lasting success? Win-win!

The end of the year is coming and I got asked, if you would give one piece of advise, what would it be? In my experience dealing with leaderships, one foundational attitude I discovered is Win-Win.

In our work life we come across various situations: developing a product, negotiate with a client, hire an employee, resolve conflict, onboard a supplier, provide feedback, conduct meetings, and simply solve a problem. When you observe yourself in these situations, how often do you want to win, how often do you want the other party to lose? Or you might simply not care if you lose. All these attitudes have in common that they are not effective. For success, we need to practice a win-win attitude.

When I help people to obtain this new approach, I usually share Green & Clean by Stephen Covey - a fun and inspiring introduction to the topic. And there are so many great quotes which I would like to share here:

• "you boss yourself" / "you judge yourself"
• "the moment you [take back control], you kill the goose; you kill effectiveness and go for efficiency"
• "reaffirm you purpose: raise boys, not grass"
• "what was heard, he hasn't done one single thing" / "what is hard is moving up the level of initiative"
• "you cannot hold people responsible for results, if you supervise their methods"
• "it takes time to set up the [win-win agreement and reaffirm it" / "keep believing in the people"

How will you approach win-win in your next negotiation?