MIL: Synergy vs. Compromise

I recently read an article about the gridlock in Washington, DC in regards to the national deficit.  No, I'm not going to give you my opinions on that or anything else poliltical.  I liked what I read in the article--it reminded me a lot of the work that I did as a trainer with the Alaska Transition Training Initiative (ATTI) where we brought a variety of agencies that work with children who have special needs and helped the agency representatives to stop thinking about what's best for their agency and to start thinking about what's best for children with special needs and their families.  I decided it's valuable information for any kind of relationship between people...and in the case for this blog, between ILs.

So often when there's a problem between people, we think the other person just needs to compromise.  Or for someone on the outside looking in, they will think that both parties need to compromise.  But in a compromise everyone loses something with both sides making concessions and neither side being truly satisfied.  In reality, the conflict is just postponed until something happens and the issue raises its ugly head yet again.

Synergy is a whole new ballgame.  The first step to synergy is the hardest...you have to be willing to put aside your position long enough to understand the other side.  In my work as a trainer with , we called it "Checking your hat at the door"--taking off your agency hat and coming into the group with ears ready to hear.  Recognizing that the more we differ, the more we can learn from each other's perspective.  In reality, the thinking is the opposite:  "You differ from me.  That means I need to fight you."  What we need to say instead is:  "You differ from me.  That means I need to listen to you."  If we really want to reach synergy we have to first, stop and listen until we deeply understand each other.  We have to be able to state the other person's case back to them as well as, or better than, they stated it themselves.  Only then can we genuinely grasp and empathize with the convictions of the other person...and they will not longer be able to say of you:  "You just don't understand."

The next step is to ask this question:  "Now, are you willing to look for a solution that is better than what either one of us has come up with yet?"  This is the question that can change everything.  If the answer is yes, then we will put aside all of our prejudices and preconceptions.  The energy wasted on conflight gets rechanneled as we set out on a path of creativity rather than confrontation.  We have no idea what valuable new discoveries await us as our energy flows toward something new and better.

The third step is to explore possibilities freely, richly, and without restraints.  Again at ATTI, we did a lot of brainstorming and the #1 rule of the activity was that all ideas were welcome.  When ideas were thrown out during an activity, there was to be no eye rolling or muttering "Like that would ever work" under one's breath.  We encouraged people to think outside the box and to share all the ideas that came into their heads.   As Stephen R. Covey stated in the article I read, "The real deficit is a deficit of ideas."  Great discoveries come only when people with different perspectives allow themselves to experiment.

Each member of your family--both the in-borns and the in-laws--is a unique individual, gifted with far more talent, insight, passion and ingenuity than s/he is often allowed to express.  Just imagine what this highly diverse pool of talent could do if they freed themselves from their adversarial mindsets about one another and let go of the idea that "It's my way or the highway." 

Stena recently shared with me that in the past when she saw Freddy doing things differently than she would do them herself, she'd get upset with him and tell/show him the right way to do them.  Then one day the thought came to her, "Hold on, I like the person that Freddy is and if I like him, then he must know how to do things pretty well to have turned out like he did."  Now when she sees him doing things with little Mac that aren't necessarily to her liking, instead of saying something to him, she thinks instead, "If I want Mac to have the those qualilties of his dad that I love, I need to let his dad do things his own way." 

Synergy:  Are you willing to give it a try?