In order for us to think Win/Win, we must understand the wants and needs of other people and put that understanding to good use.  This is where habit five—seeking first to understand, then to be understood—and habit 6—synergizing—come into play.  Communication is a key part of all of our relationships whether personal, professional, or economical.  Covey says, “Communication is the most important skill in life.  We spend most of our waking hours communicating” (237).  It is most important and yet we have so much trouble with proper communication.  Why is this?  According to Covey, we are educated thoroughly in the output stages of communication.  When it comes to listening, however, we are lacking the proper skills (238).

            “If you want to interact effectively with me,” Covey says, “to influence me…you need first to understand me.”  However, we give less time to truly attempting to understand people that we do to trying to fix them.  We will never succeed in being influential without first taking the steps to listen.  Covey suggests that effective listening in empathic listening.  Rather than seeking first to be understood we should seek first to understand, then to be understood.  Covey says that we do this most often by diagnosing people through our own experiences assuming that they are the same.  When we do this, though, we do not understand and we fail to take into account the uniqueness of every individual life (239).

            Understanding is essential in minister to kids.  Youth ministry is not tossing a bunch of anecdotes at your students and hoping they will turn out just like you in the end.  It is messy but it is not something that we should take lightly or haphazardly.  A youth minister who understands, who listens well and does not poke and prod but leads someone and lets them reveal things when they want to reveal them is most effective.  I hope that as a youth minister, my students see me as someone that they can come to with anything and who will listen to them.  It is essential to any form of counseling and ministry to connect where the people are.  If we are not listening, we are not connecting.  We are only diagnosing and probably exasperating people with our experiences with which they probably cannot relate.

            Personally, Tiffany and I have already found the value of empathic listening.  Empathic listening is active listening, but it is also so much more (240).  When Tiff and I went through our pre-marital counseling, we discussed this habit in the form of several exercises such as sharing withholds and reflecting feelings.  These activities were not set up as droning repetitions of what we were saying to one another but a dramatic rephrasing of conversation that eliminated blame and opened doors to deeper conversations where we discussed our feelings and listened intently with the hopes of deeper understanding.  There are times when we can bring things out into the open to be discussed with the goal of understanding one another and to be understood ourselves.

I believe that our marriage will benefit greatly from activities such as the rides that Covey talks about from his time in Hawaii.  It is an excellent idea to do these activities at least once a week.  A marriage can only grow deeper and become more rewarding as we grow deeper in understanding.  I know that when Tiff knows I understand her she feels loved.  When I am truly listening, she feels loved.  It is my goal, then, to be always willing and ready to listen and understand, as I know I should.

            Marriage leads me into habit 6—synergizing—because marriage is truly a deep synergy between a man and his wife when based on the correct principles.  Thinking Win/Win and seeking first to understand, then to be understood come to fruition when we synergize within our relationships.  Synergy is a beautiful thing that I believe God created us with the capacity to perform.  We grow and expand our minds and our strengths when we synergize.  “When you communicate synergistically, you are simply opening your mind and heart and expressions to new possibilities, new alternatives, new options.  It may seem as if you are casting aside habit 2…but, in fact, you’re doing the opposite—you’re fulfilling it” (264).  You start with the end in mind know when you synergize because you know that the product of more that one person will most likely be better than the product of one person—at least the proper principles of synergy are applied.

            As I said before, marriage is a synergy.  Looking at it from the standpoint of Habit 2 we can easily say that, if a man and his wife are synergistic in their marriage to one another, the result will be better than if they had not been married.  Personally, I believe that when Tiffany and I get married we will be much more effective, especially in ministry and someday raising children.  One person put it to me this way:  The knots in my head fit the bumps in hers.  We complete each other’s weaknesses when we synergize and together we move closer to God in our relationship.

            Ministry is another synergistic opportunity.  Ministry today is so much more effective when a synergistic team is involved rather than a lone ranger youth minister.  Being a lone ranger may seem gutsy at first, but in the end, it will only hurt the youth minister as he struggles for either creativity or time, or both.  Instead, we can synergize with some amazing people with talents that we do not have ourselves.  There is a reason why we are called the Body of Christ and why that metaphor is so true and powerful to us today.  We are all unique as God has created us, and we are all gifted wonderfully different as well.  When we allow people to come up with their own “job descriptions” and become proactive in ministry, beautiful things happen.  People come to Christ, the Church becomes unified, people burnout less, and I will not have to dread every youth staff meeting because people will have flexibility and will be exercising their strengths and using the gifts that God has given them when we synergize.