Seek Win/Win
This past winter break, I had the opportunity to read Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I was deeply inspired by the many principles that he shared, and I was gently reminded of his “seek win/win” principle this week after an occurrence in our family.
My mother and father have sacrificed much to provide athletic and academic opportunities for my brothers and I so that we could progress in this life. By putting aside their own goals and dreams, they have invested everything that they have with tremendous dividends. Recently, my mother applied for a flight attendant position with Hawaiian Airlines — she excels at customer service and making people feel loved and welcome. This is a job that she had been wanting for a long time. After much preparation and five rigorous rounds of interviews, she was finally given a conditional offer to join the company upon completing her training. She began her training and excelled there as well, but this week she informed my brothers and I that she would discontinue her training because she felt that it wasn’t the time for her to pursue a career as a flight attendant. I was dumbfounded, but I know why this may have happened. Before she applied to Hawaiian Airlines, my father was very supportive of my mother. However, as time passed by, it became apparent to him that this flight attendant position would be very time consuming and that he would most likely not see her very often. That, coupled with the fact that all of the children will be out of the house really soon, gave my dad the impression that he would be alone most of the time. He wanted my mother to discontinue her training, but my mother wanted to pursue her career dreams. Long story short, the pressure became so great that my mother had put another dream on hold for someone else.
In Covey’s book, seeking a win/win situation is important in conflict resolution because it is essential to forming and maintaining strong interpersonal relationships. A lose/win situation — like the one just described — may seem good in the short-term as one party seeks to appease another, but the long-term effects could be devastating as grudges and “bad blood” may form. Of course, forgiveness seems like a natural remedy for this, but we as human beings are imperfect. Although everything is okay right now, I fear that what happened this week may have inflicted a scar on my parents’ relationship.
I invite us all to seek win/win resolutions in all of our conflicts and encounters. Doing so is important to building the most important connection in this world — our interpersonal relationships.