The Dirty Shite podcast discusses the concept of interdependence, which is the next level after dependence. The first three habits of highly effective people lead to independence. After independence comes interdependence, which involves thinking win-win, seeking to understand others, and synergizing. Synergy is the essence of principle-centered leadership and relationships. It means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Synergizing involves partnering with people who share the same values and direction. It is important to choose who to trust and be vulnerable with. Synergy unleashes the greatest powers within people and creates new alternatives. The creative process can be terrifying but leads to growth.
Hello, hi, welcome to the 6th installment of the Dirty Shite podcast with me, your host The podcast where we focus on holistic professional and personal success by growing and developing the common denominator to all your successes, all your failures, and everything in between – you. It's about the mindset, emotional regulation, and the intentional personal development that underpins holistic success. Today's installment is informed by Stephen Covey's book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but we are talking about one habit in particular – interdependence.
We don't often talk about interdependence. I referenced it in the newsletter yesterday, and I thought I would talk a little bit more about the subject as it is something that I am currently focusing on. At least I'm in that stage of my life now where I need to figure out how to be interdependent, and interdependence is what comes after, or the next level after, dependence. So, let's build this idea up from the bottom. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey divides the habits into seven, as you know, and when they are depicted, there is a layering of the habits.
So, you start out at the very start of your development journey, when you are yet to develop, you start out at dependence. This is when you are entirely reliant on other people. Entirely reliant on other people to achieve anything. You cannot be without other people. That is where you start, and that's where you want to grow from. And then, the habits, the first three habits are the ones that will take you to a state of independence.
Those first three habits are, number one, be proactive. Number two, begin with the end in mind. Number three, put first things first. We've discussed each of these in turn, in different context over the last, we are into episode 30-something now. In one way or the other, we've covered a lot of the substance of these. Being proactive is about owning your journey and understanding that it is your responsibility to drive your life, and that's a brief, very brief summary.
Habit number two, begin with the end in mind, is understanding where you're going. Remember we talked about the same concept in Atomic Habits where James Clear talks about if a plane that takes off from L.A. and is pointing 3.8 degrees in the wrong direction and is intending to go to New York, will ultimately land in Washington, so the effect of pointing in the wrong direction compounds over time, and the effect of pointing in the right direction compounds over time.
Habit number three, put first things first. In other words, prioritize correctly. What is the most important thing to do in this time? What are the things that will move you in the right direction or in the pertinent direction or in the direction of your goals, and what are the things that will not? And is the proportion of things consuming your time proportional or correctly allocated in line with your intended goal? Those three habits then give you what he calls a private victory.
This is a victory that only you see for a time, and it takes you to independence, and that's in the middle of the journey. A lot of us think the journey ends at independence because there's a certain safety in independence. There's a certain safety in understanding that when you reach this point, you know, you have shirked and you have let go of the dependence on other people that hurt you, that cost you, that pulled you back, that you can do it by yourself.
It's romanticized heavily. Self-made billionaire, self-made millionaire are words that are thrown about a lot, and they encourage this idea that you can do it yourself. There's a song I was listening to, bopping to, when I was running the other day. I wonder when I love me is enough, you know? And it's Demi Lovato, and the song, the premise of the song is I am enough. I can do it by myself. I can make it happen, and there's something romantic about that.
There's something beautiful about the coming into self that happens when you get to the point of independence, and coincidentally, that's where I am in my journey, but what Stephen Covey then says, and this is why this book on self-development has stood the test of time as one of the best ever written, is because he covered these things at a time when a lot of modern pop culture hadn't even got a hold of it yet. He covered this stuff decades in advance.
After independence comes interdependence, which is now the highest level, and to progress from independence to interdependence, you need habit number four, which is the ability to think win-win, habit number five, the ability to seek first to understand and then to be understood. In other words, you need to be able to empathize. You need to be able to listen to the other person and have them feel listened to, and you need to be able to work out, based on that understanding, and then also your being understood, how to create a win-win situation for both of you.
And then habit number six, which is the ability to synergize, to synergize. To synergize is to take two energies, put them in the same space, and create more than the one energy could have created. And that's what we're going to talk about the most today, synergizing, interdependence. From there, you get what is called a public victory. That now takes you to interdependence, which is the highest point in the self-development structure that he has created. All of these habits, the six of them, are inside.
So if you were to think of it as an image, habit number one to six are inside the circle of habit number seven, which is sharpen your soul. Sharpen your soul is look after you, because you're the primary asset. We've talked about this. I don't need to go into detail. But what we are going to talk about today, like I said, is synergizing and understanding that there is something greater than saying, I did it by myself.
Because even the people who claim to have done it by themselves didn't actually do it by themselves. They synergized with other people. It might be that they did it with people they're not related to. It might be that they did it with people who they didn't grow up with, but they did it with someone. There is no one who is creating a billion dollar industry by themselves with their own two hands. So if you're building something, if you're creating something, understand that, yes, to start out by creating an independent structure, to start out by doing things yourself is great.
But if you want to go further, go with other people. And I have hammered this over and over and over over the last couple of weeks. And when you're going with other people, be selective. Be selective with who you trust. So Brene Brown says it best in the context of vulnerability, but I think it also has application in choosing who to run the race with. Brene Brown says, when we talk about a person being vulnerable, understand that when you're encouraged to be vulnerable, you're not being encouraged to be vulnerable with every Tom, Dick, and Harriet.
You're being invited to be vulnerable with people who have earned the right to hear your story. Because if you're vulnerable with everyone, what will happen is the pieces of your story that you're telling will be turned into shrapnel that will ultimately hurt you. So you want to share with a safe group of people who have earned the right to hear the deepest, darkest parts of yourself and know how to keep and hold you safely in those spaces.
The same goes with synergizing for the purpose of progressing within career or even in relationships. Partner with people with whom you share the same values and who are going in the same direction. Otherwise, what should be a good habit ultimately becomes a handicap. It is absolutely vital to choose the people you race with carefully. To quote from Stephen Covey himself, he says, when Sir Winston Churchill was called to head up the war effort for Great Britain, he remarked that all his life had prepared him for this hour.
In a similar sense, the exercise of all the other habits prepares us for the habit of synergy. When properly understood, synergy is the highest activity in all life, the true test and manifestation of all the other habits put together. The highest forms of synergy focus the four unique human endowments, the motive of win-win, which we've talked about, the skills of empathic communication on the toughest challenges we face in life. What results is almost miraculous, according to Stephen Covey.
We create new alternatives, something that wasn't there before. Synergy is the essence of principle-centered leadership. You can extrapolate this to other areas of life. Synergy is the essence of principle-centered relationships. Synergy is the essence of principle-centered love. It is the essence of principle-centered parenting. It catalyzes, it unifies, and it unleashes the greatest powers within people. All the habits that we have covered prepare us to create the miracle of synergy. And when asked to define synergy, he said, simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
It means that the relationship that the parts have to each other is a part and of itself. It is not only a part, but the most catalytic, the most empowering, the most unifying, and the most exciting part. You can tell that he's thrilled by it when he says it, but he's essentially saying that this is the key to everything else. You empower yourself so that you are able to stand as an independent human being who has the choice to say, there is another independent human being who has a particular skill set that I do not have, but is complementary to the one that I have.
How do we put those energies together to create something greater than the thing that either one of us could have produced on our own? The creative process is also the most terrifying space because you don't know what's going to happen or where it's going to lead. That's one of the things that puts people off synergy. You don't know what new dangers and challenges you'll find. It takes an immense amount of personal security, which is why you have to work on yourself first.
It's internal security to begin with a spirit of adventure, a spirit of discovery, the spirit of creativity, and I would add the spirit of vulnerability. You have to leave your comfort zone to enter into a new space where you partner with other people and risk being tethered to the outcomes that somebody else has, and this is why it's so important to partner with the right people. But that mustn't paralyze you. You must have the ability to try things out and work out, okay, this doesn't work, this works.
If my therapist heard me say that, he would chuckle out loud because he's been trying to hammer this into my head for a while now in a particular area of my life. Synergy according to Stephen Covey is everywhere in nature. If you plant two plants close together, the roots co-mingle and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants will grow better than if they were separated. If you put two pieces of wood together, they'll hold much more than the total of the weight held by each separately.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one equals three or more. The challenge is to apply the principles of creative cooperation that we learn in nature in social interactions. Family life provides many opportunities for this. Love provides many opportunities for this. Business provides many opportunities for this. He goes on to say that the very way that a man and a woman bring a child into the world is synergistic. The essence of synergy is to value differences, to respect them, to build on strengths, to compensate for each other's weaknesses.
And I thought, hmm, who can I find in the business world? And this is what took me the longest in preparation for this episode. Who can I find in the business world who can demonstrate this in a practical sense? And I found some magic. I found an article by Mike Fowler that goes straight to the heart of this. And he calls it, it's the same principles, different languages used by different experts. He calls it visionaries and integrators.
So he speaks of perhaps the most iconic duo that are known for synergizing and creating something magical, Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Disney. So Walt Disney is a global icon, an invertebrate visionary. The Walt Disney Company is one of his many legacies. But it wasn't Walt Disney on his own that created the Walt Disney Company as we know it. His brother, Roy, was beside him nearly every step of the way. And Walt is not shy about saying that if it had not been for his brother, he would probably have landed up in jail for bounced checks.
In fact, he says quite clearly many, many times that he may not have achieved the success that he achieved if not for his partnership with his older brother. The Disney brothers had what is called a necessary partnership, a visionary, Walt, and an integrator, Roy. Walt created the imaginative ideas and Roy brought the operational wisdom. This relationship allowed them to achieve success that neither one could have achieved on their own. This dynamic is clearly demonstrated with the pioneering imagination of Walt.
Walt was insanely creative and unwavering. He developed Mickey Mouse in 1928. He then introduced synchronized sound, four-color, three-strip Technicolor, and feature-length cartoons. He was a pioneer, but he knew very little about business. And the Walt Disney Company, or the Disney Company, was a business and it needed business acumen as much as it needed Walt's vision. This relationship is quite normalized in many game-changing business models. So Roy brought the operational expertise, the financial expertise, Walt did the creating, and Roy focused on making it all work.
And this partnership is actually quite normalized in business models. It just so happens that like Walt and Roy, a lot of the times one person in the duo is far more well-known than the other. So you'll find Henry Ford and James Carlsons, I might be mispronouncing that, of the Ford Motor Company. They are a duo of this nature, right? Ray Kroc and Fred Turner at McDonald's, same. In modern times, we have Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak creating Apple, James McKelvey and Jack Dorsey founding Square, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google.
In nearly all of these cases, the end result of a visionary innovation stack may not have been possible without the visionary and integrator dynamic duo. What this is telling you is, when you go into a business, when you create something, it is vital to look for the people who bolster your strengths and also close the gap for your weaknesses, and when they show their strength in closing the gap in your weaknesses, you are bolstering them where they are weak.
It is not a bunch of creatives only who make a creative company work. It is a bunch of creatives supported by a solid lawyer, supported by a solid accountant, supported by solid business principles that ultimately thrive. Don't be fooled by the fact that when people say, oh, I'm a self-made billionaire, that they are leaving out that there is a structure behind them. So when you step out to create something, whether it's a relationship or a business, make sure that you create a solid structure because that makes all the difference.
And then a visionary is an individual who has a vision, who has an idea, who has a solution to the problem. An integrator is someone who takes the visionary's idea and makes it a reality. The magic comes when you bring the two together. That's when you get the rocket fuel that creates these public victories that we then see. Let me talk about Kylie Jenner as an example. And knowing very little about her, this is just practical sense, right? Kylie Jenner, they say, is a self-made billionaire.
But what did she produce, right? She produced a product, makeup product. The same goes for Rihanna, by the way. She produced a makeup product. But what is it that made that vision work? Because if she had said, here's my lipstick, and that lipstick was a disaster and it flaked and it caused skin to crack, that wouldn't have gone anywhere. It means she had to partner with people who know how to make lipstick. She had to bring her creativity and her influence to partner with people who are in the industry and know how to make a product that does the things that people want.
In other words, it stays on, it is a nice color, it smells nice. All of those things that make a makeup product great. Rihanna, for example, has this brilliant idea that the makeup products that are available don't have enough range, right? They don't have enough range and quality. And how can she bring, she brings the idea to bring that range and that quality. And she partners with the people who make stuff. And when I say she partners with the people, I don't mean she went and she found a separate company.
She might have hired these people, right? But she creates the synergy that produces the magic that is Fenty Beauty. So when people say self-made, don't mistake that to mean by yourself. It simply means that there is a structure behind it that's been created that supports this. This is why the original idea of marriage is being supported by the people who are the bridesmaids or being supported by family and being supported by therapy. That's why those things were created back in the day.
I don't know if people are still doing these things, but that's why those things were created because the idea is if you're building something big, if you're building a partnership, it needs an underlying structure to support it. And that structure supports you and you support it. That is the basis of everything. When you say it takes a village to raise a child, it's synergy. It is synergy. It is all synergy. When we are hurt, when we are traumatized, when we are betrayed, when we are let down, we start to steer away from the idea of synergy towards the safety of independence, towards the place where we can stand and say, I can rely on myself.
I can trust myself. But when you are there, you might be safe, but you're not operating at the highest level of which you are capable. There is so much more that you can do when you pick the right people to run the race with. 90% of companies, a scary statistic, fail to execute their strategic plans. They're either missing an integrator or the visionary, or the visionary and the integrator are not aligned. We think of founders as CEOs like Elon Musk.
I always say his name wrong, but we're moving on. Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. It rarely does it work well for the business to only have that type of personality. The question isn't merely suitability, it's also sustainability. That's why even Mark Zuckerberg went and found the experience and stability that was Sheryl Sandberg, a COO. A visionary needs unstructured time, time to think and to dream, unencumbered by the weight of day-to-day. Their juices are idea-driven. When the idea was thought up or created, that's where they thrive.
An integrator's juices flow when the plan is deployed and achievement occurs across functions and a team. They are mainly excited by the result. No one is truly one or the other. There's almost always overlap, but it's important to make sure that a creative and an integrator are together. If you are a creative and an integrator in yourself, yay you, you are very much a rare breed. For the rest of humanity, you need to partner with your integrator or your creative to elevate what you are doing, to elevate life, and you need to have discussions with the people that you're partnered with.
For how to create, let's suppose you're both integrators and you've created something. That doesn't mean the thing will fail. It means now you understand that you perhaps need a creative force. Maybe you need to go in and engage that some way. Maybe you need to actively feed that part of yourself. Maybe you need to actively grow that part of yourself. The idea here is to understand how it works so that you can figure out how best to apply it to yourself as artfully and as suitably as possible.
Before I close up this episode, here are some of the best business partner duos of all time. Thank you for your time, and may God bless you and your family, and your friends, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors, and your neighbors.
