Knowledge Is Free > From “You and Me” to “Us and We”

I remembered when an old friend of mine sent me a short message right before my engagement day, I forgot the text details but the it was like this phrase more or less ‘engagement is about to learn how to change the words “you and me” to become “us and we”’. She is definitely true, without that togetherness may last, and even it was not only for those who celebrating engagement whatsoever, it was somehow reconnecting my thoughts on how we engage with our co-workers in daily basis.

The personal maturity continuum (popularized by Stephen Covey) explains how we interact with others and settle things in an effective way. This continuum is not a linear process, but it is an iterative process of handling things differently. Below is the popular maturity continuum.

First maturity phase: Dependence (the most popular word is YOU) à “You do this, You are paid to do so, You must responsible, You should be able to solve things out, You’re the one who got the skill”

This phase is the typical one-way interaction with one person take the commanding stick and tell others to do what he/she want to achieve the goals. This type of engagement aimed for private victory or self acknowledgement, and the result is a win-lose situation. This is a 19^th century mindset of industrial age. It may effective, yet also obsolete.

Second maturity phase: Independence (the most popular word are I or ME) à “I do this, I am the one who is responsible, I know things better than anyone”

In this phase, a person may took all the responsibility, he/she unlikely to delegate, hardly to trust other’s capability, and the result is most likely to be a lose-lose situation. This is a 20^th century mindset of individualism, it is powerful, but have so  many limitations.

Third maturity phase: Interdependence (the most popular words are US or WE) à “Let us discuss about this, I’m thinking this way what do you think?, Do you have a better idea?, We can do this together”

This is ultimate phase of personal maturity when one choose to open his/herself for work-collaboration, joint-thinking, and the end result will be a win-win situation since it aimed for public victory. This is the 21^st century mindset. It is unlimited and opens new possibilities.

At some point, sometimes we forced to be dependent or independent to achieve our goals, in critical situation for instance when time is essential and resource is scarce. But yet again these phase have its own risk, mostly about relationship risk. It may endangered engagement sustainability. And when we are using these two phases, use it wisely, and recover it quickly.

If we connect this concept with my company’s Leadership Model, dependency may strengthening our business operator skill, but it probably destroy the value creator and people developer skill. Independency may strengthening value creator skill but at the same time will diminished the business operator and people developer skill. Interdependence is the key to be a complete value creator, business operator, and people developer. And here in my company, reflecting to our core values, we are taught to be team players, interdependent, trusting and respecting each other. Without those attributes, we may not be able to be high performance individuals, and it is most definitely impossible to deliver.