Leadership

Perspective

Seven Habts of Highly Effective People - 1989 by: Stephen R. Covey -1We all see the world, not as it is, but as we are. We look through the frame of reference, the pair of glasses, the paradigm of our whole past background and experience. If you want to make small improvements, work on behavior or attitudes; if you want to make major improvement, shift your paradigm (how you see the situation and your role in it). People that win Private Victories will win Public Victories. I know in my life if I have failed in public, I know where I can track it, somewhere in the privacy of my life. Somewhere I was irresponsible, reactive, prideful, hypocritical. Thats where the problem is. The seven basic habits are an orderly sequence of growth. First the private victory, then the public victory. The first three habits constitute a growth sequence leading to personal effectiveness. Each habit has certain independent values, but you tap their full potential only when you develop them together. The first three habits of personal effectiveness prepare you for the last three habits of interpersonal effectiveness. Your associates rely on you to be stable, honest, and trustworthy. They are drawn to you by goodwill and a genuine interest in them, but those qualities of character are developed only when you have established the discipline and ability to be independent. Here are the Seven Habits: BE PROACTIVE: The Habit of Personal Vision This means being responsible for your life. You are not a victim of circumstance, you are exactly what you choose to be. Proactivity is the power, freedom, and ability to choose responses to whatever happens to you, based on your values. Proactivity means recognizing the best way to predict your future is to create it. Reactivity is responding on the basis of feelings that are aroused because of conditions either genetic (traits we inherited), psychic (our upbringing), or environmental (our surroundings). Proactive people change their language. They eliminate such phrases as: I cant. She makes me mad! Pressure always does this to me! If only they would do something... Proactive people focus on the inner circle of influence, rather then the wider circle of concern. Whatever you focus on gets larger! That which you center your life on becomes the lens through which you view the world.
Circle of

Circle of Influence

Concern

Anytime you think the problem is out there, in the outer circle, that thought is the problem. I have just empowered whats out there to control me. And, I am in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sure enough, you will find that the evidence will support your conviction. Key point: You are the programmer.
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Perspective

Seven Habts of Highly Effective People - 1989 by: Stephen R. Covey -2BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND: The Habit of Personal Leadership This means discovering a personal mission, then supporting it with carefully chosen roles and goals. It means establishing personal values that will guide productivity. It includes visualizing, or creating a mental image of what you want to create physically. Visualizing something organizes the abilities needed to bring it about. You see, once you can decide what you are about and that you treasure what you value, youve automatically got guidelines. Youve developed the criteria for making all of the decisions in your life. Working from such a clear sense of mission creates integrity actions that are in line with your values. Key point: Write the program. FIRST THINGS FIRST: The Habit of Personal Management This means operating every day from priorities that flow from your mission, roles, and goals. It means translating your mission into specific daily activities. It means creating optimal value from your time. Consider the following time management matrix:

1 Urgent Important

2 Not Urgent Important

3 Urgent Not Important

4 Not Urgent Not Important

In quadrant 2, we do things only because they serve our missions. They have no other urgency. This quadrant is the cure to time management problems. By moving from quadrants 3 and 4 to quadrant 2, we replace reactivity with proactivity. Once you have clearly got a picture of your priorities, that is values, goals and high leverage activities, now organize and execute around them: The first principle of organization is scheduling. The key to scheduling quadrant 2 activities is weekly planning. The second principle of organization is delegation. Stewardship delegation sets a context for successful performance. Stewardship delegation saves time. One sentence, essentially, is the summary of the whole field of life and time management -- organize and execute around priorities. Key point: Live the program. THINK WIN-WIN: The Habit of Interpersonal Leadership Win/Win means understanding that we live in an interdependent world and acting cooperatively within it. Cultural scripting toward win/lose attitudes and habits is strong and constant. Here are some powerful sources of this scripting: Conditional love. This forms self-worth based on opinions, comparisons, or competitions. Normal distribution curves in the academic world. Athletic, legal, and political contests where there are definite winners and losers.

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Seven Habts of Highly Effective People - 1989 by: Stephen R. Covey -3Lets examine the nature of the whole win/win philosophy. This is not just some little technique. It is not just a nice little phrase, win/win or no deal. Basically if I were to put it into two words, I would say, abundance mentality. Thats the character of a win/win person. Abundance basically means that persons paradigm of life is: there is plenty out there for everybody and to spare. The ultimate expression of this point is, Win/win or no deal. This means that if we cant come up with a win/win agreement or deal, we simply agree not to deal. We agree to disagree agreeably. If we both cant feel good about it, lets not enter into any agreement. This may not be a viable option in all situations, but there are many in which it is viable. Win/win relationships come from seeking the third alternative: that which will meet both parties needs rather than only one or the other. The key to finding the third alternative is to stay in the communication process. Sometimes it gets frustrating and we are tempted to give up. But the only way to reach win/win is to say, Lets keep talking until we find an option that we both feel good about. The way to escape the normal losing scripts is to write new ones through the processes described in Habits 2 and 3. Win/win starts with character, moves to relationships and must be reinforced by helpful systems and processes. A win/win character consists of three traits: integrity, maturity, and the abundance mentality. Integrity basically means that we keep our commitments and promises. Maturity may be defined as courage balanced with consideration. Mature people have the courage to express their feelings and convictions, but balance their courage with consideration for the feelings and convictions of others. Without balance, courage and consideration lead respectively to win/lose and lose/win thinking. The abundance mentality means that you dont see life as a big competition, and that most of your psychic satisfactions dont stem from competitions or comparisons. Out of character, flows trust, and trust is the foundation of healthy human relationships. With trust, we might make some unpopular win/lose decisions because of time pressures or other contingencies without losing faith with people. Without trust, even the smallest win/lose decision can throw things all out of proportion, greatly limiting our ability to work effectively with others. If character is present and the trust is high, then people can hammer out win/win decisions and agreements. The metaphor for this trust level is the Emotional Bank Account. Here are six ways to make deposits into this account: Be honest Be kind Make and keep promises Understand before evaluating Manage expectations (roles/goals) Learn to apologize when you blow any of the other five points Remember: you never get a good second chance to make a good first impression! Win/win behaviors survive only in systems that support them. Systems often cause the problems that we blame on people. The win/win principle is often undermined by an incomplete information and compensation system.

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Seven Habts of Highly Effective People - 1989 by: Stephen R. Covey -4SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND: The Habit of Communication If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have ever learned in the field of interpersonal relations, this would be the sentence: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Most people listen not with the intent to understand, but with the intent to reply. The key to influence is to first be influenced (gain understanding). Seek first to understand is both an attitude and a skill -- an attitude of openness, coupled with the skill of emphatic listening. To understand another person, we must be willing to be influenced. As stated in Habit 4, win/win solutions require completely new positions that people create together. That is what were looking for when we open ourselves to be influenced. When we are open, we also give people room to release their fixed positions and consider alternatives. To truly understand, we must listen to more than words. Empathy is listening with the eyes and the heart. Empathic listening is deep listening, followed by statements of what we understand the other person to be expressing. People typically learn the skills of empathic listening in five stages: Stage 1: Mimic the content of the communication Stage 2: Rephrase the content Stage 3: Reflect feelings Stage 4: Rephrase content and reflect feeling Stage 5: Learn when not to reflect SYNERGIZE: The Habit of Creative Cooperation Synergy is the crowning achievement of all the habits. It means seeing and appreciating that differences in a relationship can be a source of information and creativity. It is evidenced by teamwork, team-building, developing unity and harmony. Now remember how were defining unity? Is it sameness? What is it? Complementariness. Build a complementary team. Thats the essence of unity, not sameness. Its a far more mature definition. When people communicate with respect and creativity, they learn, gain insight, and can then produce solutions to problems and issues better than any originally proposed. And they all know it! The way to create synergy is to create a context that supports it. We cant create synergy directly. It is a byproduct. Our goal, therefore, is to create the climate in which it thrives. The elements of that climate include the win/win attitude, seeking first to understand, and a belief in our abilities to find a third alternative. In other words, this habit builds directly upon the two that precede it. SHARPEN THE SAW: The Habit of Self Renewal The only person over which you have direct control and immediate control is yourself. So, the greatest assets to constantly develop, preserve and enhance are your own capabilities. And no one can do it to you. You have to do it for yourself. You have to cultivate this habit. It is the single greatest investment we ever make because it leverages everything else. The idea is to take small positive steps every day. We sharpen the saw in four areas: Physical -- The physical self is the body. We build its strength through nutrition, exercise, and rest. Mental -- We exercise our mental self through learning -- through reading, writing, and taking time to think. Spiritual -- We exercise our spiritual self through reading literature that inspires us, through meditation or prayer, and through spending time with nature. Socio-emotional -- We exercise our socio-emotional self by making consistent daily deposits into the Emotional Bank Accounts of our key relationships. Sharpening the saw in these four areas maintains our personal production capability.
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