Judd N. Adams
Management Training, Consulting & Project Facilitation
Ideas -- Insight -- Transformation

  

THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE:  
Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Steven R. Covey, Chairman, 
Covey Leadership Center

Fireside Books, Simon & Schuster, 1990, 340 pages,

Covey's model of personal effectiveness began evolving in the mid seventies while working on a Ph.D., which involved reviewing 200 years of U.S. success literature. His perception was that much of the work of the last 50 years focused on superficial quick-fix advice in contrast to the prior 150 years, which emphasized development of character. It wasn't so much that the techniques and skills being advanced were wrong, but that they weren't built on a proper foundation:

“In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.”

Principle-Centered Paradigm

Covey sets out the seven habits that he believes constitutes a "principle-centered paradigm" or model for guiding self-development. These "natural laws in the human dimension that are just as real, just as unchanging and unarguably `there' as laws such as gravity are in the physical dimension."

"Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value." They are not `acquired' like skills, to be added on to one's basic self. They are the basic self. The habits take time and constant attention to develop until they represent the automatic way of dealing with life's daily challenges. Primary greatness comes from mastering the seven habits; secondary greatness comes from mastering specific skills and techniques, such as effective communication and time management.

A habit is the "intersection of knowledge, skill and desire. Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm., the what to do and the why. Skill is the how to do. And desire is the motivation, the want to do."

Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

As Maslow describes a hierarchy of needs, Covey sees the seven habits similarly as an "incremental, sequential, highly integrated approach to the development of personal and interpersonal effectiveness.” They move us progressively on a Maturity Continuum from dependence, to independence, to interdependence. The seven habits are:

  1. Be proactive; take the initiative.
  2. Begin with the end in mind; create a mission-vision for your life or business.
  3. First things first -- keep focused on your priorities.
  4. Think and act win-win.
  5. Emphatic communication -- emphasize listening to comprehend.
  6. Practice synergy or creative cooperation.
  7. Renew yourself: keep balance between productivity and developing capacity.

The first three habits involve transforming yourself. The second three involve improving your relationship with others. The seventh involves continuous improvement.

1. BE PROACTIVE

  • Take the initiative: don't wait for others
  • Engage in positive self-talk.
  • Focus on areas on influence, not areas of concern.
  • Focus on being, not having.
  • Admit and learn from mistakes.
  • Make and keep commitments.
  • Daily choices make habits.

2. BEGIN WITH END IN MIND: Develop a personal mission/vision for your life

  • Adopt first principles in developing mission and vision.
  • Be holistic: have a vision for all roles of work, spouse, parent, citizen.
  • Rescript or reprogram your thoughts: use visualization & affirmations which are personal, positive, present tense, and emotional.

3. FIRST THINGS FIRST: KEEP FOCUSED

  • Manage time based upon priorities.
  • Keep balance between production and developing production capacity.
  • Make weekly plans: 
    • maintain flexibility/daily adaptability
    • emphasize people over things delegate to develop capacity

The next three habits involve transforming your relationships with others.

4. THINK AND ACT WIN-WIN

  • Take a team attitude.
  • Strengthen interdependence: “I succeed if I help you succeed.”
  • Identify your current paradigm: how you spend most of your time, or, what governs a particular relationship you are interested in understanding better. Which strategy do you take?
  1. Win/Lose: I want badly to win, and I know it will be at your loss.
  2. Lose/Win: I subordinate my own needs to yours hoping to keep harmony or in some intangible way to get credits.
  3. Lose/Lose: Competition is so destructive both parties get hurt. No one wins.
  4. Win/?: I want to win and don't even consider that someone else may get hurt.
  5. Win/Win: I try to find a way that both you and I come out ahead.
  6. Win/Win or No Deal: If we can not create a solution we both are happy with, we agree to disagree agreeably.

If you are using one of the first four, convert to 5 or 6.

The WIN-WIN habit “begins with character and moves toward relationships, out of which flow agreements” sustained by systems and process.

See also Getting To Yes.

CHARACTER

  • Act with Integrity
    • Say what you mean and do what you say (walk your talk).
    • Deliver on your commitments.
    • Show loyalty to those not present: don't say to others what you wouldn't say directly to the person you are discussing.
  • Act with Maturity
    • Balance courage & consideration: express your feelings with courage, being considerate of others' feelings.
  • Act with an Abundance mentality.
    • Adopt the attitude that there is plenty for everyone.

RELATIONSHIPS

  • Build a Positive Emotional Bank Account by:
    • Understand the person, and show that you do (by nodding, paraphrasing).
    • Attend to little things.
    • Keep commitments.
    • Clarify expectations.
  • Turn problems into opportunities.
  • Affirm a person's motives.

“Dealing with Win/Lose is the real test of Win/Win. ... It goes beyond transactional leadership into transformation leadership, transforming the individuals involved as well as the relationship.” The theory and expectation is that if you persist in a Win/Win manner you can convert a person from Win/Lose into Win/Win.

NOTE:  See also the book abstracts The Transformational Leader, by Noel M. Tichy and Mary Anne Devanna and Getting Together, by Roger Fisher and Scott Brown in my book Core Competencies Handbook and Tool Kit

AGREEMENTS

Variously called performance agreements or partnership agreements, they define:

  1. Desired results
  2. Guidelines for accomplishing the results (principles, policies)
  3. Resources needed,
  4. Accountability
    • performance standards,
    • measurement process,
    • time frame.
  5. Consequences
    • good and bad,
    • logical and natural to follow from the evaluation of performance:
      • financial,
      • psychological (recognition, approval, respect, credibility),
      • opportunity (training, development, other perks),
      • responsibility.

SYSTEMS

Systems are needed to reward and reinforce cooperation, such as planning involving teams, performance appraisal which includes peer review. 

“So often the problem is in the system, not in the people. If you put good people in bad systems, you get bad results.”  

NOTE: This emphasis on systems and process is a key premise in the Total Quality Movement. Deming and other TQM specialists estimate that 80% of problems are from the system and 20% or less from people deficiencies.

PROCESS

Covey recommends following the process described in Getting to Yes which describes the “principled” vs. “positional” approach to bargaining. Covey suggest a four-step process:

  1. See the problem from the other person's point of view.
  2. Identify the key issues and concerns of both parties.
  3. Determine what results would constitute a fully acceptable solution.
  4. Identify possible new options to achieve these results.

5. EMPATHETIC COMMUNICATION

Seek to understand before trying to be understood. [In Myers-Briggs language, be in perceiving not judging mode.] Turn transactional into transformational (reframing) opportunities.

The emphasis in school is on reading and writing, with little on listening and speaking. Yet in the work world the importance of these skills is reversed, with listening being the most important on average.

Levels of “listening”

  1. Ignoring
  2. Pretending -- words may suggest listening, but behavior contradicts.
  3. Selective listening -- hearing what one wants to hear.
  4. Attentive -- realigning hearing the words, ability to paraphrase accurately.
  5. Empathic -- hearing the words and the feelings and understanding the personal paradigm (how does the world look from their point of view).

Components of the message: words (10%), sounds (3O%), nonverbal (60)%).

Stages in improving listening ability:

  1. mimic content
  2. paraphrase content
  3. paraphrase feelings
  4. paraphrase content & feelings

Barriers to Effective Listening

Four types of "autobiographical" listening -- listening through one's own paradigm, which gets in the way of effective listening

  • Evaluating -- trying to decide if we agree of disagree with the speaker.
  • Probing -- asking questions from our own frame of reference.
  • Advising -- giving counsel based on our own experience.
  • Interpreting -- trying to figure out people, the motives, based on our own motives.

Affirming or acknowledging a person's motives creates emotional deposits.

Effective selling is based upon emphatic listening. Diagnose before you prescribe -- the mark of all true professionals. The amateur salesman sells products; the professional sells solutions to needs and problems.

8. SYNERGY -- PRINCIPLES OF CREATIVE COOPERATION.

Synergy means the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Value differences for they will stimulate brand new opportunities [an interpersonal version of the Dialectic: thesis antithesis, then synthesis.]

7. RENEWAL -- SHARPEN THE SAW -- CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

"Kaizen" is the Japanese word roughly equivalent to continuous improvement (see the abstract of Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success, Masaaki Imai in Core Competencies Handbook and Tool Kit). Take time to renew your self: physical, social, emotional, spiritual. Your ability to produce (P) is dependent upon continuous attention to renewing your production capacity (PC). Covey tells the story of a man sawing a tree with a dull saw who won't take the time to sharpen the saw, with the consequence that it takes longer over all to saw the tree, and at a greater effort.

Four dimensions to “exercise” regularly to develop your PC:

  1. Physical - nutrition, rest and relaxation, exercise (flexibility, strength, aerobic capacity) -- to develop energy for daily work and for resistance during stressful times
  2. Spiritual - commitment to your value system -spiritual reading, communing with nature, immersion in great literature and music
  3. Mental -- reading, visualizing, planning .
    • Covey recommends beginning with a goal of a book a month, then one every two weeks, then one a week.
    • Also keep a journal of your thoughts, experiences, & insights.
  4. Social/emotional -- habits 4,5 & 6-can be practiced as a part of daily life. They do not require extra time as the first three do, but they do require conscious effort & planning - look for opportunities for win/win thinking, for communicating empathetically, for using diversity or differences in perspective to stimulate creativity.

“The person who doesn't read is no better off than the person who can't read.”

"I do not agree with the popular success literature that says that says that self-esteem is primarily a matter of mind set, of attitude - that you can psych yourself into a peace of mind. ... The late Dr. Hans Selye, in his monumental research on stress, basically says that a long, healthy, and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others."

Scripting Others - The Self-fulfilling Prophecy

Because, Covey argues, "most people are a function of the social mirror, scripted by the opinions, the perceptions, the paradigms of the people around them" we have the opportunity to help them, via the dynamics of the self-fulfilling prophecy to become principle-centered, value-based, independent worthwhile individuals by being that way ourselves. By personally acting on an affirmative basis living the Abundance Mentality, engaging in WIN/WIN thinking and talking, we can influence others to be likewise.

In Covey's final chapter he reveals how he used his own principles, especially empathic listening with his wife to work through some difficult issues.

“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should he.” Goethe

Post script: If you find these ideas stimulating, I encourage you to read the whole book. It is an easy and fun read, which can easily be done in several evenings.

 
September 16, 2002

 

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