The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People-By Stephen R. Covey

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
By Stephen R. Covey
The Two Sides of Success
Aesop’s Fable, “The Goose and the Golden Egg,” is the story of a poor farmer who one day
visits the nest of his goose and finds at her side a glittering golden egg. Though he suspects a
trick, he decides to take it home where he learns to his delight that the egg is actually pure
gold. Every morning thereafter the farmer gathers one golden egg from the nest of the
goose, and soon becomes fabulously wealthy. As he grows rich, however, he also grows
greedy and impatient with the output of the goose. In an attempt to get at once all the gold
in the goose, he kills and opens it, only to find nothing.
The moral of this old fable has a modern ring to it. Like the foolish farmer, we often
emphasize short-term results (golden eggs) at the expense of long-term prosperity (the
goose). Indeed, it seems that we are often more concerned with doing things right
(efficiency) than with doing the right things (effectiveness). In his attempt to be efficient, the
farmer became grossly ineffective; he destroyed his capability for getting the desired results.
In this presentation, I introduce seven habits of highly effective people – habits used
consistently by people who achieve desired results. Albert E. Gray in his essay, “The
Common Denominator of Success,” says, “Successful people have the habit of doing the
things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either, necessarily, but their
disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.”
Habits are patterns of behavior composed of three overlapping components: knowledge,
attitude, and skill. Since these are learned rather than inherited, our habits constitute our
second nature, not our first. We are not our current habits; hence, we should avoid defining
ourselves in terms of our habits, characteristics, and reactive tendencies. Habits of
effectiveness can be learned, habits of ineffectiveness unlearned.
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Successful people daily weave habits of effectiveness into their lives. Often, they are
internally motivated by a strong sense of mission. By subordinating their dislike for certain
tasks, they develop the following seven habits and discipline their lives in accordance with
fundamental principles.
As illustrated, these habits are interrelated, interdependent, and sequential. The first three are
habits of character; they will help you achieve the daily private victory and progress from a
state of dependence to independence. The next three are the outward expressions of
character and lead to interdependence, mutual benefit, and public victories. The seventh
habit renews “the goose” and sustains the growth process.
Habit 1: Be Proactive
The habit of being proactive, or the habit of personal vision, means taking responsibility for
our attitudes and actions. It’s most instructive to break the word “responsibility” into two
parts: response/ability. Proactive people develop the ability to choose their response, making
them more a product of their values and decisions than their moods and conditions.
The more we exercise our freedom to choose our response/ability, the more proactive we
become. The key is to be a light, not a judge; a model, not a critic; a programmer, not a
program; to feed opportunities, starve problems; to keep promises, not make excuses; and to
focus upon our immediate circle of influence, not upon the larger circle of concern.
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
This is the habit of personal leadership, meaning to begin each day with a clear
understanding of your desired direction and destination. Management is concerned more
with efficiency and speed along that course.
Effective people realize that things are created mentally before they are created physically.
They write a mission or purpose statement and use it as a frame of reference for making
future decisions. They clarify values and set priorities before selecting goals and going about
the work.
Ineffective people allow old habits, other people, and environmental conditions to dictate
this first creation. They adopt values and goals from their culture and climb the proverbial
ladder of success, only to find, upon reaching the top rung, that the ladder is leaning against
the wrong wall.
The second or physical creation follows from the first, just as a building from a blueprint. If
the design is good, the construction will go faster and better. Quality, after all, can’t be
inspected into a product; it must be designed and built into it from the beginning.
Habit 3: Put First Things First
This is the habit of personal management, and it involves organizing and managing time and
events around the personal priorities identified in Habit Two.
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Studies show that about 80 percent of the desired results flow from a few (20%) “high
leverage” activities. To “leverage” our time, we should devote less attention to activities that
are urgent but unimportant, more time to those things that are important but not necessarily
urgent.
Urgent Not Urgent
Important I Urgent & Important
· Crises
· Pressing problems
· Deadline-driven projects,
meetings, preparations
II Important but not urgent
· Preparation
· Prevention
· Values clarification
· Planning
· Relationship building
· True re-creation
· Empowerment
Not Important III Urgent and not important
· Interruptions, some phone calls
· Some mail, some reports, some
meetings
· Many proximate, pressing matters
· Many popular activities
IV Not urgent, not important
· Trivia, busywork
· Junk mail
· Some phone calls
· Time wasters
· Escape activities
Borrowed from © Covey Leadership Center, Inc
Urgent things act on us and we usually react to them. But we must be proactive to do the
important but not urgent things. Only by saying “no” to the unimportant can we say “yes”
to the important (Quadrant II).
If you neglect Quadrant II prevention and opportunities, Quadrant I crises will disrupt your
life. And if you plan daily instead of weekly, you will live in Quadrant I, and your “planning”
will only prioritize your problems.
Habit 4: Think Win-Win
Win-win is the habit of interpersonal leadership. In families and businesses, effectiveness is
largely achieved through the cooperative efforts of two or more people. Marriages and other
partnerships are interdependent realities, and yet people often approach these relationships
with an independent mentality, which is like trying to play golf with a tennis racket – the tool
isn’t suited to the sport.
Win-win is the attitude of seeking mutual benefit. Win-win thinking begins with a
commitment to explore all options until a mutually satisfactory solution is reached, or to
make no deal at all. It begins with an abundance mentality, a belief that by synergistically
increasing the “pie,” there are pieces enough for everybody. People with a scarcity mentality
believe that there is only enough for the best; they seek win-lose solutions. And people who
are kind but lack courage usually end up with the lose-win leftovers. Effective people model
the win-win principle in their relationships and agreements.
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The win-win performance agreement clarifies expectations by making the following five
elements very explicit: desired results, guidelines, resources, accountability, and
consequences.
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
The fifth habit is the habit of communication-one of the master skills in life, the key to
building win-win relationships, the essence of professionalism. Doctors diagnose before they
prescribe; top sales people pre-assess needs and sell solutions to problems, not products.
We see the world as we are, not as it is. Our perceptions come out of our experiences. Most
credibility problems begin with perception differences. To resolve these differences and to
restore credibility, one must exercise empathy, seeking first to understand the point of view
of the other person. Empathic listening is deeply therapeutic because it gives people
“psychological air.” Once people are understood, they lower their defenses.
Hammering emotionally rooted problems by probing is often counterproductive.
Evaluation, sympathy, and advising are also ineffective as a means of gaining understanding
and influence – but they may have value once the other person feels understood.
Habit 6: Synergize
This is the habit of creative cooperation or teamwork. For those who have a win-win
abundance mentality and exercise empathy, differences in any relationship can produce
synergy, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Synergy results from valuing
differences by bringing different perspectives together in the spirit of mutual respect. People
then feel free to seek the best possible alternative, often the “third alternative,” one that is
substantially different and better than either of the original proposals.
Synergy is the human resource approach to problem solving as opposed to a “please or
appease” human relations’ approach. Insecure people tend to make others over in their own
image, and surround themselves with people who think similarly. They mistake uniformity
for unity, sameness for oneness. Real oneness means complementariness.
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
This is the habit of self-renewal. As the farmer in the fable learned from sad experience,
success has two sides: the goose, which represents production capability, and the golden egg,
the production of desired results.
It is wise to keep both sides in balance. Yet when people get busy producing or “sawing,”
they rarely take time to sharpen the saw because maintenance seldom pays dramatic
immediate dividends.
The habit of sharpening the saw regularly means having a balanced, systematic program for
self-renewal in the four areas of our lives: physical, mental, emotional-social, and spiritual.
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Without this discipline, the body becomes weak, the mind mechanical, the emotions raw, the
spirit insensitive and the person selfish.
It’s the law of the harvest; we reap as we sow. We will enjoy a successful harvest if we
cultivate these seven habits of effectiveness and live in accordance with the underlying
principles.
Resources
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey. Simon and Schuster, 1989.
First Things First, Stephen Covey, Roger Merrill, Rebecca Merrill. Simon and Schuster, 1994.
The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker. Pan, 1970.