LEADERSHIP LIBRARY

IN BRIEF

Steven Covey’s key concept is a matrix of Urgent v. Important, against which one could plot their activities. The push is to clarify your purpose and then to align your time and effort to what is truly important, especially because the urgent—both important and not—constantly distracts our attention. It takes proactive effort to pursue the important but not urgent activities that yield the highest impact in our lives.

The concept of the Emotional Bank Account is also relevant for relationships, both personal and professional.

The 7 Habits

Be Proactive—“While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word you won’t find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.”

Begin with The End in Mind—“By keeping that end clearly in mind, you can make certain that whatever you do on any particular day does not violate the criteria you have defined as supremely important, and that each day of your life contributes in a meaningful way to the vision you have of your life as a whole.”

Put First Things First—“As a longtime student of this fascinating field, I am personally persuaded that the essence of the best thinking in the area of time management can be captured in a single phrase: Organize and execute around priorities.”

Think Win/Win—”Win/Win is a belief in the Third Alternative. It’s not your way or my way; it’s a better way, a higher way.”

Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood—”Because you really listen, you become influenceable. And being influenceable is the key to influencing others. Your circle begins to expand. You increase your ability to influence many of the things in your Circle of Concern.”

Synergize—“In interdependent situations compromise is the position usually taken. Compromise means that 1 + 1 = 1½.”“Synergy means that 1 + 1 may equal 8, 16, or even 1,600.”

Sharpen the Saw—“Habit 7 is personal PC. It’s preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have—you.”

Key Concepts

 Focus inside-out to improve one’s life

“The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others.”

P/PC Balance

Effectiveness lies in the balance—what I call the P/PC Balance. P stands for production of desired results, the golden eggs. PC stands for production capability, the ability or asset that produces the golden eggs.

Circle of Influence / Circle of Concern

• “Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about.”

• “Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control.”

• “Though they may have to prioritize the use of their influence, proactive people have a Circle of Concern that is at least as big as their Circle of Influence, accepting the responsibility to use their influence effectively.”

Urgent v. Important

(Source)

• “We react to urgent matters. Important matters that are not urgent require more initiative, more proactivity.”

• “Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because, urgent or not, they aren’t important. They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II.”

• “To say ‘yes’ to important Quadrant II priorities, you have to learn to say ‘no’ to other activities, sometimes apparently urgent things.”

Planning with a Quadrant II mindset

• “IDENTIFYING ROLES. The first task is to write down your key roles.”

• “SELECTING GOALS. The next step is to think of one or two important results you feel you should accomplish in each role during the next seven days.”

• “SCHEDULING. Now you can look at the week ahead with your goals in mind and schedule time to achieve them.”

• “DAILY ADAPTING. With Quadrant II weekly organizing, daily planning becomes more a function of daily adapting, of prioritizing activities and responding to unanticipated events, relationships, and experiences in a meaningful way.”

Emotional Bank Account

“...describes the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship.”

Six types of deposits:

• Understanding the Individual—”You simply don’t know what constitutes a deposit to another person until you understand that individual.”

• Attending to the Little Things—”The little kindnesses and courtesies are so important. Small discourtesies, little unkindnesses, little forms of disrespect make large withdrawals. In relationships, the little things are the big things.”

• Keeping Commitments

• Clarifying Expectations—”The cause of almost all relationship difficulties is rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations around roles and goals.”

• Showing Personal Integrity—”Lack of integrity can undermine almost any other effort to create high trust accounts.”

• The Laws of Love and the Laws of Life—”In other words, when we truly love others without condition, without strings, we help them feel secure and safe and validated and affirmed in their essential worth, identity, and integrity.”

Five Dimensions of a Win/Win

• Character—”To do that, to achieve that balance between courage and consideration, is the essence of real maturity and is fundamental to Win/Win.”

• Relationships—”A relationship where bank accounts are high and both parties are deeply committed to Win/Win is the ideal springboard for tremendous synergy (Habit 6).

• ”Agreements

• Systems—“Win/Win can only survive in an organization when the systems support it. If you talk Win/Win but reward Win/Lose, you’ve got a losing program on your hands.”

• Processes—”There’s no way to achieve Win/Win ends with Win/Lose or Lose/Win means.”

Dimensions of renewal / sharpening the saw

• Physical Dimension —“The physical dimension involves caring effectively for our physical body—eating the right kinds of foods, getting sufficient rest and relaxation, and exercising on a regular basis.”

• Spiritual—”Renewing the spiritual dimension provides leadership to your life.”

• The Mental—“Proactive people can figure out many, many ways to educate themselves.”

• Social/Emotional Dimension—“Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way.”

Quotables

“Many people with secondary greatness—that is, social recognition for their talents—lack primary greatness or goodness in their character.”

“Albert Einstein observed, ‘The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.’”

Habit 1: Be Proactive

“The difference between people who exercise initiative and those who don’t is literally the difference between night and day. I’m not talking about a 25 to 50 percent difference in effectiveness; I’m talking about a 5000-plus percent difference, particularly if they are smart, aware, and sensitive to others.”

Habit 2: Begin With The End in Mind

“It is possible to be busy—very busy—without being very effective.”

“Effectiveness—often even survival—does not depend solely on how much effort we expend, but on whether or not the effort we expend is in the right jungle.”

“A personal mission statement based on correct principles becomes the same kind of standard for an individual. It becomes a personal constitution, the basis for making major, life-directing decisions, the basis for making daily decisions in the midst of the circumstances and emotions that affect our lives. It empowers individuals with the same timeless strength in the midst of change.”

“Personal leadership is not a singular experience. It doesn’t begin and end with the writing of a personal mission statement. It is, rather, the ongoing process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with those most important things.”

Habit 3: Put First Things First

“My own maxim of personal effectiveness is this: Manage from the left [brain]; lead from the right.”“Again, you simply can’t think efficiency with people. You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things.”

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

“And it involves process; we cannot achieve Win/Win ends with Win/Lose or Lose/Win means.”

“The third character trait essential to Win/Win is the Abundance Mentality, the paradigm that there is plenty out there for everybody.”

Habit 5: Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They’re either speaking or preparing to speak. They’re filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.”

“In addition, empathic listening is the key to making deposits in Emotional Bank Accounts, because nothing you do is a deposit unless the other person perceives it as such.”

“When you can present your own ideas clearly, specifically, visually, and most important, contextually—in the context of a deep understanding of other people’s paradigms and concerns—you significantly increase the credibility of your ideas.”

Habit 6: Synergize

“When you communicate synergistically, you are simply opening your mind and heart and expressions to new possibilities, new alternatives, new options.”

“Valuing the differences is the essence of synergy—the mental, the emotional, the psychological differences between people. And the key to valuing those differences is to realize that all people see the world, not as it is, but as they are.”

“When you see only two alternatives—yours and the “wrong” one—you can look for a synergistic third alternative. There’s almost always a third alternative, and if you work with a Win/Win philosophy and really seek to understand, you usually can find a solution that will be better for everyone concerned.”

Habit 7: Sharpen The Saw - Principles Of Balanced Self-Renewal

“I highly recommend starting with a goal of a book a month, then a book every two weeks, then a book a week.”

“Sharpening the saw in the first three dimensions—the physical, the spiritual, and the mental—is a practice I call the ‘Daily Private Victory.’ And I commend to you the simple practice of spending one hour a day every day doing it—one hour a day for the rest of your life.”

“We can choose to reflect back to others a clear, undistorted vision of themselves. We can affirm their proactive nature and treat them as responsible people. We can help script them as principle-centered, value-based, independent, worthwhile individuals. And, with the Abundance Mentality, we realize that giving a positive reflection to others in no way diminishes us. It increases us because it increases the opportunities for effective interaction with other proactive people.”

“Although renewal in each dimension is important, it only becomes optimally effective as we deal with all four dimensions in a wise and balanced way. To neglect any one area negatively impacts the rest.”