Stephen R. Covey is justifiably famous for his books on business and personal success. In this blog, I briefly summarize two of his best and most relevant books for moving you and your company forward.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

• The 7 habits
  
  • Be Proactive
    
  • Begin with the end in mind
    
  • Put first things first
    
  • Think win / win
    
  • Seek first to understand, then to be understood
    
  • Synergize
    
    • Creative cooperation
      
  • Balanced self-renewal
    
    • Continuous learning
      
    • Can you learn for one hour a day?
      

• Other insights
  
  • It is crucial to be principle centered
    
    • Focus on thinking the right way and then doing the right things
      
    • Build your success from the inside out
      
  • In time and attention management, focus on those tasks and activities that are important but may not be urgent
    
    • The tyranny of the urgent (those tasks that are not important but immediately pressing) needs to be combatted
      
  • Failure is the result of applying yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.
    

The 8^th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness

• The 8^th Habit: Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs
  
  • Your voice is your unique personal significance
    
  • Voice is one of the three components of spiritual intelligence
    
    • Integrity – being true to one’s highest values and achievements
      
    • Meaning – a sense of contribution to people and causes
      
    • Voice – aligning work with one’s unique calling and gifts
      
  • Voice is at the intersection of Talent, Passion, Need, Conscience
    
    • Talent – Your natural gifts and strengths
      
    • Passion – Those things that naturally energize, excite, motivate and inspire you
      
    • Need – What the world needs enough to pay you for
      
    • Conscience – That small voice that assures you of what is right and that prompts you to actually do it.
      
  • Create high level of commitment in yourself and others
    
    • Not, rebel or quit
      
    • Nor, malicious obedience
      
    • Not even, willing compliance
      
    • But, cheerful cooperation
      
    • Even better, heartfelt commitment
      
    • Best of all, creative excitement
      
  • Learning
    
    • You learn best when you teach another
      
    • Your learning is internalized when you live it
      
  • Finding your voice involves all four human intelligences / capacities
    
    • Mental – IQ – Mind – Vision – Talent
      
    • Physical – PQ – Body – Discipline – Need
      
    • Social / Environmental – EQ – Heart – Passion – Passion
      
    • Spiritual – SQ – Spirit – Conscience – Conscience
      

• Leadership
  
  • What is leadership?
    
    • Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.
      
    • You lead and empower people. You manage and control things.
      
  • Symptoms of chronic problems in companies (“All organizations are perfectly aligned to get the results they get.” Arthur W. Jones)
    
    • No shared vision / values
      
    • Misalignment
      
    • Disempowerment
      
    • Low trust
      
  • What do successful leaders do (Results Based Leadership)
    
    • Set Direction
      
      • Vision, customers, future
        
    • Demonstrate personal character
      
      • Habits, integrity, trust, analytical thinking
        
    • Mobilize individual commitment
      
      • Engage others, share power
        
    • Engender organizational capability
      
      • Build teams, manage change
        
  • Ultimately, a good leadership team is a complementary team where people’s strengths are made productive and their weaknesses made irrelevant by the strengths of others
    
  • The key question is always:
    
    • What is the best thing I can do under these circumstances?
      
  • A high level of initiative or self-empowerment is fostered
    
    • Wait until told
      
    • Ask
      
    • Make a recommendation
      
    • I intend to
      
    • Do it and report immediately
      
    • Do it and report periodically
      
    • Do it
      
  • Ethical leadership is crucial
    
    • “The supreme quality of leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.” Dwight D. Eisenhower
      
    • 90% of all leadership failures are character failures
      
    • Only 57% of workers surveyed agree that their organizations consistently do what they say they will do.
      
    • The key to trust is in making and keeping promises
      

• Communication
  
  • 40 – 50% of our communication time is spent listening. This is the one mode we have had the least training in.
    
  • Only 17% of workers surveyed feel that communication in their organizations is truly open, candid, and respectful
    
  • Listening continuum
    
    • Ignoring
      
    • Pretend listening (patronizing)
      
    • Selective listening
      
    • Attentive listening
      
    • Empathic listening (within the other’s frame of reference)
      
  • Use a “talking stick” – in a meeting, only the person holding the talking stick is permitted to speak. You thus can speak until you are satisfied that you are understood.
    
  • In listening, to understand does not mean to agree with.
    
  • 90% of all communication problems are caused by differences in either semantics (the way you define words or terms) or perceptions (how you interpret data).
    

• Synergize
  
  • Two steps to achieving synergy
    
    • Would you be willing to search for a solution that is better than what either one of you (us) have proposed?
      
    • Would you agree to a simple ground rule: No one can make his or her point until they have restated the other person’s point to his or her satisfaction?
      
  • Solutions continuum
    
    • Lose – Win / Win – Lose
      
    • Compromise
      
    • Mutual Understanding
      
    • Win-Lose / Lose – Win
      
    • Compromise on Issue
      
    • Synergy on Issue and in Relationship
      
  • Create commitment
    
    • Mission statements and strategic priorities that are developed in a rush by those at the top and then announced are forgotten. Without involvement or strong identification, there will be no commitment.
      
    • “Leadership is creating an environment in which people want to be part of the organization and not just work for the organization.” Horst Schulze, CEO of Ritz-Carlton
      
    • “The best way to inspire people to a superior performance is to convince them by everything you do and by your everyday attitude that you are wholeheartedly supporting them.” Harold S. Geenen, Former Chairman of ITT
      
    • Ask employees:
      
      • Do people clearly understand the organizational goals?
        
      • Are they committed?
        
  • Ensure alignment
    
    • Aligning requires constant vigilance
      
    • Ask ask ask your people: What do they think?
      
    • Best interview question: Starting with your earliest memory, what did you really like doing and do well?
      

• Execution
  
  • Six core drivers to execution
    
    • Clarity of Goals
      
    • Commitment to Goals
      
    • Translation – what does it mean to me; translating lofty goals into specific actions
      
    • Enable
      
    • Synergy – ensure people get along well
      
    • Accountability
      
  • People are naturally wired to focus on only one thing at a time (or at best very few) with excellence.
    
    • Focus on the wildly important
      
  • You must clarify your team’s top two or three “wildly important” goals and carefully craft them to be in alignment with the organization’s top priorities.
    
  • Yet, in a survey about goals, these were the results
    
    • 15% of people in an organization can identify the top goals and priorities
      
      • Unclear
        
      • Vastly under-communicated
        
    • 19% of people in an organization are passionate about the top goals and priorities
      
    • 49% of people’s time is spent on the top goals and priorities
      
    • 51% of people in an organization don’t understand what they need to do to achieve the top goals and priorities.
      
  • In a Harris poll, only 8% of workers systematically schedule their priorities
    
  • Good questions to ask: how much time do our people actually spend on key goals?
    
  • Try Triage reporting – everyone reports quickly on the vital few issues, leaving the less important issues for another time. Focus on the important issues not the urgent.