7 Habits of Highly Effective People

In my last post A Commitment to Time Management, I mentioned I was re-reading the Stephen Covey book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and I would publish summaries as I went along. Well, today is the first of what will probably be a series of 8 or 9 posts about Covey’s model for becoming highly effective.

The book written by Stephen Covey “The 7 habits of highly Effective People” has sold over 15 million copies and has become a absolute classic in the area of time management.

However, from what I have read on the web and see around me very few people have actually managed to adopt those 7 habits.

Why?

I expect that’s because the 7 habits as defined by Covey are not quick and easy cheats. Every single habit will for most of us require fundamental changes to who we are, how we think and how we behave. That takes time and it seems many people simply don’t want to or can’t commit to such a change. Especially not in this dage and age of instant everything.

So, don’t be fooled. The 7 Habits is not something you read on a rainy afternoon and then put in practice the next morning when you’re back in the office.

This is pretty hard stuff.

The 7 Habits which Stephen Covey puts forward are:

• Habit 1: Be Proactive
• Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
• Habit 3: Put First Things First
• Habit 4: Think Win/Win
• Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
• Habit 6: Synergize
• Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

But before Covey goes in to the description of these and how they fit within his model of Dependence – Independence – Interdependence he outlines a number of basic principles or paradigms in his book. Some of which are so essential to his thinking that I will explain them here before describing his overall model.

The Principles behind the 7 Habits

The key principle is that of “Inside-Out”. It’s in my view a beautiful principle, true, but not easy to live up to. Basically with Inside-Out Covey is saying that to bring about change or to obtain what you want, you need to start with yourself first; and even more fundamentally you need to start with the most inside part of yourself.

That means your values, your beliefs, your character and your motives.

Covey goes on to say that:

“if you want to have a happy marriage, be the kind of person who generates positive energy and sidesteps negative energy rather than empowering it. If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee. If yo want to be trusted, be trustworthy.”

So no instant gratification, no “I want it all and I want it now” to quote Freddy Mercury. If you want something you need to earn it.

Covey backs his views up by his study of success literature published in the United States since 1776. He breaks this period up into two phases. The first 150 or so years from 1776 up to World War I the success literature was in focused on what Covey refers to as the Character Ethic.

The Character Ethic suggests that there are basic principles of effective living and people can only achieve true success and lasting happiness if these basic principles are embedded in their character. These principles include integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty and the Golden Rule (treat others the way you want to be treated).

Covey finds that post World War I the view on achieving success shifts from the Character Ethic to what he calls the Personality Ethic which Covey sees as a combination of quick-fix influence techniques, power strategies, communication skills and positive attitudes. The problem is, eventually you would be discovered as insincere and shallow.

Know anybody who fits this profile? I certainly do.
 

You can use and in fact need to use the techniques addressed by the modern day Personality Ethic, but for your success to last you need to build upon a basic foundation and that is the Character Ethic.

In Covey’s view our character is a composite of our habits. Changing habits is hard, but can be done by tremendous commitment.

Covey defines habits as knowing what to do, knowing how to do it (or the skill), and actually doing it (desire is the motivation – or the wanting to do).

To Covey, the Seven Habits supplement the personal development of an individual from being a dependent infant or child to becoming and independent adult. But he argues that despite modern day mental models the journey shouldn’t stop there. We should all move up to interdependence because we can all achieve much more through cooperation and specialisation. However we must first achieve independence before we can choose interdependence.

When you look at Covey’s model for his 7 habits it will hopefully make much more sense:

We all start with the basic foundation of dependence. The first three habits of being proactive, beginning with the end in mind and putting first things first will help us to achieve private victories. We will become better people. And once truly embedded we will have achieved independence.

The next step are habits 4, 5 and 6 being thinking win/win, seeking first to understand then to be understood and to synergize. Practising those habits will allow us to book our first public victories and eventually will lead us to interdependence.

The final habit, sharpen the saw, is all about continuously improving.

 
 

Becoming Effective

In the 7 Habits effective individuals win two victories in life: a Private Victory when they learn self-mastery and self-discipline, and a Public Victory when they build deep and enduring relationships with others. As they practice the 7 Habits, they move from being dependent on others to independence and finally to interdependence, where they reap the rewards of superb cooperation and collaboration.

Next post will look at Habit 1: Be Proactive.