7 habits of highly effective people

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE

This new level of thinking is what Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is about. It\'s a principle-centered, character-based, \"Inside-Out\" approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness. \"Inside-Out\" means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self -- with your paradigms, your character, and your motives.

It says 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 you want to be trusted, be trustworthy. If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.

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. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.

But shortly after World War I the basic view of success shifted from the character ethic to what we might call the personality ethic. Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques that lubricate the processes of human interaction. This personality ethic essentially took two paths: one was human and public relations techniques and the other was positive mental attitude (PMA).

This brings into focus one of the basic flaws of the personality ethic. To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which those attitudes and behaviors flow.

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are -- or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them. Sincere, clearheaded people see things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience.

The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.

The more closely our maps or paradigms are aligned with these principles or natural laws, the more accurate and functional they will be. Correct maps will infinitely impact our personal and interpersonal effectiveness far more than any amount of effort expended on changing our attitudes and behaviors.

Our level of development is fairly obvious with tennis or piano playing, where it is impossible to pretend. But it is not so obvious in the areas of character and emotional development. We can \"pose\" and \"put on\" for a stranger or an associate. We can pretend. And for a while we can get by with it -- at least in public.

Habits are powerful factors in our lives. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character and produce our effectiveness or ineffectiveness.

For our purposes, we will define a habit as 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. In order to make something a habit in our lives, we have to have all three.

Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own effort. Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.

Interdependence is a far more mature, more advanced concept. If I am physically interdependent, I am self-reliant and capable, but I also realize that you and I working together can accomplish far more than, even at my best, I could accomplish alone. If I am emotionally interdependent, I derive a great sense of worth within myself, but I also recognize the need for love, for giving, and for receiving love from others. If I am intellectually interdependent, I realize that I need the best thinking of other people to join with my own.

Dependent people cannot choose to become interdependent. They don\'t have the character to do it; they don\'t own enough of themselves.

That\'s why Habits 1, 2, and 3 move a person from dependence to independence. They are the \"Private Victories,\" the essence of character growth.

The habits

They are also habits of effectiveness because they are based on a paradigm of effectiveness that is in harmony with a natural law, a principle I call the \"P/PC Balance,\" which many people break themselves against. This principle can be easily understood by remembering Aesop\'s fable of the Goose and the Golden Egg

As the story shows, true effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden eggs) and the producing asset or capacity to produce (the goose).

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

In our quest for short-term returns, or results, we often ruin a prized physical asset -- a car, a computer, a washer or dryer, even our body or our environment. Keeping P and PC in balance makes a tremendous difference in the effective use of physical assets.

To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (Production) and the health and welfare of the goose (Production Capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness. It balances short term with long term.

Private Victory

Habit 1: Be Proactive -- Principles of Personal Vision

Between stimulus and response is our greatest power -- the freedom to choose.

Within the freedom to choose are those endowments that make us uniquely human. In addition to self-awareness, we have imagination -- the ability to create in our minds beyond our present reality. We have conscience -- a deep inner awareness of right and wrong, and a sense of the degree to which our thoughts and actions are in harmony with them. And we have independent will -- the ability to act based on our self-awareness, free of all other influences.

Proactivity defined

It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen. Look at the word responsibility -- \"response-ability\" -- the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.

Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn\'t a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values -- carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.

Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response. As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, \"No one can hurt you without your consent.\" In the words of Gandhi, \"They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.\" It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place.

The proactive approach is to change from the Inside-Out: to be different, and by being different, to effect positive change in what\'s out there -- I can be more resourceful, I can be more diligent, I can be more creative, I can be more cooperative.

While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions.

We can make a promise -- and keep it. Or we can set a goal -- and work to achieve it. As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

The application of \"Begin with the End in Mind\" is to begin today with the image, picture, or paradigm of the end of your life as your frame of reference or the criterion by which everything else is examined. Each part of your life -- today\'s behavior, tomorrow\'s behavior, next week\'s behavior, and next month\'s behavior -- can be examined in the context of the whole, of what really matters most to you. 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.

It\'s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it\'s leaning against the wrong wall. If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.

Personal mission statement

People can\'t live with change if there\'s not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value. With a mission statement, we can flow with changes. We don\'t need prejudgments or prejudices. We don\'t need to figure out everything else in life, to stereotype and categorize everything and everybody in order to accommodate reality

In order to write a personal mission statement, we must begin at the very center of our Circle of Influence, that center comprised of our most basic our paradigms, the lens through which we see the world.

It is here that we deal with our vision and our values. It is here that we use our endowment of self-awareness to examine our maps and, if we value correct principles, to make certain that our maps accurately describe the territory, that our paradigms are based on principles and reality

These four factors -- security, guidance, wisdom, and power -- are interdependent. Security and clear guidance bring true wisdom, and wisdom becomes the spark or catalyst to release and direct power. When these four factors are present together, harmonized and enlivened by each other, they create the great force of a noble personality, a balanced character, a beautifully integrated individual.

Principles don\'t react to anything. They won\'t divorce us or run away with our best friend. They aren\'t out to get us. They can\'t pave our way with shortcuts and quick fixes. They don\'t depend on the behavior of others, the environment, or the current fad for their validity. Principles don\'t die.

Frankl says we detect rather than invent our missions in life. I like that choice of words. I think each of us has an internal monitor or sense, a conscience that gives us an awareness of our own uniqueness and the singular contributions that we can make. In Frankl\'s words, \"Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone\'s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.

A mission statement is not something you write overnight. It takes deep introspection, careful analysis, thoughtful expression, and often many rewrites to produce it in final form. It may take you several weeks or even months before you feel really comfortable with it, before you feel it is a complete and concise expression of your innermost values and directions. Even then, you will want to review it regularly and make minor changes as the years bring additional insights or changing circumstances. But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Habit 3, then, is the second creation -- the physical creation. It\'s the fulfillment, the actualization, the natural emergence of Habits 1 and 2. It\'s the exercise of independent will toward becoming principle-centered. It\'s the day-in, day-out, moment-by-moment doing it.

The key is not to prioritize what\'s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. And this can best be done in the context of the week.

Quadrant I -- Important and Urgent -- crises, deadline-driven projects, and pressing problems\ Quadrant II -- Important and Not Urgent -- preparation, planning, and relationship building\ Quadrant III -- Not Important and Urgent -- interruptions, most phone calls and mail and reports\ Quadrant IV -- Not Important and Not Urgent -- trivia, busywork, time wasters, and escape activities

Quadrant II organizing involves four key activities.

1. Identifying Roles: The first task is to write down your key roles. If you haven\'t really given serious thought to the roles in your life, you can write down what immediately comes to mind. You have a role as an individual. You may want to list one or more roles as a family member -- a husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter, a member of the extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. You may want to list a few roles in your work, indicating different areas in which you wish to invest time and energy on a regular basis. You may have roles in church or community affairs. e.g.:

   1. Individual

   2. Husband/Father

   3. Manager New Products

   4. Chairman United Way

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1. Personal Development

2. Wife

3. Mother

4. Real Estate Salesperson

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1. Selecting Goals: The next step is to think of two or three important results you feel you should accomplish in each role during the next seven days. These would be recorded as goals. At least some of these goals should reflect Quadrant II activities. Ideally, these short-term goals would be tied to the longer-term goals you have identified in conjunction with your personal mission statement. But even if you haven\'t written your mission statement, you can get a feeling, a sense, of what is important as you consider each of your roles and two or three goals for each role.

2. Scheduling: Now you look at the week ahead with your goals in mind and schedule time to achieve them. For example, if your goal is to produce the first draft of your personal mission statement, you may want to set aside a two-hour block of time on Sunday to work on it. Sunday (or some other day of the week that is special to you, your faith, or your circumstances) is often the ideal time to plan your more personally uplifting activities, including weekly organizing. It\'s a good time to draw back, to see inspiration, to look at your life in the context of principles and values. If you set a goal to become physically fit through exercise, you may want to set aside an hour three or four days during the week, or possibly every day during the week, to accomplish that goal. There are some goals that you may only be able to accomplish during business hours, or some that you can only do on Saturday when your children are home. Can you begin to see some of the advantages of organizing the week instead of the day?

3. Daily Adapting: With Quadrant II weekly organizing, daily planning becomes more a function of daily adapting, or prioritizing activities and responding to unanticipated events, relationships, and experiences in a meaningful way. Taking a few minutes each morning to review your schedule can put you in touch with the value-based decisions you made as you organized the week as well as unanticipated factors that may have come up. As you overview the day, you can see that your roles and goals provide a natural prioritization that grows out of your innate sense of balance. It is a softer, more right-brain prioritization that ultimately comes out of your sense of personal mission.

You simply can\'t think efficiency with people. You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things. I\'ve tried to be \"efficient\" with a disagreeing or disagreeable person and it simply doesn\'t work. I\'ve tried to give 10 minutes of \"quality time\" to a child or an employee to solve a problem, only to discover such \"efficiency\" creates new problems and seldom resolves the deepest concern.

Delegation

Stewardship delegation involves clear, up-front mutual understanding and commitment regarding expectations in five areas.

1. Desired Results: Create a clear, mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished, focusing on what, not how; results, not methods. Spend time. Be patient. Visualize the desired result. Have the person see it, describe it, make out a quality statement of what the results will look like, and by when they will be accomplished.

2. Guidelines: Identify the parameters within which the individual should operate. These should be as few as possible to avoid methods delegation, but should include any formidable restrictions. You won\'t want a person to think he had considerable latitude as long as he accomplished the objectives. Point out the potential failure paths, what not to do, but don\'t tell them what to do. Keep the responsibility for results with them -- to do whatever is necessary within the guidelines.

3. Resources: Identify the human, financial, technical, or organizational resources the person can draw on to accomplish the desired results.

4. Accountability: Set up the standards of performance that will be used in evaluating the results and the specific times when reporting and evaluation will take place.

5. Consequences: Specify what will happen, both good and bad, as a result of the evaluation. This could include such things as financial rewards, psychic rewards, different job assignments, and natural consequences tied into the overall mission of an organization.

Public Victory

Integrity includes but goes beyond honesty. Honesty is telling the truth -- in other words, conforming our words to reality. Integrity is conforming reality to our words -- in other words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations. This requires an integrated character, a oneness, primarily with self but also with life. One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build the trust of those who are present. When you defend those who are absent, you retain the trust of those present.

Habit 4: Think Win-Win -- Principles of Interpersonal Leadership

Win-win is not a technique; it\'s a total philosophy of human interaction. In fact, it is one of six paradigms of interaction. The alternative paradigms are win-lose, lose-win, lose-lose, win, and Win-Win or No Deal

Win-win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win-win means that agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial, mutually satisfying. With a win-win solution, all parties feel good about the decision and feel committed to the action plan. Win-win sees life as a cooperative, not a competitive arena. Most people tend to think in terms of dichotomies: strong or weak, hardball or softball, win or lose. But that kind of thinking if fundamentally flawed. It\'s based on power and position rather than on principle. Win-win is based on the paradigm that there is plenty for everybody, that one person\'s success is not achieved at the expense or exclusion of the success of others.

No deal basically means that if we can\'t find a solution that would benefit us both, we agree to disagree agreeably -- no deal. It is so much better to realize this up front instead of downstream when expectations have been created and both parties have been disillusioned. If you can\'t reach a true win-win, you\'re very often better off to go for no deal.

If family members can\'t agree on a video that everyone will enjoy, they can simply decide to do something else -- no deal -- rather than having some enjoy the evening at the expense of others.

In my own work with various people and organizations seeking win-win solutions, I suggest that they become involved in the following four-step process:

1. See the problem from the other point of view. Really seek to understand and give expression to the needs and concerns of the other party as well as or better than they can themselves.

2. Identify the key issues and concerns (not positions) involved.

3. Determine what results would constitute a fully acceptable solution.

4. Identify possible new options to achieve those results.

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. \"Oh, I know exactly how you feel!\" \"I went through the very same thing. Let me tell you about my experience.\" They\'re constantly projecting their own home movies onto other people\'s behavior. They prescribe their own glasses for everyone with whom they interact.

Emphatic listening

When I say empathic listening, I am not referring to the techniques of \"active\" listening or \"reflective\" listening, which basically involve mimicking what another person says. That kind of listening is skill-based, truncated from character and relationship, and often insults those \"listened\" to in such a way. You listen with reflective skills, but you listen with intent to reply, to control, to manipulate. When I say empathic listening, I mean listening with intent to understand. I mean seeking first to understand, to really understand. It\'s an entirely different paradigm.

Empathic (from empathy) listening gets inside another person\'s frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel.

Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is a form of agreement, a form of judgment. And it is sometimes the more appropriate emotion and response. But people often feed on sympathy. It makes them dependent. The essence of empathic listening is not that you agree with someone; it\'s that you fully, deeply, understand that person, emotionally as well as intellectually.

In empathic listening, you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with your eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behavior. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel. Empathic listening is so powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. Instead of projecting your own autobiography and assuming thought, feelings, motives, and interpretation, you\'re dealing with the reality inside another person\'s head and heart. You\'re listening to understand. You\'re focused on receiving the deep communication of another human soul.

You will never be able to truly step inside another person, to see the world as he sees it, until you develop the pure desire, the strength of personal character, and the positive Emotional Bank Account, as well as the empathic listening skills to do it.

Habit 6: Synergize

When properly understood, synergy is the highest activity in all life -- the true test and manifestation of all the other habits put together. The highest forms of synergy focus the four unique human endowments, the motive of win-win, and the skills of empathic communication on the toughest challenges we face in life. What results is almost miraculous. We create new alternatives -- something that wasn\'t there before.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw - Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal

Habit 7 is personal PC. It\'s preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have -- you. It\'s renewing the four dimensions of your nature -- physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional. Although different words are used, most philosophies of life deal either explicitly or implicitly with these four dimensions. Philosopher Herb Shepherd describes the healthy balanced life around four values: perspective (spiritual), autonomy (mental), connectedness (social), and tone (physical). George Sheehan, the running guru, describes four roles: being a good animal (physical), a good craftsman (mental), a good friend (social), and a saint (spiritual). Sound motivation and organization theory embrace these four dimensions or motivations -- the economic (physical); how people are treated (social); how people are developed and used (mental); and the service, the job, the contribution the organization gives (spiritual). \"Sharpen the Saw\" basically means expressing all four motivations. It means exercising all four dimensions of our nature, regularly and consistently, in wise and balanced ways.