The Habits of Highly Effective People

Habit Results of Practicing the Habit

1. Be Proactive Fosters courage to take risks accept new challenges

and proactively move things forward in a positive way

2. Begin with the End Brings projects to completion and unites teams and
in Mind organizations under a shared vision, mission, and
purpose - fosters realistic goal-setting

3. Put First Things Promotes getting the most important things done first
First and encourages effectiveness

4. Think Win-Win Encourages conflict resolution and helps individuals

seek mutual benefit, increasing group momentum

5. Seek First to Helps people understand problems, resulting in

Understand, Then targeted solutions; and promotes better
to Be Understood communications, leading to successful problem-
solving

6. Synergize Ensures greater "buy-in" from team members and

leverages the diversity of individuals to produce even
higher levels of success

7. Sharpen the Saw Promotes continuous improvements and safeguards

against "burn-out" and subsequent non-productivity

Ref: The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic - Stephen R.
Covey, Simon and Schuster, 1989.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People 1

Paradigms:
A paradigm is a model of the way we “see” the world – in terms of perceiving,
understanding, and interpreting.

A paradigm can be compared to a map. Improving behaviour, doubling your

effort, or thinking more positively would have no effect if you were given a map
of London and asked to find an address in Birmingham. The frustration you
would face would have nothing to do with behaviour or attitude: it would simply
arise out of having the wrong map!

When principles – fundamental values, like fairness, integrity, human dignity

and service – are internalised into habits, they empower people to formulate a
wide variety of practices to deal with different situations. This involves
developing an “inside-out” paradigm – maps and models generated of both the
way things are and the way we want them to be – then following the maps and
living the models.

We cannot change all situations, but we can change ourselves – inside-out.

The inside-out, upward spiral and self-renewal concepts of the seven Habits
revolve around becoming more self-aware. Only by knowing ourselves can we
choose high purposes and principles to live by and find similar unity in our
relationships with others.

Developing the seven habits won’t eliminate mistakes from our lives but will
make us more able people. To quote Emerson: “That which we persist in doing
becomes easier – not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to
do has increased.” And habits centred on correct principles can increase our
ability to live peaceful, harmonised, loving, effective lives.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People 2

Habit 1: Be Proactive – The ‘Initiative’ Ethic

“Give me the courage to change the things

which can and ought to be changed,
the serenity to accept the things that cannot be changed,
and the wisdom to know the difference”

Four main characteristics separate humans from animal:

1. Imagination
2. Conscience
3. Independent Will
4. Self-awareness.

In humans there is an interval between stimulus and response; we have the

freedom to choose, not just react. Being proactive means making this conscious
“choice to choose”; being responsible for our own lives; taking the initiative;
acting instead of being acted upon. Proactivity empowers us to create
circumstances.

Responsibility = Response + Ability

Here’s a story about four people named;

Everybody Somebody Anybody and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that
Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.
Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Everybody
wouldn't do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody
when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

In summary: between stimulus and response in human beings lies the power to
choose. Proactivity, then, means that we are solely responsible for what
happens in our lives. There is no point blaming anyone or anything else!

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Effective people truly lead their lives. Instead of saying, “It’s hopeless,” they say,
“Let’s look at the alternatives.” Instead of, “If only…” they say “I will.”

“Do what you can, with what you have, right now,
and don’t worry about tomorrow”
-Brian Tracy

“Never complain, never explain”

-Henry Ford

The phrases of a responsible person include:

“I am responsible” and “If it’s to be it’s up to me”

There is a direct and positive relationship between the amounts of:

• Personal Responsibility we choose to accept
• Control we feel we have over situations, ourselves and our lives
• Success that we enjoy… and therefore
• Happiness we experience

“We” Inter-Dependence

“Me Independence

“You” Dependence

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People 4

Dependence is reactive and disempowered. It is characterised by an
atmosphere of:
• Blame
• Fear
• Avoidance of responsibility.

Personal Responsibility & Success:

• Every time we make a decision to accept Personal Responsibility we move
up the performance/success graph.
• Every time we decide to blame or make excuses we move down.

P
E
R Success
S
O
N
A
L

R
E
S
P
O
N
S
I
B
I
L
I
T
Y

TIME

If we don’t like things the way they are it’s up to us to change them.

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Covey’s Circles
Each of us possesses a circle of concern, which includes our state of health,
our children, problems at work, the national debt, nuclear war… It is apparent
that we have a great deal of control over some of these concerns and very little,
if any influence over others.

The events we do have control over constitute our circle of influence.

Proactive people focus their time and energy on their circle of influence – those
things they can do something about.

Out of Our
Circle of Concern

Circle of

Circle of
Control

Influence

Concern

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Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind – The
‘Creativity’ Ethic
All successful endeavours are created twice. First there’s a mental or spiritual
creation, and secondly a physical creation to all things. For example, if you were
going to build a home, you wouldn’t simply start hammering away. You would
look at your budget, carefully plan what you wanted in the house, make a
blueprint, and then develop construction plans.

Effective leaders envision what they want and how to get it. They habitually pick
priorities stemming from their basic values.

In our personal lives, if we do not develop self-awareness and become

responsible for our own “first creations”, we empower other people and
circumstances to shape our lives by default. Living “by default”, we merely react
to the scripts given to us by our family, associates, et al.

Imagine your funeral and listen to what you would like the readers to say about
you. This should reveal exactly what matters most to you in your life. You can
use this as a frame of reference to make all your day-to-day decisions so that
you are working toward your most meaningful life goals.

Goals give your life, and the way you spend your time, direction.
When asked the secret to amassing such a fortune, one of the
famous Hunt brothers from Texas replied: "First you've got to
decide what you want." Set goals that are specific, measurable,
realistic and achievable. Your optimum goals are those which
cause you to "stretch" but not "break" as you strive for
achievement.

Questions to help direct personal goal setting:

• What do you regret not having done so far in your life?

• What do you wish for?
• What do your friends tell you that you ought to try?
• If you had more free time, to what would you devote it?
• Which activities give you greatest pleasure?
• At the end of your last holiday, what sort of hopes for the future did you
have?
• Which of your responsibilities has the greatest positive impact to enhance
your career?
•

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 Habit 3: Put First Things First – The
‘Productivity’ Ethic

To manage our lives effectively, we must keep our mission

in mind, understand what's important as well as urgent, and
maintain a balance between what we produce each day
and our ability to produce in the future. Think of the former
as putting out fires and the latter as personal development.

The Urgent/Important Priority Matrix separates activities into four quadrants:

• Prevention • Immediately productive

• Seizing Opportunities activities
• Preparation • Problems
• Planning • Crises
• Relationship Building • Productive Meetings
• True re-creation • Deadlines
• Productive meetings
Importance
Importance

Q2 Q1

Q4 Q3
• Trivia • Interruptions
• ‘Busy’ work • Some telephone calls
• Some mail • Mail
• Some phone calls • Some reports
• Time wasters (people) • Non-productive meetings
• Many pleasant activities • Pressing matters
• Many popular activities

Urgency

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Quadrant 1 includes tasks that are urgent and important –crises, pressing
problems, deadline driven projects. We react quickly to urgent matters.
However, if we focus on Q1, the “urgent” list tends to grow bigger and bigger
and we seem to go from one crises to the next.

Quadrant 3 includes matters that are urgent but not important –some
interruptions, phone calls and meetings. Many people spend much of their time
reacting to things they deem urgent, assuming that they are also important.

Quadrant 4 consists of activities that are not urgent and not important such as
busy work and some recreation (not relationships & exercise –see Habit 7).
These could be thought of as the “escape” portions of our lives.

Quadrant 2 is at the heart of effective personal management. It deals with

concerns that are important but not urgent – building relationships, long-range
planning, exercising… things we know we should do but seldom get around to
actually doing. “Important matters that are not urgent require more initiative,
more proactivity. We must act to seize opportunity, to make things happen.” We
become Q2 people by learning to say “No” by defining our roles in life, and by
deciding what we want to accomplish in each of those roles.

Urgent Not Urgent

What tends to happen:

Important Priority 1 Priority 3

Not Never
Important Priority 2
gets done

Urgent Not Urgent

What should happen:

Important Priority 1 Priority 2

Not Never
Important Priority 3
gets done
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Habit 4: Think Win/Win – The ‘Interdependence’
Ethic
Stephen Covey describes Win/Win thinking as a frame of mind that constantly
seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions – agreements or solutions that
are satisfying to all involved.

“Every kind of co-operation between men is primarily

based upon mutual trust”

- Albert Einstein

Most people are inclined to think in terms of competitive dichotomies:

• Strong v Weak
• Winning v Losing
• Tough v Nice

But Win/Win thinking centres on the paradigm that there is plenty for everybody,
and that one person’s success is not achieved at the expense or exclusion of
another person.

Win/Win is tough and nice, courageous and empathetic, brave and sensitive. To
do that, to achieve a balance between courage and consideration, is the
essence of real maturity and is fundamental to Win/Win.

Win/Lose Win/Win
COURAGE

Lose/Lose Lose/Win

CONSIDERATION

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People 10

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, then to be
Understood – The ‘Empathy’ Ethic
Most people don't listen. Not really. They listen long enough to devise a solution
to the speaker's problem or a rejoinder to what's being said. Then they dive into
the conversation. You'll be more effective in your relationships with people if you
sincerely try to understand them fully before you try to make them understand
your point of view.

Stephen Covey’s Fifth Habit involves fostering the habit of empathic listening –
making deposits in the other person’s “emotional bank account” by sincere
validation and appreciation.

Suppose you’ve been having trouble with your eyes and you go to the optician.
After listening to your complaint, he takes off his glasses and hands them to
you:

“I’ve worn these glasses for years now and they’ve

really helped me.
I have an extra pair at home; you can wear these.”

Would you thank him for his generosity?

In the communication process, how often do we prescribe before we diagnose?

We have a tendency to rush in, to fix things up with “good advice”, but without
deep understanding.

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Habit 6: Synergize – Valuing Differences

”Synergy” implies that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

In practice, this means you must use "creative co-operation" in

social interactions. Value differences because it is often the clash
between them that leads to creative solutions.

Levels of Communication
High

Synergistic (Win/Win)
TRUST

Respectful (Compromise)

Defensive (Win/Lose or Lose Win)

Low

Low High
CO-OPERATION

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Synergistic Communication begins with the assumption that cooperating
individuals will share insights and open their minds and hearts. Then, if the
opinions of all parties are valued, momentum will build and new alternatives will
emerge where there were only roadblocks before.

The lowest level of communication coming out of low trust

situations would be characterised by defensiveness,
protectiveness, and often legalistic language, which covers all
the bases and spells out qualifiers and the escape clauses in
the event of things going sour. Such communication produces
only Win/Lose or Lose/Lose.

The middle position is respectful communication. This is the level where fairly
mature people interact. They have respect for each other, but they want to
avoid the possibility of ugly confrontations, so they communicate politely but not
empathically. They might understand each other intellectually, but they really
don’t deeply look at the paradigms and assumptions underlying their own
positions and become open to new possibilities.

Respectful communication works in dependent situations and even in inter-

dependent situations, but the creative possibilities are not opened up. In inter-
dependent situations compromise is the position usually taken.

Compromise means that 1 + 1 = 1½. Both give and take. The

communication isn’t defensive or protective or angry or
manipulative; it is honest and genuine and respectful. But it isn’t
creative or synergistic. It produces a low form of Win/Win.
(cf: Thomas-Killman’s Conflict Handling Model)

Synergy means that 1 + 1 may equal 8, 16 or even 1600! The synergistic

position of high trust produces solutions better than any originally proposed, and
all parties know it. Furthermore, they genuinely enjoy the creative enterprise.

Seeking the “3rd alternative” is a major paradigm shift from the dichotomous
either/or mentality. When you communicate synergistically, you are simply
opening your mind and heart and expressions to new possibilities, new
alternatives, new options. You’re not sure how things will work out or what the
end will look like, but you have an inward sense of excitement and security and
adventure, believing that things will be better than they were before. In this way
you fulfil your Habit 2 generated “end in mind”.

Valuing differences is the essence of synergy – the

mental, 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 become aware of a
difference in perceptions between you and another say:
“Good! You see it differently! Help me to see what you
see.” This will create the environment for synergy!

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Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw – The Habit of ‘Self
Renewal’

Habit 7 entails preserving, renewing and enhancing the greatest

asset you have – you. It enables you to move on an upward spiral of
growth.

There are four elements:

Involves caring effectively for your Embraces Habits 4, 5 and 6 which

body – eating the right foods, centre on the principles of
getting sufficient rest, relaxation and interpersonal leadership, empathic
exercise. communication, and creative co-
operation. This dimension is
developed through service to others
and self-discipline.

Physical Social/Emotional
Dimension Dimension
Exercise, Service, Empathy,
Nutrition, Stress Synergy, Intrinsic
Management Security

Reading, Value Clarification

Visualising, & Commitment,
Planning, Writing Spiritual Study & Meditation
Mental
Dimension Dimension

Gives direction to your life. Find inner

Is central to life-long development.
Education is a vital source of
mental rejuvenation.
Sometimes it requires the external
discipline of the classroom or a
systemised home study program;
often it does not
peace through daily prayer,
meditation, reading from scripture,
communing with nature, or habitually
immersing yourself in great literature
or music. Get up early (“mind over
mattress”) and live in harmony with
the “still small voice” within you.

Formulate a personal program to keep in balance the four dimensions of your

nature – physical, spiritual, mental and social/emotional. To do this, again begin
with Habit 1 – be proactive. Taking the time to regularly “sharpen the saw” is
definitely a ‘Quadrant 2’ activity!

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