The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

by Stephen R. Covey

The popularity of reacting to the urgent but unimportant priorities of other people in Quadrant III or the pleasure of escaping to Quadrant IV will threaten to overpower the important Quadrant II activities you have planned.

Again, 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.

We accomplish all that we do through delegation—either to time or to other people. If we delegate to time, we think efficiency. If we delegate to other people, we think effectiveness.

But effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is.

DESIRED RESULTS. Create a clear, mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished, focusing on what, not how; results, not methods.

Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience, and it doesn’t preclude the necessity to train and develop people so that their competency can rise to the level of that trust.

You won’t make me “an offender for a word.”

Remember that quick fix is a mirage. Building and repairing relationships takes time.

Really seeking to understand another person is probably one of the most important deposits you can make, and it is the key to every other deposit.

My friend was asked on his return, “Do you like baseball that much?” “No,” he replied, “but I like my son that much.” ***

Our tendency is to project out of our own autobiographies what we think other people want or need. We project our intentions on the behavior of others.

Showing Personal Integrity

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.

Sincere apologies make deposits; repeated apologies interpreted as insincere make withdrawals. And the quality of the relationship reflects it.

I went through a mental dress rehearsal of the anticipated visit, and I finally became settled within myself around the principles rather than the practices of what I was going to do and say.

While courage may focus on getting the golden egg, consideration deals with the long-term welfare of the other stakeholders.

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

The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security.

One thing I have found particularly helpful to Win/Lose people in developing a Win/Win character is to associate with some model or mentor who really thinks Win/Win. When people are deeply scripted in Win/Lose

Desired results (not methods) identify what is to be

done and when. Guidelines specify the parameters (principles, policies, etc.) within which results are to be accomplished. Resources identify the human, financial, technical, or organizational support available to help accomplish the results. Accountability sets up the standards of performance and the time of evaluation. Consequences specify—good and bad, natural and logical—what does and will happen as a result of the evaluation.

The focus is on results, not methods. Most of us tend to supervise methods.

Management philosopher and consultant Peter Drucker recommends the use of a “manager’s letter” to capture the essence of performance agreements between managers and their employees. Following a deep and thorough discussion of expectations, guidelines and resources to make sure they are in harmony with organizational goals, the employee writes a letter to the manager that summarizes the discussion and indicates when the next performance plan or review discussion will take place.

There are basically four kinds of consequences (rewards and penalties) that management or parents can control—financial, psychic, opportunity, and responsibility.

You basically get what you reward. If you want to achieve the goals and reflect the values in your mission statement, then you need to align the reward system with these goals and values.

But cooperation in the workplace is as important to free enterprise as competition in the marketplace.

So often the problem is in the system, not in the people. If you put good people in bad systems, you get bad results. You have to water the flowers you want to grow.

In activities such as bowling, for example, they can keep a family score and try to beat a previous one.

Roger Fisher and William Ury, two Harvard law professors, have done some outstanding work in what they call the “principled” approach versus the “positional” approach to bargaining in their tremendously useful and insightful book, Getting to Yes.

And fourth, identify possible new options to achieve those results.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

Communications experts estimate, in fact, that only 10 percent of our communication is represented by the words we say. Another 30 percent is represented by our sounds, and 60 percent by our body language.

This is one of the greatest insights in the field of human motivation: Satisfied needs do not motivate.

That’s why Habits 1, 2, and 3 are so foundational. They give you the changeless inner core, the principle center, from which you can handle the more outward vulnerability with peace and strength.

The amateur salesman sells products; the professional sells solutions to needs and problems. It’s a totally different approach.

Constant probing is one of the main reasons parents do not get close to their children.

There are times when transformation requires no outside counsel. Often when people are really given the chance to open up, they unravel their own problems and the solutions become clear to them in the process.

The early Greeks had a magnificent philosophy which is embodied in three sequentially arranged words: ethos, pathos, and logos. I suggest these three words contain the essence of seeking first to understand and making effective presentations.

“That which is most personal is most general.”

a person of your intelligence and competence and commitment disagrees with me, then there must be something to your disagreement that I don’t understand, and I need to understand it. You have a perspective, a frame of reference I need to look at.”

Valuing the differences is the essence of synergy—the mental, the emotional, the psychological differences between people.

I could see his point. It’s the same principle that works with emotional muscles as well, such as patience. When you exercise your patience beyond your past limits, the emotional fiber is broken, nature overcompensates, and next time the fiber is stronger.

As he listened, he began to think of lessons the sea had taught him as a child—patience, respect, an awareness of the interdependence of things. He began to listen to the sounds—and the silence—and to feel a growing peace.

The great reformer Martin Luther is quoted as saying, “I have so much to do today, I’ll need to spend another hour on my knees.” To

I highly recommend starting with a goal of a book a month, then a book every two weeks, then a book a week. “The person who doesn’t read is no better off than the person who can’t read.”

It is said that wars are won in the general’s tent. 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.

words of Phillips Brooks: Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die.

“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.”

The Daily Private Victory—a minimum of one hour a day in renewal of the physical, spiritual, and mental dimensions—is the key to the development of the Seven Habits and it’s completely within your Circle of Influence.