First Things First

by Stephen R. Covey

Roger asked each of the children to write three words on a piece of paper: continue, stop, and start. Then he said, “What are the things I’m now doing you’d like to see me continue to do? What would you like to see me stop doing? What would you like to see me start doing that I’m not doing now?” I had to admit I admired his courage.

It’s not only been personally helpful; it’s also given the children a sense of participation and investment in creating the kind of family we want to be.

As soon as you receive feedback, it’s good to carefully analyze it and then go back to those who gave it and say, “Thank you. I appreciate this feedback. Let me share it with you. This is what you’re saying to me.” Feed it back to them and then involve them in creating an action plan based on that feedback. As you do this, you become a change catalyst. You model change, and when people around you see that happen, they become open to your change and to their own as well.

Feedback can be anonymous or face-to- face.

Feedback should be given against performance and effectiveness criteria—not character criteria.

The point here is not that leadership is more important than production or management; all three were critical to this company’s success.

Weekly organizing encourages leadership with vision and perspective.

Daily planning, on the other hand, increases the need for management because so much time is spent prioritizing crises.

Good feedback given early in a project can make a significant positive di...

The more we work with organizations, the more convinced we become that this 360 degree feedback from all stakeholders—customers, suppliers, employees, affiliates, vendors, investors, community, self— has a powerful impact on quality.

We create shared vision. We strengthen, coach, and mentor to help develop the capacities of individuals and teams. We build relationships of trust. We do long-range planning, scan horizons, look at stakeholders’ needs, study the trends of the market, work on systems, create alignment.

In other words, we spend time doing the important, non-urgent Quadrant II activities that make the significant difference.

But when the conditions of empowerment are in place, servant leadership creates powerful results.

So what happened was that my conscience, not this man, became the dominant force. He had other areas of responsibility. He would leave me and go on to do other things, but my conscience never would. It was always with me.

Shortly after that I went to work with another supervisor who was a very fine person as well, but very controlling. And I eventually found how easy it was to just do what he told me to do. But there was no creative opportunity, no learning opportunity. I felt totally disempowered. So I found most of my satisfactions off the job, not on the job.

When someone comes to you with a problem, ask him or her, “What do you recommend?” Don’t be quick to solve problems that people can and should solve for themselves. Encourage them to use their creativity to find newer, better ways to do things.

I discovered that being a leader servant was a lot tougher—at least the first time—than being a controlling leader. But the rewards were so much greater!

“Accomplishing tasks through people” is a different paradigm than “building people through the accomplishment of tasks.”

Seek to understand. Talk it over. Agree on desired results.

In the same way, you can go through each of the five elements of win-win.

This may take weeks, even months.

The agreement will give you—and your boss— a standard to measure against.

In almost every situation, if you build your skills and capacities and work within your Circle of Influence, you can change people’s paradigms of you and your job over time. If you don’t have a clear vision of what you want to do in your job and a willingness to pay the price to create change, it’s easy to disempower yourself, to get into blaming and accusing.

The key is to stay empowered, to realize that you can make the choice to try to change the paradigm or to change the situation.

Depending on your Circle of Influence and the trust you have with others, your efforts to change the system may spread to affect the entire organization. If you’re patient and persistent, and you operate in harmony with correct principles, the positive change you create may benefit everyone.

There was such a high sense of trust in the culture because of the openness of the senior executives in involving people in the problem and working out the solution together.

If you find yourself afraid to act authentically, to speak courageously, to challenge the assumptions, you’re doing a disservice to yourself and your organization.

Examine your fears, and free yourself so that you can be—and give—your best.

Success is always inside out.

It’s our experience that most people are not intentionally incompetent. Neither are they purposefully mean, duplicitous, or manipulative. They just don’t have their act together . . . yet.

Your deeply held beliefs about someone will create the tone for any interactions you have.

Make sure your paradigms are true ...

It’s important to realize that we are not ultimately responsible for the development of anyone else. We can never really change someone; people must change themselves. But we can help.

Deal with the realities.

Don’t set yourself up as the judge and jury. Be a source of help.

They must know that you have no secret delight in telling them what they really need to hear.

It may take a long time to build the trust you want.

Working in an environment of mistrust is a drain on you and on the organization.

The fact that people aren’t perfect shouldn’t hold back your efforts to create a high-trust environment.

Trusting people to be creative and constructive when given more freedom does not imply an overly optimistic belief in the perfectability of human nature, it is rather a belief that the inevitable errors and sins of the human condition are far better overcome by individuals working together in an environment of trust, freedom, and mutual respect than by individuals working under a multitude of rules, regulations, and restraints imposed upon them by another group of imperfect people.

It’s not a win for the organization if people are afraid to take risks, if they’re constantly scared of getting shot out of the saddle. People are not truly self-governing unless they are free to fail.

They know what it means to pay the price to prepare the ground, to plant the seed, and to fertilize and cultivate and water and weed, even when they can’t see immediate results, because they have faith that ultimately they will reap the fruits in the harvest.

Only by acting in harmony with correct principles, exercising patience, humility, and courage, and working within your Circle of Influence can you transform yourself and positively influence your organization.

Principle-centered living is not an end in itself. It’s the means and the end.

In a principle-centered life, the journey and the destination are one.

But don’t get caught in the example; look for the principle in practice.

Rather than activities and appointments, you see your day in terms of people and relationships.

Involve people in the problem; work out the solution together.

We sometimes fail to think of our role in the family as a leadership role, but what an opportunity for impact!

One of the greatest legacies we can leave our children is a sense of purpose and responsibility to correct principles.