By Tim Grubb, posted 8/17/10
One book I’ve been very impressed with lately is one that’s been around for quite awhile. It is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey. It was first published back in 1990, but it continues to be a business bestseller with over 10 million copies sold.
We had this book on our shelf for years, but more recently my wife saw this title in someone’s list of recommended books somewhere. She started reading it and was so impressed with it she encouraged me to read it.
The biggest reason I like this book is that I’ve seen very good results in my own marriage since we started applying the principles we learned in this book. This benefit alone pays for the price of the book many times over (though in my case I think the book was given to me).
The Message
The message of this book is change from the inside out. It contrasts the Character Ethic, our primary characteristics such as integrity, courage, justice, patience, etc., with the Personality Ethic, secondary characteristics such as personality traits, skills, techniques, maintaining a positive attitude, etc. While much of the success literature of the second half of the 20th century focused on the Personality Ethic, the literature for the prior 150 years focused on the Character Ethic.
Personality Ethic traits help us succeed in specific tasks and circumstances, but to succeed in the long run, both Personality and Character Ethic traits are necessary.
Covey gives the following example to show the difference between the Personality and Character Ethics. If you are in Chicago and are using a map to find a location in the city, you might have all the necessary map reading skills, but it you have a map of Detroit instead of Chicago it will not help you get to your destination in Chicago. The map is an example of a primary trait, and the map reading abilities are a secondary trait. So you have to have the primary traits (the right map) in order to effectively use the secondary traits (map reading ability).
Changing outward behavior does not have lasting results unless the underlying paradigms are changed as well. Covey gives another example involving two groups of people. One group is shown a drawing of a beautiful young woman, and the other group is shown a drawing of an old, decrepit woman. After seeing the drawing, both groups are shown a more abstract drawing that combines the elements of the previous drawings. Practically without fail the group that was originally shown the young woman sees a young woman in the abstract drawing, and the group that was shown the old woman sees an old woman in the abstract drawing. Each group saw the drawing as they were conditioned to see it, not as it actually was. To change our lives we need to recognize the effect our past conditioning has on the way we see things. After having this paradigm shift in the way we see things, we can work on adjusting our underlying paradigms to make the changes in our life that we desire.
The Character Ethic presupposes that there are basic, absolute principles that are true for everyone everywhere. Some examples of these are fairness, honesty, integrity, human dignity, quality, potential, and growth.
So change begins within us according to The 7 Habits. Effectiveness is built upon the foundation of principles and character. The individual needs to experience a paradigm shift away from the Personality Ethic toward the Character Ethic.
Overview of The 7 Habits
Our character consists largely of our habits, and our habits have a central function in our lives. Knowledge, skill, and desire are the components of our habits. Knowledge shows us what to do, skill is the ability to do it, and desire is the motivation to accomplish it.
The 7 Habits move us through these stages:
1) Dependence – We depend on others to meet our needs and take care of us.
2) Independence – We learn to take responsibility for our own lives and take care of ourselves.
3) Interdependence – We work together with others to achieve much more than we could individually.
Today a lot of the literature in the success genre focuses on independence. But the truth of the matter is that we are not independent but interdependent, and we can achieve the best results and be most effective when we learn to live our lives according to the principles of interdependence.
On the path toward becoming interdependent we have to learn first to be independent. Dependent people do not have the character yet to be interdependent. They must learn to be independent, and then they can move on to interdependence.
The first three habits are the Self Mastery habits and deal with moving from Dependence to Independence:
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Change begins within. Highly effective people choose to improve their lives by changing the things that are within their control and not just reacting to outside things that are beyond their control.
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Formulate a personal mission statement based on your core principles and values. Then use that mission statement to develop long-range goals.
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Evaluate and prioritize the things you do according to how they fit into your personal mission statement. Keep in mind the balance between doing things (production) and developing the capability to do more and better things (production capacity). Determine the roles and functions in your life that should receive priority, and make sure you devote adequate time and attention to each of them.
The next three are the Interdependence habits:
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Make choices and enter into relationships that are good for all the parties involved. If a “win/win” is not possible, then realize that the best course may be to stop and proceed no further. In the business world or within an organizational environment, make it your objective to positively reinforce employees or members who are taking the win/win approach, and refrain from unintentionally reinforcing win/lose choices and actions.
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Make sure you fully hear out the other person first and understand where they are coming from and what they are trying to say. Then seek to have them understand you. Covey says this habit is the one to be given top priority when relating to other people. You shouldn’t just repeat what the other person has said through your own interpretive framework, but you should put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Try to understand what they are feeling as well as the meaning of what they are saying.
Habit 6: Synergize
Using effective communication skills, seek to combine the individual personalities and unique strengths and abilities of each person to build something that together is much more than just the totaled sum of all the individual components. Better solutions to problems and conflicts can be achieved when all the parties work together to contribute to the solution rather than simply implementing any one party’s solution.
The last habit is the Self-Rejuvenation or Renewal habit:
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
Be sure to take breaks from production periodically to work on increasing production capacity. This renewal needs to be accomplished in all areas of our life—physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual. Then continue to keep these various areas in balance.
To illustrate this principle, Covey uses the fable of the goose and the golden egg. This is one of my favorite take-aways from this book, and it is an analogy that sticks in my mind sometimes when thinking of different situations and relationships in my own life.
A poor farmer has a goose that begins laying a golden egg every day. The farmer becomes rich. He also becomes greedy and impatient and thinks the goose must be filled with golden eggs. So he kills the goose to get all the golden eggs right away without having to wait. But after cutting the goose open he doesn’t find any golden eggs, and now he has killed the goose so no more golden eggs are produced. What we learn from this is that if we attempt to max out production in the short term with no thought as to how it will affect ongoing long-term production, we can destroy the capacity to produce. Ongoing effectiveness is the result of both production and production capability.
A balance between production and production capacity is necessary in relation to physical, financial and human resources. For example, in a company the operator of a certain machine may boost the short-term production of that machine by putting off the periodic maintenance. This increased production may earn the machine operator a promotion. But the increased short-term production results in a decrease in production down the road when additional maintenance is necessary. Whoever moves into the promoted person’s position may even be held at fault for the lost production time and higher maintenance cost resulting from the delayed maintenance.
Another important asset affected by the production and production capacity balance is customer loyalty. A restaurant may have earned an excellent name for its delicious food, but if the owner gets greedy and starts skimping on the food quality, he may make a lot more money in the short term. But soon people will figure out that the quality of the food has gone down and will stop frequenting the restaurant. Customer loyalty as well as profitability will be negatively impacted in the long run.
This is not to say that only production capability is necessary. Production capability without production is useless. To maximize your personal effectiveness, you have to find the right balance between the two.
Closing Thoughts
In sum, I highly recommend this book for your self-development and business development reading. Add it to your library so you can read it again later. It’s great for periodically re-examining how you are prioritizing things in your life and whether you are devoting the right amount of time to these things in line with their importance and in line with their relevance to your personal mission statement and your long range goals. It can provide a valuable tune-up for maximizing your effectiveness in all the various roles you have in your life. It is a tool to help reestablish the proper balance in your life.
And you may even get a bonus out of it like I got—an improved marriage.
