In Stephen Covey’s bestselling book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen discusses the following 7 habits:
- Be proactive. You are responsible for your life. Decide what you should do and get on with it.
- Begin with the end in mind. Think of how you want to be remembered at your funeral. Use this as a basis for your everyday behavior.
- Put first things first. Devote more time to what’s important but not necessarily urgent.
- Think win-win. Have an abundance mentality. Seek solutions that benefit all parties.
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Don’t dive into a conversation. Listen until you truly understand the other person.
- Synergize. Find ways to cooperate with everyone. Value the differences between people.
- Sharpen the saw. Continually exercise and renew four elements of your self: physical, mental, emotional/social, and spiritual.
Many of us have read this book and been inspired by its profound message. The question is, how many of the 7 habits have we integrated into our lives? Consider the following story from the post “Read any good books lately? So what?”, which illustrates the difficultly many people experience in applying some of the great leadership principles and practices into their lives.
“One of the best-selling business books of all time is Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. A colleague of mine recently told me about attending a workshop at which the presenter asked, "How many people here have read 7 Habits? Stand up if you’ve read the book."
More than half of the 100 people in attendance stood.
Then the presenter said, "If you can remember three of the seven habits, stay standing. If you can’t name at least three habits, sit down."
More than half of those standing sat down.
Then he said "If you can recite all seven habits, stay standing."
Only three people remained standing.
Finally, he said, "If you are living all seven habits in your life, remain standing."
The remaining three people sat down.
That event further illustrates the sad truth that we can read good books, but reading is not enough. If we want to incorporate what we read we need to seriously study the content.”
If you were asked the same questions, which group would you be a part of? The challenge to us as leaders as we learn is to apply what we are learning into our lives. Do you consciously seek to apply what you learn into your life?
Technorati Tags: Book, Learning, Growth, Stephen Covey, Habits, Principles, Leadership, Business, Management, Personal Development
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi,
I have read The 7 Habits back on 1988. For years I’ve worked on embedding those principals into my life. For several years I also lead The 7 Habits workshops in Israel.
This IS indeed a challenging thing to do. Maybe THE most challenging thing a leader should do.
I am working with Covey’s materials for 20 years, and feel I still at the beginning.
The key is Discipline! As Covey himself says: If you have a burning YES inside you (that is ‘the meaning’) - you will have the discipline to follow-through.
Good luck!
Ronen
(ISRAEL)
If you would like to implement some of Stephen Covey’s best ideas, you can use this web aplication:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage and prioritize your Goals (in each of your life’s categories), projects and tasks, in an intuitive interface. It has a Checklists section, for the repetitive activities you have to do, important but not urgent (Quadrant II, for example your routines/habits). Also, it features a Schedules section and a Calendar, for scheduling you time, activities and for the weekly review.
Some features from GTD are also present, like Contexts and Next Actions.
And it’s available on the mobile phone too, so you can access it wherever you are.
I’m in the group that could remember 3 (sharpen the saw, proactive, win-win)
While its true that much of the great content available is never entirely put into practice, I believe that is a testament to how difficult it actually is. Everyone has different factors in life and different interests so while we can agree those 7 habits are great, we won’t agree that they will pay off for each of us so they won’t all make it into practice. At least that is how I seem to be affected most by books.
I do always implement at least one thing from any book I read, but I pick and choose those based on many things. Even picking the easiest is still not easy.
Hi Mike,
I totally agree with your observation. It is indeed a statement of how difficult things may be to different people at different stages of their lives. This is why having a deep internal meaning for practice is absolutely needed in order to create the discipline for practice.
By the way, did you ever pay attention that the habits are all in a form of action-oriented phrase? Not only “proactive” but rather “Be proactive”, “Think win-win”, Put first things first”, Synergize” etc.
I do, by the way, can recommend a nice tool that will help people who care to practice and produce results. It’s called The 7 Habits Journal (or, you can get any type of empty note-book. Less inspiring, but does the trick). Also, I strongly recommend getting the audio book (or the regular version) of “Living the 7 Habits” which takes the reader deep onto practical path for embedding the 7 Habits,
All the best,
Ronen
(ISRAEL)
Practicing 7 habits needs discipline and that means hard work.
I wouldn’t say I am following 7 habits every single day/time. But yea, most of them are imbibed within me and I pull it out at most of the times.
That might be because I read the book multiple times in a year for 5 years and thought through how to follow it in daily life.
I first saw the benefit of ‘Be Proactive’. It was not easy to change the thinking style. It came with lot of mental work; but when it paid off, the mental challenge to follow other habits got little easier.
I do read lots of other books; however I go back to 7 habits every now and then to see if I could get one more point/concept/living benefit. So I can say this is the only book that I am really following in life; but I put that to use to a large extent. Since I see the benefit, it is not difficult to follow.