The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey - Book Report/Review Example

Leadership and Responsibility 1 Leadership and Responsibility (Response Paper) A few days ago I came across this book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey and it was a highly enriching experience. It made me to re-look at my values, attitudes and behaviours. I have started to look at a situation, often involving conflicts, from different angles after reading this book. Covey talked about character ethics and personality ethics and how we have started to focus more on the latter off late. Personality ethics is concerned with personality growth, communication skills, positive thinking etc. which are of utmost importance according to us to be successful in life. But we often forget that personality ethics is effective only when there is a strong character ethics like honesty, integrity, conscience etc. Whatever values we are having inside, we reflect that in outside. We can not fool people around by our sweet talks for a long if we do not have an equally sweet nature. Focusing only on personality ethics may come in handy for a short-term relationship but not adequate to sustain a long-term relation. I found this quite relevant for both our personal and professional life. Do not we often complain that our partners used to be a different human being before we get married…always attentive and caring to me…but now the things have changed. May be, that initial charming personality was a personality ethics or the “outside” only. Same for our professional world. Sometimes recruiters fail to access a candidate properly by concentrating on their “outer” qualities. Candidates who seemed very well spoken and gentle in the interview may end up as insincere and indiscipline while at work! However, this entire character ethics and personality ethics concept is based on our paradigms. Paradigm is the way we perceive, understand and interpret the world outside. There are some natural laws or principles like fairness, integrity, honesty etc. that govern our paradigms. Until and unless our paradigm is changed, we are unable to alter our perceptions or values. For example, even a few years back, we had no idea of exercising flexi-timing in our offices. Our perception about office was that it should start at the same time every day and for all and also end in the same manner. But, thankfully, the management at some of the companies provided a better work-life balance to the employees by exercising a paradigm shift by introducing flexi-timing and work from home options. Interdependence is another idea which I found very useful to handle corporate situations. While explaining interdependence Covey wrote, “If I am intellectually interdependent, I realize that I need the best thinking of other people to join with my own” (24). If we start to value interdependence, we will start valuing co-operation and team work. Covey talked about a maturity continuum where people move from dependence to independence and then to interdependence. As an infant, we, the human beings are totally dependent on others. Then gradually, we become more independent in terms of physical, mental, emotional and financial state. However, focusing more on independence creates an obsession around the word 'I'. But both the nature and society are by their origin, interdependent units. Leadership and Responsibility 2 Hence, both our personal and professional life can flourish only when we value interdependence as interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve success. Covey talked about the critical success factors such as balance between the production assets and production capacity in an organization (P/PC balance). He has put forward this idea that to create and maintain organizational effectiveness, the organization must focus on maintaining a balance between its production assets and production capacity. If the institution focus only on production capacity, the assets get hampered and vice-versa. The success lies in striking the right balance at the optimum level. I have decided to take care of this fact while looking after the logistics of my organization. The first habit to exercise for being effective is to be "Proactive". Covey explained proactivity as "It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behaviour is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values" (71). He further elaborated proactivity as having the ability to choose response to a particular situation. Proactive people do not blame circumstances or conditions for their behaviour. Rather, they treat their behaviour as a product of their own conscious choice. However, people generally are reactive. The main difference between proactive and reactive people are that, reactive people are more affected by the immediate physical and social environment where as the proactives are almost unaffected. "The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person" (72). Reactive people are driven by feelings where as proactives are by their internalized values. It’s so easy to talk about being proactive. But to actually practice it is really tough. I can remember that whenever by immediate supervisor asked me about some assigned task which I could not completed in time, the first reply that spontaneously came to my mind is "you don't know the problems that I suffered....". This, I now find as a reactive response. I can discuss the specific problems with him instead and can ask for his valuable advice or suggestion. Again, this is a sign of exercising interdependence. May be the actual problem lies in the planning itself or may be I am not so efficient and effective at time management. To be proactive, the first thing that we need to exercise is "self-awareness". Self-awareness will give us a clear idea at where we focus our time and energy. We all have our own "Circle of Concern" and "Circle of Influence". Circle of Concern are the various problems in our life that keep our mind engaged throughout the day. Circle of Influence are the things or situations about which we can do something. By focusing on Circle of Influence we can reduce our Circle of Concern. The problems that we generally face fall into three categories - direct control, indirect control or no control. In an organizational perspective, the policies taken up by the top management fall into the no control category. The immediate superior and subordinates are the areas of indirect control where as my own self and my work are under my direct control. I can focus on my job, finishing it in time, be supportive to my subordinates and co-operative to superior and eventually may be chosen by the company as the "Employee of the year"! Leadership and Responsibility 3 The second habit says, "Begin with the End in Mind". This is explained as "....to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you are going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction" (98). For a business to be successful, the organization should be clear about what it want to accomplish. Generally this is stated in the mission and vision statement of the organization keeping the big picture in mind. When the organization offers clear cut goals to its employees, they know what to achieve and can set their individual goals accordingly. However, to exercise all these, the first thing we need to realize is what is there at the center of our life which governs us to act. People could be family centered, money centered, work centered (the workaholics) possession centered, pleasure centered or friend centered. The center guides our values and behaviours. For example, the work centered persons give utmost value to their work and they give the highest priority to this. Often affecting their family life and personal relationships in the process. The ideal state is to be "Principle Centered". "Principles are deep, fundamental truths, classic truths, generic common denominators" (122). While habit 1 says, "we are the creator", habit 2 focuses on our imagination or the ability to envision; habit 3 focuses on the physical creation or actualization of the dream created by the habit 2. "Put first things first" is what the third habit says. The third habit is a highly important aspect for time management. Covey described the most effective way to manage time is to "Organize and execute around priorities" (149). The writer proposed a time management matrix taking urgency in one axis and importance in another one. We can sense the urgent matters. They are clearly visible, seeking our attention out loud. Matter of importance, on the other hand, is more related with the aftermath or the results. Covey's time management matrix has four quadrants. Quadrant I - activities which are both urgent and important. Quadrant II - not urgent but important activities. Quadrant III - urgent but not important activities. Quadrant IV - neither urgent nor important activities. For an effective personal management, a person should focus on all those activities which appear as not so urgent but are very important. These are the "things like building relationships, writing a personal mission statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparation - all those things we know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren't urgent" (154). Think for a while and you will find how true this is! Almost every day we think of exercising but actually start that only after a chiding from our doctors following some health hazards. Likewise, working towards a preventive maintenance in an organization. How much we are concerned about the maintenance of the machineries while increasing production? or, say, in a service industry, how far we focus on the physical and mental well being of the human resource while increasing targets? Usually, not much. Consequently, when one fine morning suddenly the machineries breakdown or a large number of employees leave the organization, we find ourselves in the quadrant one. Busy with things which are urgent as well as important. Leadership and Responsibility 4 The person or the institution that neglects the second quadrant, finds themselves in the first quadrant. Always busy with some crisis or pressing problems. So much so, that they find themselves unable to focus on more important activities like planning for future, identifying new opportunities, etc. On the other hand, people who mostly spend time in quadrants III and IV mainly lead irresponsible lives. Finally Covey concluded as "...the essence of effective time and life management is to organize and execute around balanced priorities" (157). But how to do that? Covey proposed to prepare a weekly chart of activities to understand and organize our priorities. The chart has four key activities - identifying goals, selecting goals, scheduling and daily adapting. First, we need to identify the key roles that we have to perform in a day-to-day basis in our life. Say, that of an individual, an employee, a son/daughter etc. Then we need to set the goals that we want to achieve for each of these goals. After that we need to schedule our daily activities or appointments/commitments in the descending order of priority. Habit IV is to "think Win/Win". The mute point in all our business dealings, mergers and acquisitions and joint ventures. To bring forward an effective relationship or business dealing, both the parties should profit from the deal. Then only the relationship or the business will sustain. "Win/win is not a technique; its a total philosophy of human interaction. In fact, it is one of six paradigms of interaction. The alternative paradigms are Win/Lose, Lose/Win, Lose/Lose, Win or No deal." (206). As quite evident from the name, Win/Win is the most preferable outcome to the human mind. As in every other situation one party is gaining at the cost of the other. Our brain constantly seeks mutual benefits and mutual satisfaction in every situation. In this case, all the parties involved in the deal feel good about the decision and feel committed to the action plan. "Win/Win sees life as a co-operative, not a competitive arena" (207). This I found very applicable in today's business scenario where companies are thinking beyond mergers and joint ventures. Where even the competitors are joining hands for a specific business purpose. An MNC entering a joint venture deal to use the supply chain of a host country has became a common phenomenon in business today. By this, the host country gains by getting associated with an international brand and getting a piece of their profit where as the MNC gains favour of using the deep penetrated supply chain channels of the host country and their labour with minimum investment of time and money. Similarly, sometimes some MNCs make a deal by which they can use the manufacturing plant and resource of the host country. Again, saving time and money. Another example we can site here is that of companies providing its point-of-purchase promotion materials to its distributors and dealers. How many of you have noticed that freezer with Pepsi or Coke logo in it at your nearest mom-and-pop shop? almost everyone. The point here is, the dealer is benefiting by using the freezer to store the products and the company is getting benefit from the promotion by displaying its logo on the freezer. Leadership and Responsibility 5 Habit V deals more with effective listening and communication. "Seek first to understand, then to be understood" (237) is the fifth habit. Covey talks about 'Empathic Listening' here. He defined empathic listening as listening with an intention to understand, to get inside another person's frame of reference while listening, to understand their paradigm and to understand how they feel. How often do we practice this? sheldom. isn't it? Covey rightly pointed out that generally we all want to be understood or want some one who would listen to us instead of trying to understand others and listening to others. I think often I kept thinking of the answers to justify my actions while my boss was talking about some problems related to work. Similarly, Covey asked to diagnose a problem before going to prescribe the solution while counseling or giving suggestion to someone. I think I must take care of this while analyzing some critical situations with my subordinates in the organization. However, this is only the first part of the habit V. The next part is 'then to be understood' which is equally important. This involves a thorough and proper projection of your self to the outside world. In an organizational perspective, its all your seven P's - the product, price, place, promotion, people, process and physical evidence that assist in building the persona of an organization. The next habit, habit VI is the habit of synergy. In simple words, synergy is the concept that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" (263). A group of people, or a team work to form a synergy. However, it happens only when there is a creative co-operation from the each and every individual who are working in that team or group. The seventh and the final habit discussed by Covey in this book is "Sharpen the Saw". This is, basically, a combination of all the other habits that has been discussed till now. That is, be proactive, plan well with the vision of the end result in mind, organize yourself properly and prioritize your work, always try to exercise a Win/Win transaction, be an empathic listener to deliver effective communication and try to form synergy in both your personal and professional life. Reference: Covey, Stephen R., (2004) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Cox & Wyman Ltd, London Read More