This book was mentioned in the 'video from vince del monte'
After reading Rich Dad's books i got reading this one! Now it took me a while and didn't click with it at first, but it was only when i EVENTUALLY finished i realised how good it was! Again i suppose thats why its 'sold over 15 million copies'. Tho according to wikipiedia it now stands at 25million.
Hell...
'U.S. President Bill Clinton read the book and invited Covey to Camp David to counsel him on how to integrate the book into his presidency'
Though this book is NOT about business and becoming financially free, this book is about yourself and communicating with people which can only be a bonus in business.
Independence:
(Habits 1-3 are based from moving from dependence to independence
- Habit 1 : BE PROACTIVE
Two circles (Circle of Concern) and (Circle of Influence) if we only spend time in the circle of concern we increase all the negativity, worry and stress etc We have no control over this but most of us spend most our energies looking for results here. Whereas if we focus our energies in the Circle of Influence! We can be proactive.
(He tells a story about a business, and executives giving opinions and updates to the boss, but one man went further and when there was a problem he ALSO gave suggestions how to fix it, the boss then went one meeting to all the other executives do this, do that, BUT stopped and asked this pro-active man 'What's your opinion?' by this man being pro-active! when he didn't need to be, his Circle of Influence had grown.
- HABIT 2: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND
All Things Are Created Twice, Take the construction of a home, You create it in every detail before you ever hammer the first nail into place. You reduce it to blueprint and develop construction plans. All of this is done before the earth is touched. If not, then in the second creation, the physical creation, you will have to make expensive changes that may double the cost of your home. Begin with the end in mind.
- HABIT 3: PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST
If Habit 2 is about visualising and imagining the end and planning, then Habit 3 is the physical part.
INTERDEPENDENCE
The next three have to do with Interdependence (I.e working with others):
- HABIT 4: THINK WIN-WIN
Someone once said 'You can never Win an argument' as if you win it verbally there and then, you've lost some respect from the person you've been talking too. So you might of gained points from the argument but you've also lost points with them.
THINK WIN-WIN is basically listening with intent to the other person so you can understand their point you could argue their point to them just as well as they can. And like a triangle come to an outcome where both parties can achieve a higher result.
- HABIT 5: SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD
This is about listening and understanding someones point of view without interrupting as we tend to always think everyone thinks like us, but going back to the picture of the lady, if we assume the picture is of an old lady so must the person were speaking too. We must take a step back and fully listen and understand them and how they see something before we give information.
- HABIT 6: SYNERGIZE
Merging all the Habits together and like team work more can be achieved together than apart.
Continuous Improvement
The final Habit...
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
Basically the story of the tree cutter working hard hours on end trying to cut down a tree within a time frame, whereas someone else spends most the time sharpening the saw and cuts the wood in a fraction of the time.
Some good stories and examples are littered throughout the book a few good ones for me were:
He showed a picture of a lady:
He explains that this was done i think it said in Harvard Business school. Half the class said they saw a young lady, and the other half said they saw an old lady!
BUT who was right!? clearly someone was wrong.
The lesson here is that BOTH ARE RIGHT! you can either see a young looking high class lady looking away from you, or you can see an old lady with a big nose and a big chin looking to the bottom left of the picture.
The lesson was designed to explain and show, how two people can look at the SAME situation, picture but see TOTALLY different things!
Neither is wrong, and thats why you shouldn't always assume your partner or colleague etc has fully understood what you have asked of them or have shown them. Check with them first for feedback etc
Another he tells of a conversation between two people at sea, ....
While at sea someone notices they are on course with another ship, and they communicate to say change your course by 20 degrees.
- They hear a reply saying NO you change your course
- The ship replies with an ego response, I'm a captain change your course!
- The reply back is 'I'm a sea-man change your course!'
- The ship replies back with 'I'M A BATTLESHIP! CHANGE YOUR COURSE!'
- The reply back is 'I'm a LIGHTHOUSE!'
- The ship changed it's course!
The story shows how paradigms can change in an instant when you see the FULL PICTURE, you might think your right and therefore are correct! But as this story shows when you actually see the full picture suddenly what you thought can be completely wrong.
My Highlights from the book:
- "Your attitude determines your altitude," "Smiling wins more friends than frowning." and "whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve."
- Look at the word responsibility - "response - ability" - the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognise that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behaviour.
- As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them."
- "I am what i am today because of the choices i made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise."
- "Management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things." Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
- Efficient management without effective leadership is, as one individual has phrased it, "like straightening deck chairs on the titanic." No management success can compensate for failure in leadership. But leadership is hard because we're often caught in a management paradigm.
- We are free to choose our actions, based on our knowledge of correct principles, but we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. Remember, "If you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other."
- Remember that your paradigm is the source from which your attitudes and behaviours flow. A paradigm is like a pair of glasses; it affects the way you see everything in your life. If you look at things through the paradigm of correct principles, what you see in life is dramatically different from what you see through any other centred paradigm.
- Personal responsibility, or proactivity, is fundamental to the first creation. Returning to the computer metaphor, Habit 1 says "You are the programmer." Habit 2, then, says, "Write the program." Until you accept the idea that you are responsible, that you are the programmer, you won't really invest in writing the program.
- Abraham Maslow, "He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail."
- A good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it's personal, it's positive, it's present tense, it's visual, and it's emotional. So i might write something like this: "It is deeply satisfying (emotional) that i (personal) respond (present tense) with wisdom, love, firmness, and self-control (positive) when my children misbehave."
- Time and time again, I see the leadership of the organisation come into a group and say that IBM stands for three things: the dignity of the individual, excellence, and service. These things represent the belief system of IBM.
- The ability to manage well doesn't make much difference if you're not even in the "right jungle." But if you are in the right jungle, it makes all the difference. In fact, the ability to manage well determines the quality and even the existence of the second creation. Management is the breaking down, the analysis, the sequencing, the specific application, the time-bound left-brain aspect of effective self-government. My own maxim of personal effectiveness is this; Manage from the left; lead from the right.
- A paradigm is like a pair of glasses,
- Integrity is, fundamentally, the value we place on ourselves. It's our ability to make and keep commitments to ourselves, to "walk our talk." It's honour with self, a fundamental part of the character ethic, the essence of proactive growth.
- Organise and execute around priorities.
- Pareto Principle - 80 percent of the results flow out of 20 percent of the activities.
- The key is not to prioritise what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
- Returning once more to the computer metaphor, if Habit 1 says "You're the programmer" and Habit 2 says "Write the program," then Habit 3 says "Run the program," "Live the program."
- 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. Many people refuse to delegate to other people because they feel it takes too much time and effort and they could do the job better themselves. But effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is.
- You can't have the fruits without the roots. It's the principle of sequencing: Private Victory precedes Public Victory. Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationships with others.
Some people say that you have to like yourself before you can like others. I think that idea has merit, but if you don't know yourself, if you don't control yourself, if you don't have mastery over yourself, it's very hard to like yourself, except in some short-term, psych-up, superficial way.
- It's hard not to get impatient. It takes character to be proactive, to focus on your Circle of Influence, to nurture growing things and not to "pull up the flowers to see how the roots are coming."
- 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.
- You don't have much confidence in someone who doesn't diagnose before he or she prescribes. But how often do we diagnose before we prescribe in communication?
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.
- Communication 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. (Actions do speak louder than words it seems)
- Seeking first to understand, diagnosing before you prescribe, is hard. It's so much easier in the short run to hand someone a pair of glasses that have fit you so well these many years.
- If you don't have confidence in the diagnosis, you won't have confidence in the prescription.
This principle is also true in sales. An effective sales person first seeks to understand the needs, the concerns, the situation of the customer. The amateur salesman sells products; the professional sells solutions to needs and problems. It's a totally different approach. The professional learns how to diagnose, how to understand. He also learns how to relate people's needs to his products and services. And, he has to have the integrity to say, "My product or service will not meet that need" if it will not.
- Because we listen autobiographically, we tend to respond in one of four ways. We evaluate - we either agree or disagree; we probe - we ask questions from our own frame of reference; we advise - we give counsel based on our own experience; or we interpret - we try to figure people out, to explain their motives, their behaviour, based on our own motives and behaviour.
- The early Greeks had a magnificent philosophy which is embodied in three sequentially arranged words: ethos, pathos, and logos. I suggest these words contain the essence of seeking first to understand and making effective presentations.
Ethos is your personal credibility, the faith people have in your integrity and competency. It's the trust that you inspire, your Emotional Bank Account. Pathos is the empathic side - it's the feeling. It means that you are in alignment with the emotional thrust of another person's communication. Logos is the logic, the reasoning part of the presentation.
- The combination of those ingredients - the high Emotional Bank Account, thinking Win/Win, and seeking first to understand - creates the ideal environment for synergy.
Buddhism calls this "the middle way." Middle in this sense does not mean compromise; it means higher, like the apex of the triangle.
- When you exercise your patience beyond your past limits, the emotional fibre is broken, nature overcompensates, and next time the fibre is stronger.
- Religious leader David O. Mckay taught, "The greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the silent chambers of the soul."
- It is said that wars are won in the general's tent.
- Goethe taught, "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."
- In the words of Madame de Stael, "The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it: but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it."
- The law of the harvest governs; we will always reap what we sow - no more, no less. The law of justice is immutable, and the closer we align ourselves with correct principles, the better our judgment will be about how the world operates and the more accurate our paradigms - our maps of the territory - will be.
- "There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children - one is roots, the other wings."
- Change - real change - comes from the inside out. It doesn't come from hacking at the leaves of attitude and behaviour with quick fix personality ethic techniques. It comes from striking at the root - the fabric of our thought, the fundamental, essential paradigms, which give definition to our character and create the lens through which we see the world.
- Principles are natural laws that are external to us and that ultimately control the consequences of our actions. Values are internal and subjective and represent that which we feel strongest about in guiding our behaviour.
- Any airplane is off track much of the time buy just keeps coming back to the flight plan. Eventually, it arrives at its destination. This is true with all of us as individuals, families, or organisations. The key is to have an "End in Mind" and a shared commitment to constant feedback and constant course correction.
- Being highly effective as individuals and organisations is no longer optional in today's world - it's the price of entry to the playing field. But surviving, thriving, innovating, excelling and leading in this new reality will require us to build on and reach beyond effectiveness.
- People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- Circle of influence
