7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Summary of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Covey, S. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Melbourne: The Business Library.

This summary written February 2002 by Edward Chan <echan101@hotmail.com> Diagrams are original, composed on StarOffice 5.2.

People keep telling me jokingly that Stephen Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" should be re-titled "The 7 Habits of Highly Obsessive People". I guess it's because no one can seriously fulfil every aspect of being an "effective" person without being pedantic about almost everything.

And I guess I'm not one for being obsessive. It's taken me about half a year to get around to writing a summary for this book even though I decided to do it right after I read it. Clearly no matter how good a book is there has to be some level of self-motivation. Even the "Good Book" itself (i.e. the Bible) can't make someone good – God has to do the saving, and we have to do the changing.

So if I'm ever going to finish this summary, I'd better start now while I have the motivation.

First Impressions

1. Wow. What a pathetic book cover. Gaudy seventies-style large writing, a blue, red, white and green mish of solid shapes. Funny thing is they didn't even change it for the recent 2001 edition I bought after I had to return the one Pete lent me. My guess is its like the Sydney Morning Herald thing: even though a broadsheet is so inconveniently huge, and the style of the title font is outmoded, its the familiarity factor that sells.
2. Hmm. The first few pages are full of quotes from people who say they have benefited from reading this book. I'm always sceptical about such reviews. You'd have to have a really bad editor to have bad reviews of your book IN your own book. So I skipped these quotes, intending to read them after I finished the book. Still haven't read them though. O well.
3. Flick. To the back and read "About the Author". As usual, the author is described in vague terms, and they try to sell you more of the other books they've written. A bit more flicking through leads me to the Appendices... interesting to see how his Mormon upbringing shows itself through the categories he uses.
4. Think. Most books are like this, except for the huge amount of reviews at the front. So it looks like those crazy marketing gurus have been at this book, adding ads to maximise spinoff sales. But if the book has been reprinted this many times (35!) it can't be too bad. Lets see what the hype is all about.

Paradigms and Principles

This section describes the necessity of having a paradigm, a framework, through which to view things. It explains that the wrong paradigm will pretty much lead to incorrect methods and failure. In particular, Stephen delineates between Personality and Character Ethic.

Paradigms themselves can be part of the problem, blinding people from issues that need to be addressed. But when someone undergoes a "paradigm shift", their outlook may be completely changed, seeing things in a completely different light.

Personality Ethic is where the focus is on changing one's personality in the desire to become successful in the eyes of the world, while Character Ethic is where a person starts from within, improving their own attitude and way of doing things before attempting to please everyone else.

Personality Ethic is the paradigm currently in fashion. However, it is inately superficial. As time wears on, people begin to see through personality shields to the inner person.

The paradigm of The Seven Habits are based on the principles of Character Ethic. Character Ethic starts from within, and then works out.

Throughout this chapter, Stephen uses relevant examples from his own personal life, and insightful illustrations and pictures. Interestingly, I had already read most of the illustrations from those email chain letters.

One thing I disagreed upon was the idea that there are no short cuts (e.g. he used the example of a child learning to crawl before walking, while recent studies indicate that babies of SIDS-aware parents may never go through a crawling stage because they are put on their back – they jump straight to walking. This discredits Stephen's illustration).

He explains the idea of P/PC – Production and Production Capacity. Like the goose which laid golden eggs, you've got to feed and take care of the goose to get the gold. The consequences of not taking good care of your production capacity is lower production. In the short term production may go up because all the time is put into production. But in the long term production will suffer. Its the same with relationships, customer loyalty, and employee morale – not only your own ability to produce. But you've got to start from yourself and then work out.

Hence the Seven Habits are divided into 3 areas: Dependence, Independence, and Interdependence. These are the boundaries between Private Victory and Public Victory.

The Seven Habits in a nutshell are:

1. Be Proactive
2. Begin with the End in Mind
3. Put First Things First
4. Think Win/Win
5. Seek First to Understand... Then to be Understood
6. Synergise
7. Sharpen the Saw

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Principles of a Personal Vision

Pavlov's experiment showed that a dog could be conditioned to dribble in anticipation whenever a bell was rung, because the bell would signify that a meal was about to be served. Stephen's assertion is that humans can break out of this cycle of "stimulus-and-response" by exercising our freedom to choose. Stephen uses the acronym "R and I" (Resourcefulness and Initiative) to describe being proactive.

In a word, it's about responsibility. Response-ability, the ability to choose our response. To be pro-active, rather than reactive. This means we should not use reactive language and instead use proactive language, such as replacing "I can't" with "I choose" or replacing "I must" with "I prefer". We must understand that although the problem may or may not be outside of us, we can choose a response that can alleviate this problem. For instance, Stephen gives the example of someone who feels she doesn't love their husband any more. The solution he says is for her to love her husband – not the Hollywood style of emotional love, but a practical love of serving and sacrifice. Another kind of proactive language is focussing on "I can be"s rather than "if only I had".

One way of looking at proactivity and reactivity is looking at your own circle of concern and circle of influence. Proactive people focus on their circle of influence, and try to make a difference where they can. Thus their circle of influence grows and fills their circle of concern and eventually their circle of concern enlarges to encompass other aspects.

Reactive people focus on their circle of concern which include the weaknesses of other people, environmental problems, and other areas which they have no control. Their circle of influence presses into their circle of concern until they feel powerless.

Being proactive doesn't mean being pushy, aggressive, or insensitive, but rather reading behind what's needed to anticipate what is wanted, and then using their influence to achieve both. It means going the extra mile for someone because you can.

Stephen uses the Old Testament story of Joseph being proactive and rising to become second to Pharoah, from being dumped in prison. He also brings out many examples from his consultancy experience of particular situations within companies. I think the concept of circle of influence and circle of concern are useful ways of viewing my own life. I can't help thinking that proactivity is something I need to get better at, given the sorts of ways I'm prone to thinking about things and my generally reactive nature.

The end of the chapter has lots of challenging application exercises which I haven't done. There you go, that proves I need to be more proactive!

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Principles of Personal Leadership

Visualise yourself at your own funeral – what would you want people to think of you? What will they remember, and what sort of impact will you have made in their lives? It's a very confronting image, but something which sheds light on what it means to "begin with the end in mind".

And what you have as your focus, i.e. your centre, determines the way you see the world, and determines what your end will be. Some common centres are: spouse-centredness, family-centredness, money-centredness, work-centredness, possession-centredness, pleasure-centredness, friend/enemy-centredness, church-centredness, and self-centredness. But these centres are not absolute – they depend on other people, other things, or even yourself. Hence people with these centres may have more than one centre, or spend their life moving from one centre to another as each one does not fulfil their needs.

Stephen has a huge table listing how these focuses affect these areas of our life: Security, Guidance, Wisdom, and Power. The Appendix contains an even larger table extracting further consequences of these centres. Its pretty interesting, and shows how these centres may not be the correct ones.

The suggested centre is one based on principles. Principles are absolute truths which cannot change. Hence the trick is to determine the correct principles to use as your centre.

Stephen doesn't actually tell us what are good principles to use. I guess you could end up with bad principles as your centre, much as criminals do. This is the gap between good and bad which Stephen leaves up to the reader. Of course the assumption is that we're all good people and that we will select good principles. But I think it's worth keeping in mind; where do we find good principles.

To make the principle centre clear, you should write a mission statement. A mission statement sets out the principles you intend to live out. It may take a while to write, because it needs to be written carefully with a lot of thought, and expressed carefully.

Stephen gives some examples of mission statements. The personal mission statements tend to be written by Christians, so they show that their focus is on God. I guess he's trying to infuse as much of his own beliefs while trying to keep the book as objective as possible, giving us hints on what principles to base our lives upon. He gives examples of mission statements from other people and organisations, and how the mission statement has given them focus in a very obvious way.

Habit 3: Put first things first

Principles of Personal Management

Time management is probably best summarised by the concept of organising and executing around priorities. There have been perhaps three generations of time management schemes that have been used in western society:

1. Notes and checklists
2. Calendars and appointment books
3. Prioritisation according to perceived values of activities, by setting short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term goals

However these are merely time-management tools and are geared to efficiency. People on the other hand need to respond to unforeseen circumstances and do not want to be conformed to these restrictive schemes at the expense of relationships, spontaneity, and quality of life.

There is an emerging for of time management which overcomes these difficulties. Its called "Quadrant II". It's based on a two dimensional matrix, two columns wide by two columns long. The columns are labelled Urgent and Not Urgent while the rows are labelled Important and Not Important. Each quadrant of the matrix corresponds to the combination of the headers. Activities can be classified into one of the four quadrants. The time spent in each quadrant determines how effectively you spend your time.

Quadrant 1 (Urgent and Important): "Crisis management". Results in stress, burnout, crisis management, always putting out fires.

Quadrant 3 (Urgent and Not Important): Does matters that are urgent based on expectations and priorities of other people. Results in a short-term focus, crisis management, reputation-chameleon character, sees goals and plans as worthless, feels victimised, out of control, shallow or broken relationships.

Quadrant 4 (Not Urgent, Not Important): Total irresponsibility, fired from jobs, dependent on others or institutions for basics.

Quadrant 2 (Not Urgent, Important): Effective personal management, shrinks Quadrant 1 activities, builds relationships, has a strong sense of mission and purpose, plans long-term, exercises, uses preventative maintenance.

Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. The key is not to prioritise what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. It should deal not only with schedules but also people, keeping in mind your mission statement. It should be flexible and portable. Within the particular technique you choose, you will need to implement first- and second-generation time management (checklists, appointments), but these should be seen in context of scheduling priorities, not the other way around.

Stephen has his own system which he allows you to photocopy. He doesn't try to sell it but extols its virtues in context of what he says should be in a good Quadrant 2 tool.

This means that even if things take longer than scheduled, you won't need to feel guilty about it. You can't be "efficient" with people like you can with things, but you can be "effective" with people.

A Quadrant 2 mentality can be used to manage other people. It promotes a stewardship delegation – where the results count, not the method. This is in opposition to "gofer" delegation, where the manager is always on patrol, giving commands on how things should be done (Go for this, Go for that). Stewardship delegation also places responsibility for the results on the person delegated to the task. Maturity levels will vary according to each person, so it's important to assign reasonable levels of guidelines, results, and accountability. More mature people need less guidelines and check ups, but will produce more.

All the 7 habits are in Quadrant 2, because the time spent in Quadrant 2 will minimise time spent in Quadrant 1, resulting in more effectiveness.

Quadrant 2 does seem like a very effective way of seeing whether an activity wastes time or is worthwhile. For instance, I can see how many addictions (whether drinking, smoking, playing computer games, surfing the net) are useless Quadrant 4 activities. That being said, everyone indulges in Quadrant 4 activities, albeit some are more destructive than others. Christian disciplines such as reading the Bible, praying, and meeting together are all Quadrant 2 activities. Hmmm... but is Worship in Song a Quadrant 3/4 activity? Not if we're worshipping God, an important guy to maintain a relationship with!

Paradigms of Interdependence

Private Victory precedes Public Victory. The three habits of Private Victory: Be Proactive, Begin with the End in Mind, and Put First Things First, need to have some firm basis before moving onto the habits of Public Victory, before someone can be truly interdependent.

One of the ways of seeing a relationship is in terms of an emotional bank account. It is a metaphor describing the amount of trust that is available. Like a bank account, deposits and withdrawals can be made. If only withdrawals are made, then the emotional account will be overdrawn, and the relationship will be on shaky ground, full of tension.

This should highlight the importance of understanding the individual, attending to the little things, keeping commitments, clarifying expectations, showing personal integrity, and apologising sincerely when you make a withdrawal.

Love itself should come without strings attached, unconditional, unconcerned about "rights", full of grace

This chapter was unexpectedly wishy-washy. I was surprised at how well it fitted in with Boundaries (Townsend). Stephen uses plenty of real life examples from his own experiences and his consultancy. Again, they are very helpful in illustrating what he's saying. I think this chapter could be expanded to be a few books.

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

Principles of Interpersonal Leadership

There are six paradigms of human interaction:

1. Win/Win
2. Win/Lose
3. Lose/Win
4. Lose/Lose
5. Win
6. Win/Win or No Deal

Win/Win is where the outcome is mutually beneficial to both parties involved. There is enough for all.

Win/Lose is where my win results in someone else's loss. Many people are scripted in this way, trying to get the better of other people so to be better than the other person. It's reinforced by exam rankings, athletics, and the adversarial justice system.

The Higher School Certificate examination is Win/Lose. You are ranked in accordance to how well you performed to others. Only some university courses rank in this fashion. I like thinking of this as saying to someone "Bad luck to me, worse luck to the rest of you".

Lose/Win is where someone acts as a walkover, leading to feelings of being unjustly persecuted. Many executives and managers bounce between Win/Lose and Lose/Win mentalities.

Lose/Lose is where two Win/Lose people compete until revenge consumes them to the extent that both lose. This may the case in some divorce settlements. "If nobody ever wins, perhaps being a loser isn't so bad".

Win is where a person is only concerned with their own situation. Each person is left to fend for themselves.

Depending on the situation, all philosophies may be effective. Sometimes there can only be one winner. Sometimes giving in is the best way to move forward.

However, Win/Win is usually the most viable of the five, because in the long run it's the only one which benefits both parties.

Win/Win or No Deal is an extension of Win/Win. Sometimes there is no way to go for Win/Win. Hence No Deal should always be an option, except in some circumstances (e.g. important human relationships). Compromise is a lower form of Win/Win, but is useful in these sorts of situations.

Win/Win requires effective interpersonal leadership. It begins with Character, moves onto Relationships, which allows Agreements. Underlying this are Supportive Systems and Processes.

Character: Integrity, Maturity, Abundance Mentality.

Relationships: Emotional Bank Account, obedience in the spirit of the letter.

Agreements: Desired Results (not methods), Guidelines, Resources, Accountability, Consequences.

Processes: See the problem from the other's point of view. Identify key issues and concerns (not positions). Determine criteria for acceptable solution. Identify new options to achieve results.

It seems to me that a lot of the assessment tasks at uni follow this kind of agreement. I used to think compromise was the highest form of solcing problems, but I'm beginning to see how Win/Win is possible. But it seems like it requires hard yards!

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Principles of Empathic Communication

"Suppose you've been having trouble with your eyes and you decide to go to an optometrist for help. After briefly listening to your complaint, he takes off his glasses and hands them to you. ‘Put these on’ he says. ‘I've worn this pair of glasses for ten years now and they've really helped me. I have an extra pair at home; you can wear these.’"

You need to diagnose before you can prescribe. That's one of the keys to communication. This requires the skill of listening – a skill that is rarely taught, unlike reading, writing, or speaking. It requires empathic listening.

People tend to say "I understand how you feel" when they are merely projecting what they themselves think onto the other person. Many people have been taught the skills of being an "active" or "reflective" listener. This involves saying "uh huh, yeah, right" every now and then. However this is not true empathic listening because it is just a skill, listening in order to reply.

Neither is empathic listening the same as sympathetic. Sympathy has the nuance of agreement, while empathy is trying to understand a person, emotionally and intellectually.

It's important to be empathetic, otherwise people will feel that your diagnosis isn't correct, and refuse to accept your prescription. The skills of being an empathic listener involves mimicking content, rephrasing content, and reflecting feeling.

My own experience with empathic listening is that it does work. It's definitely a skill which is very useful, especially for evangelism. It's also particularly interesting to practice empathic listening to people over ICQ, or just over the phone. Over the phone you can judge someone's feeling by their voice, but over ICQ it's even more difficult. Yet I have to constantly remind myself to be empathic in my listening. God gave us two ears, but one mouth, so we really should be listening twice as much as we talk!

The hard work is empathic listening, seeking first to understand. Once you have that, you can then seek to be understood. The early Greeks used three words:ethos, pathos, and logos to indicate the order of attributes of making effective presentations. Ethos is personal credibility, Pathos is empathy, and Logos is logic. Good presentations are prepared in this order.

It's also important to listen to people one on one, taking time to understand individual ideas.

The experiences he presents are almost all positive. They seem to be too good to be true, yet quite plausible in context of what he has been saying. I know how it feels to be really listened to, and it is very true for me that I do long to tell what's on my heart, so long they are willing to listen and not form opinions without an accurate diagnosis.

Habit 6: Synergise

Principles of Creative Cooperation

Synergy us where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It involves a creative process that means leaving one's comfort zones, in order to discover new ways of doing things.

Synergy is such a buzzword. My initial reaction was one of scepticism. But I know it's a real thing. I have been in teams which have been synergised. It just happens, in a good way.

For a group to be synergistic, there has to be a safe environment which allows people to be open. This allows brainstorming to take place, allowing everyone to be involved. Along the way, excitement builds and new ideas are formed. It's an almost chaotic situation, yet creativity lends new workable solutions and keeps it from descending into chaos.

Sometimes it's possible for chaos to ruin synergism. It is possible for people to be burned by these situations. They close themselves to future synergy, which is unfortunate.

Yet most synergistic situations in Stephen's experience have started with a spark from someone who was willing to be genuine and courageous in saying something. It is possible to side-step an adversarial environment by not taking insults personally, by looking for the good points, and improving on ideas put forward. When someone has an idea, affirm them. Affirming is not the same as agreeing, yet it helps to break down the barriers because you're seeking to understand them.

Ultimately the goal of synergy is to create a Win/Win solution.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal

Sharpening the saw is taking time out to make sure things are on track. To review and practice. It's a personal task of maintenance to improve PC (Production Capacity). It requires the renewing of the four dimensions of human nature: Physical, Social/Emotional, Spiritual, and Mental.

Sharpening the Physical dimension involves things such as exercise, nutrition, and stress management.

Sharpening the Social/Emotional dimension involves service, empathy, synergy, and intrinsic security.

Sharpening the Spiritual dimension involves value clarification and commitment, study and meditation.

Sharpening the Mental dimension involves reading, visualising, planning and writing.

Stephen goes onto specify specific things, such as what is considered a good exercise routine, taking time to understand each other, praying, reading instead of watching TV. All very practical stuff. It's something I should read again and may be even follow through!

Reflection can help to reveal what scripts we're following, and what biases we have. It helps us to see things as they really are, and make changes if necessary to compensate. It helps us keep on track, or know what to avoid in future projects.

After we learn something, we should commit it, then do it. Then we should continue to learn, commit, do in an upward spiral.

Stephen concludes the book in a chapter called "Inside-Out Again", which relates a personal experience with his wife, that illustrates all the 7 Habits. It's a bit mushy, but it puts things into perspective.

Before I read the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People initially struck me as a weird, with a weird title, and possible just a quick-fix manual like so many out there. Yet after reading it, I discovered it's not that at all. Like all good things, it's a hard book to live out. It leaves many avenues open, and raises questions of what principles to uphold. It seems to presume that people have an inbuilt sense of what's right and wrong. Yet it's a worthwhile read, and a challenge to living my own life.

While reading the book, I came to realise that I was already following some of the habits (3 & 5). Yet other habits I really haven't been following and should be (1, 4, & 7) . Other habits I found innovative useful (2 & 6). Hopefully when I look back over this in a few years I'll have given them all my best shot, without becoming obsessive!

I guess while even typing up this summary, I've spent some time in Quadrant 4, occasionally playing Chess against the computer, or Solitaire or Big 2. May be it's just my nature. But at least I've spent some time in Quadrant 2 summarising The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.