In the
seven habits of Highly effective people, Stephen Covey presents SEVEN WINNING
HABITS for solving professional and personal problems and achieve growth and happiness.
He shows the step by step approach starting from self control and then moving
from inside to external environment.
Those who practice these habits
will see a remarkable change in their professional and personal relationships.
So do not just read but also follow these habits and achieve happiness, success
and healthy life.
Seven Habits are
1. Be Proactive
It
means more than just taking initiative and basically taking responsibility of
your actions. Response-ability means ability to take or choose the response. Proactive
people take action based on their value system rather then based on feelings-
which are affected by the circumstances, environment and the situations. Reactive
people are driven by feelings. It means in a simple manner you might be living
in a very adverse circumstances but it is upto you to feel good or bad about it.
That choice belongs to you. Nothing can hurt you till you give your permission.
Take the initiative, it means recognize your responsibility and power to
make things happen. You need to present the solutions instead of becoming the
problem. This is the paradigm of the success according to the author.
Instead of presenting the usual reactive response like I cannot do this, There
is nothing I can do, What can I do.. choose the typical responses like what are
the alternatives, Let us look this differently…try a different approach…..etc.
2. Begin
with the End In Mind
All
things are created twice, first in mind and then in physical space. A house is
designed and thought out before it is built physically. So you need to first think
about your goal before imparting on the journey. It is all about what you want
to accomplish. It is concerned with Leadership/ What are the right things you
want to do? It is to do with effectiveness. Lot of people mistake efficiency as
effectiveness. Effectiveness is all about being the leader. Management is
all about being efficient. One of the management paradigm is managers do the things
right and Leaders do the right things. Create your personal mission statement
and then follow it. Use your imagination and awareness to make your mission statement.
While writing an organizational statement – involve stakeholders; without
involving there is no commitment. An organizational mission statement should truly
reflect the deep shared vision and values of everyone.
3.
Putting first thing first
The
third habit is self management. It leads from the second habit after you have
put your personal mission then the third habit tells you how to achieve it. It
uses the left brain which is more logical . The Habit two is the right brain activity
and is about leadership. Lead from the right brain but manage from the left brain.
Third habit is putting first thing first. It is all about prioritizing, spending
time in things which are long term and will benefit you in achieving your mission
or goal. Most of the human beings spend a lot of time either in fire fighting,
crisis management or in non productive activities like chatting, playing internet
games or watching inane TV programmes. Author with the help of the urgent-important
grid really helps you in managing yourself. In short you should do activities
which are important but not urgent. Important actives are those activities which
helps you in achieving your mission/goals. We should instead of managing time
manage ourselves.
So identify your various roles which you play for example
a. Individual b. Family person c. Husband/wife d. Father/mother
e. Son/daughter f. Student g. Professional h. College cricket team
player i. Student committee head j. Leader
Think of some of the
things which you would like to achieve for each role. As an individual you might
like to learn new skills, read latest book or as a family man you would like to
go for a family vacation. As a father you may wish to help your son/daughter in
school homework. As a husband/wife provide support for your spouse in household
work/ financial planning. After this schedule them in a week. Covey has given
a very nice chart to plan and schedule your activities.
4. Think win-win
People are programmed
to think win-lose. That is I can only win if you lose or lose win or lose- lose,
that is if I want you to win then I have to sacrifice or alternatively if I can’t
win let everybody lose. Win –Win according to the author means win-win is
not your way or my way but the better way. Win-win means it is a collaborative
competition. It supports the big pie small pie syndrome. There is enough for everybody,
you do not have to snatch from others for self. There is plenty for others to
share and spare. In Win –win approach; you move from transaction approach
to relationship approach.
For win –win to work , there should be
no contest, competition. It should reward all if everybody wins as a team or a
group.
5. Seek first
to understand then to be understood
Practice
empathetic listening. Empathetic listening gets inside the other person’s
frame of reference. Empathetic listening is more than listening with your ears,
it is to listen with your eyes and your hearts.. After the physical survival,
the greatest need for any individual is for psychological survival. When we listen
with empathy we satisfy that need . Any problem solution can be found by using
this. It plays a important problem in communication.
It is like you
need to diagnose before you prescribe- a good salesperson first tries to understand
the customer requirements(diagnose), his/her needs before recommending the product(prescribe).
Unless and until , a person has confidence on diagnosis, it cannot prescribed.
Empathetic listening only works if an individual does not evaluate or
interpret things from his/her life experiences, biases and likes/dislikes. Empathetic
listening is equally applicable in personal life also where we need to see from
the children , older generation, wife-husband point of views.
6. Synergy
Synergy
means 1=1 is not two but in multiples it could be 8, 16 …It is called creative
cooperation. When two different individuals with different strengths and weakness
joins hands and leverage, the result is outstanding. A team where a leader has
members which have different strengths is likely to succeed more then a leader
where the teams members are photocopy of the leader.
Use trust and cooperation
between the various individuals to achieve the 3 synergetic results.
7. Sharpen your saw.
Covey
illustrated this habit with the nice story about a wood cutter who initially was
very hard working and efficient but slowly was unable to get the earlier result
no matter how hard he tried. His output was continuously falling because he did
not have time to sharpen the saw as he was busy trying to raise his output.
The wood cutter did not realize that the time invested in sharpening the
saw will ultimately improve his output. We also in our quest to achieve our goals
become so busy that we either forget to sharpen our saw or do not have time for
it.
We need have to live a balanced life and we should take care of
our
• Physical dimension- exercise, live a healthy, disease free
life
• Mental dimension- writing, reading, learning new things.
• Social/Emotion dimension-helping others, making a difference in other
‘s life
Stephen covey has very Meticously charted down 7 effective habits and my personal view is that item no. 5 i.e."Seek first to understand then to be understood" is the most importatnt one.
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very useful
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Simply excellent
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Simply excellent
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simply outstanding!!
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Excellent,Really you are doing good work,keep it up
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Excellent,Really you are doing good work,keep it up
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this is good one to me and others to fallow best of luck for all reder..........thanks anbu
5
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this is good one to me and others to fallow best of luck for all reder..........thanks anbu
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It is very simple and informative
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Excellent only when one implements.
4
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nice attempt with lot of information
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So good
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its notPPT
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wow fantastic
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10 stars were not possible!!!!
excellent effort by kamyabology.com
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simply superb
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this good
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excellent
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Excellent article, a must read
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Nothing can beat 7 Habits ,,, we should follow this...nobody can beat us,,,
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Very basic teachings
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Really outstanding
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I can only say it really enlightned me about where i was going wrong in my carrier
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Very Good one
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Best one,Remarkable change in the personnal and professional life