Tag Archives: Be Proactive

Seven Habits – Day 7 – Intro to Habit 1 – Be Proactive

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

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Habit 1 is ‘Be Proactive’. Most businesses look upon that as meaning ‘anticipate events and prepare accordingly’. That’s only part of it. That is a way of being Proactive, but that isn’t what Covey meant. Here’s my take based on study and attendance at many 7H courses over time.

In the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, this Habit was sub-titled, “The Principle of Personal Vision’ and it still is. But in later course workbooks the subtitle was changed to The Principal of Choice which I think better reflects the intent.

Be Proactive reflects the fact that as humans we have the ability to pause in the gap between stimulus (what happens to us) and our response (what we do about it). Stimuli can be prevailing circumstances or something that blindsides us. The advice is the same. But I get ahead of myself.

Being proactive requires that we recognise and utilise our ability to self-analyse, to understand ourselves and to use and change that knowledge for the better. Covey opined that we all tend to default to our social mirror, in that we reflect back to others what we think they want from us. He called that the Case of Mistaken Identity and the result of determinism, where we accept and take on characteristics of those we respect. Other psychologists call this Belong – Believe – Behave, where our desire to join a group is followed by unthinking adoption of its credo and then behaviour in accordance with that credo. Discuss the Nazi Party as an illustration.

Being Proactive essentially means overcoming that auto-response to social nurturing and deciding for ourselves what we want to be, do and have. And how we wish to live, and to be seen. In order to do that we must use our four endowments, which Covey identified as self-awareness, creative imagination, independent will and conscience. He suggests that in the gap between the aforementioned stimulus and response, then instead of just reacting instinctively, ‘the way we always have’ or according to influence, we utilise those endowments to choose our response. Or to use a Covey-ism, to act as if we are Response-Able.

When we do that we subordinate moods to our values, we do the right and better thing instead of the easiest or most convenient thing. We move towards principled living and effective success instead of just clearing the problem away only for it to come back again, harder.

Covey quotes something he said he read in a university library – I suspect he came up with it himself –  and says, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and capacity to choose our response. And in that choice lies our growth and our happiness.”

How often have I wanted to snap back at something someone has said only to think, in that space, “Is this a victory worth winning at the expense of the relationship?” – and shut the hell up.

Do you have experiences where you wish you hadn’t hurriedly done something? If you’d been proactive you might not have transgressed, and what did happen, may not have. That is how powerful this Habit can be. It stops us making mistakes.

It also means we can constantly redirect our efforts away from the convenience of ‘now’ and towards the effectiveness and success of our future. Or, as Covey and others put it, sacrificing the present for a better future.

Effective people are consistently proactive. Not in terms of anticipating trends – even that is a reaction to the data that identifies that trend. No, they are proactive in that they take a moment to make better decisions.

Tomorrow, we look at where those choices should be directed.

Never too old for an AHA! Moment.

12 Wednesday Feb 2020

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As I indicated yesterday, my afternoon was spent regaling a crowd of mature people with my reminiscences and observations on policing, 1986 and 2020 style. During that talk, I spoke of how, in the ‘olden days’ of 34 years ago, training of officers was based on laws and practices of law enforcement and how, in the mid-1990s, the focus swung its pendulum from that and more towards teaching diversity. Now, that was an exaggeration and the example I used was how detailed and deep training on The Theft Act was now 7 pages of the training material, whereas diversity was 14. Which might explain why coppers can’t investigate without the internet, any more. 😊

My point, poorly made, was to show how diffusion of training to soft skills had an effect on law enforcement.

Afterwards, two people came up to me and challenged me on the basis that (they heard) I’d said diversity training wasn’t important which was not my intention. It became clear that one lady – an equalities trainer – had an expertise in this area that I did not, but it also meant she had a passion on the subject which I will never match. As Covey said, “One man’s mission is another man’s minutia.”

I countered her ‘need for training’ with a ‘just be nice to everybody’ argument, but then person number two said – and this made me really think – ‘Some people need to be taught how to be nice.’

Now THAT was an argument that I’d never considered, but it made sense. An AHA! Moment.

I come from the school of thought borne of the First Habit ‘ Be Proactive’ which promotes the idea that we all have an ability to choose our response to stimuli. This means that when someone (person 1?) tells me that poverty causes crime/stabbings, I respond, “Doesn’t have to, therefore it is not an excuse.”

But person 2’s statement really piqued my interest. I guess some people DO have to be taught how to be nice.

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t believe we need three day courses on other cultures to be nice. I believe we simply have to have a half-day course to suggest that other cultures exist, and people may not see things the way I do – but I may not see things the way they do, either.

But in these times of polarity, how about having learned and understood that, instead of screaming every time someone inadvertently transgresses (or tells what is clearly a joke), we try forgiving them and politely asking them, once, not to do it again.

THAT is how you build bridges – not by bombing the other side of the river.

So while person 1’s attack and demand that I understand – no, actively AGREE with – her point didn’t work, that one sentence from person two, which was not directed AT me but FOR me, made me think.

I still don’t believe that ‘poverty’ is an excuse for criminality, but I can see how an upbringing that isn’t all it could be can explain distrust and an argumentative nature. And for that reason I’d love it if the sociologists would stop spreading the ‘poverty is a reason and therefore an excuse for crime’ meme and try, instead and with the same end, the ‘you are not a product of your environment unless you choose to be – and if you choose crime you choose the consequences’ argument.

And teach it in schools, before it’s too late.

If I had a big lottery win…….

How full is your glass?

30 Thursday Jan 2020

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I read an interesting ‘alternative viewpoint’ on the Seven Habits philosophies recently. It was an article written in 1994, early in the days of The Seven Habits (at least as a famous philosophy), which I discovered through good old Google. It was a bit of biography and a bit about the Habits, and in fairness appeared to be balanced, criticising and complimenting in equal measure. Do you remember those days? So long ago.

The part that caught my attention was an interesting, albeit negative take on people being taught to take personal responsibility and I quote:

“The problem, they say, lies in the message that is being subsidized by management: that individual workers are responsible for their own destinies, and that the way to achieve security and serenity is through continual self-improvement. For a big corporation that is mowing down whole suitefulls of middle managers, critics say, this can be a handy way to get employees to start thinking that if they are laid off, the fault lies somewhere in themselves. “If the individual worker is made to feel the responsibility for his or her condition, the social contract is no longer there.” (Quote is that of Jeremy Rifkin, author of ‘The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labour Force and the Dawn of the Post- Market Era’. Article is by Timothy K. Smith.)

That’s a bit negative – and, given the cost of the company providing the training, a very expensive strategy. Who trains people just as you’re thinking of sacking them? Makes no sense but hey, you can’t fault finding a bad motive in any principled act, eh?

The benefit of teaching people to take responsibility in the event of a redundancy threat, is to remind them that they are not reliant on others to do everything for them. They are reminded that benefits are not the only option. And they are reminded that ‘being miserable’ is not the only, and certainly not the best option. Furthermore, such advice can be taken anywhere, including one’s personal life – unlike most in-house training.

Our experience influences how we see what happens to us, but it does not have to dictate how we feel about it, or how we act as a result.

I was also amused by a second quote where someone (non-Mormon) who’d studied Mormonism for 34 years – needed a job, I guess – read some Seven Habits material and dismissively concluded ‘I can see that was written by a Mormon’ – adding, by the way, that he didn’t know why he felt that. What he had been shown was the book Principle-Centred Leadership, which included a list of suggested traits of the principled leader – fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, quality, and excellence – and these Were the terms that led him to his conclusion. Which begs the question what principles the critic felt were acceptable outside that church. Methinks he studied Mormonism with a view to proving why he was right in hating it. (I am NOT a member of the church, by the way.)

My question today, therefore is – do you ever see something absolutely normal, and conclude that there is some motive behind it that doesn’t serve you?

If you do, I bet Christmas is fun……

48 years. Same tune, different words. Still true.

05 Tuesday Nov 2019

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As an enthusiastic student of The Seven Habits® , and having shaken the hand of the great man himself, one of my pastimes has been to explore Stephen R. Covey’s earlier works and compare them to those with which many leaders and businesspeople will be more familiar.

I’d gamble most of you would be aware of the first Habit, ‘Be Proactive’, which uses the ‘you are the programmer’ computer metaphor to describe how individuals have control over how they live their lives – to a greater extent than they may otherwise have thought – because they have the ability to choose their response to what happens to them.

In 1971, I suggest, ‘proactivity’ the term was yet to be invented by Stephen Covey. But the idea of humans having ‘choice’ was not, and although the terminology has changed and become part of the business lexicon (like ‘journey’, which is now grossly over-used, so stop it), the concept remains valid.

In his work ‘How to Succeed with People’ (Deseret Books, 1971), a 2½ page chapter referred to how there is a gap between our knowledge about things, and our ability to act on that knowledge. He calls the chapter “Three Processes – Knowing, Choosing and Doing”.

He suggests that many of us fail in our efforts to be better despite the fact that we know what we should do, because there is a disconnect between that knowledge and our ability, or perhaps our willingness, to act on that knowledge. Put simply, our failures lie in how we choose, or fail to choose, to act.

Here’s a direct lift.

“Choosing means to pause and stand back for perspective, to think deeply, and then decide our own actions and reactions. Choosing means to accept responsibility for ourselves and our attitudes, to refuse to blame others or circumstances.

Choosing, then, means to commit ourselves strongly to that which we decide to do. This committing process often involves a real internal struggle, ultimately between competing motives or between conflicting concepts of ourselves.”

He goes on to suggest that making the better choice can break the binding power of habit, and it is habit that tends to keep us where we already are, and away from where we want to be. Moreover, habit teaches us ‘you’ve failed before, you’ll fail again’. As Covey also put it – ‘Private Defeats precede Public Defeats. Choice can over come the pull of habit.

Choice, therefore, creates an important link between the engine of knowing and the gearbox of drive.

The best leaders have the ability to choose well. Their better choices overcome the largesse and stasis created by habit, and habit is the enemy of change for the better. (While a great servant, habit is a poor master. Occasionally.)

Stephen Covey said that principles endure. The principle of choice – whether you use the expression ‘Knowing, Choosing, Doing’ or ‘Be Proactive’ – endures.

It’s fun finding that out by reading older works. Makes me feel all scholarly.