Tag Archives: self leadership

Seven Habits Review: Day 0. Introduction.

30 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by in Character and Competence, Discipline, General, Purpose and Service, Rants, Time Management, Uncategorized

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I have written before about how many people confuse The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with being a business book. It isn’t, never was. What it is, is a book about living effectively as an individual and as part of any relationship. It is not about fame or success, per se, but about living a principled life, which in turn can lead to those things – if they are what you want. But let’s be frank – most of us don’t want them or don’t see them as important as being a good person doing good work for the people they care about, while enjoying life – which this book promotes in spades.

I recall once attending a meeting of personal development teachers preparing to deliver the Seven Habits material to schools with the overall aim of teaching ‘leadership’, and I opined that what we would be teaching was  self-leadership, and this was even more important because while everyone has the potential to be ‘a success’ and a ‘boss’ the vast majority of young people would be the staff, the workers, the led – and they should be trained to be the best they could be at those things, too. Leaders – self-leaders – make great followers.

The Seven Habits are (and I quote) A principle-centred, character-based, inside-out approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness.

Let’s break that down a bit.

Principle-Centred. We like to think we can control events, but while we can control what we do, principles (sciences, incontrovertible truths, systems) decide the results. I’ll get deeper into that in future articles but for now I’ll explain that it means that instead of letting fame, wealth, family, church, peers, friends, pleasure, friends, enemies or work dictate how we think and behave, we let principles lead our decisions and resulting actions.

Character-Based. Our personality is what we show other people deliberately, but our character is what we really are. Personality tends to make us follow fashions and popular thought and ‘the latest thing’ so that we can fit in and benefit from that fitting in. Character, on the other hand, requires sacrifice, work and effort. But it lasts well beyond fashion, fame and money.

Inside-Out Approach. There is a tendency for folks to wait for their external world to change so that it suits them, instead of either changing it for the better themselves by changing their approach towards the changes needed. In 2020 we see protest after protest of people demanding other people change to suit their agenda – then they go home and wait for it to happen instead of engaging those in power in an effort to persuade and influence the change they want. The Inside-Out Approach is about looking into yourself and deciding what you need to change in yourself and how you need to change your approach, in order to achieve what you seek. Waiting for ‘them’ to change is ineffective.

Personal and Interpersonal Effectiveness. Effectiveness is not ‘just ‘success. Effectiveness is getting the results you want in such a way as to get them consistently – not once, but as long as they are needed. And it is not just about ‘you’ – it’s about effectiveness with and through other people, too. I have often said ‘Everything we do, we do with, for or because of other people – everything.’ So relationships are important enough to pursue with diligence. Including those we have with ourselves.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, then, are about taking responsibility for making things happen for the benefit of all those you love or serve, including yourself, while acting with good character and respecting the realities of the world.

Over the next 17 days (long story*) I intend to expand upon Stephen Covey’s work with a view to encouraging any reader to take up their own study of The Seven Habits so that they can benefit, as I have, from a better self-understanding and an improved recognition of what is going on around them, how they can respond to the challenges of the modern world – and do so without offending or being offended.

A word of warning, though – as you understand the lessons Covey taught you will start to recognise how many people are trying to tell you how to live. Covey’s main lesson is that you have that choice and it need not be imposed upon you. Reading the book will make you aware of how the world is trying to condition you – not necessarily out of malice but out of a desire to make you agree with ‘them’. After reading it, you may still agree with ‘them’. But it will be a conscious rather than popular agreement.

In the end, a major tenet of this book is this.

You can live your life or your life can be lived for you.

I hope you enjoy the work to follow.

 

(* Michael Heppell, personal development coach, has proposed a 17 day project for his Facebook Group and this is mine. That wasn’t as long a story as I thought.)

If you don’t think you’re good enough…..

10 Monday Feb 2020

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Stephen Covey’s son-in-law, as I understand it a medical student at the material time, was asked in an interview, “If being considered for surgery, would you prefer your doctor to be a man of good character, or of great competence?

The response provided was considered. “If I needed the surgery, I would want the super-competent surgeon. But if it was a question of whether I needed the surgery, I’d want the one of character.”

Good answer. But still arguably incomplete.

As I review The Three Resolutions book, and by simple virtue of the fact that I constantly review Covey’s written and spoken works (good ol’ YouTube!) I discovered yet another thought-provoker. It was about the relationship between character and competence (the Second Resolution).

In my book, I write about the progressive nature in which The Three Resolutions are applied, and the impression may be that the one leads to the next and that they are in some way separate, which is not so. They are a continuum, so the crossover from one to the next is more of a blurred edge than a fence, if you will. The same goes on the ‘separation’ between the traits linked at each level – self-discipline and self-denial are linked, not separate characteristics, for example.

Therefore, character and competence are also linked, with blurred edges and ‘bleed’ through from one to another and to the higher levels of purpose and service.

To illustrate how they are interdependent, consider how having good character means better decisions, which in turn feeds better performance (competency). Imagine those two doctors addressing the concerns of the patient. The greedy one who is super-competent might agree that the surgery is necessary, but his self-interest trumps that of the patient every time. His poor character might not affect the decision to have the surgery, but it might affect a decision during the surgery, which means he may, super-competently, do something completely unnecessary and risk the patient’s welfare. Not in terms of life or death, perhaps, but any decision made by a person of poor character is suspect. You know that. You’ve probably experienced it!

The person of good character, having concluded the surgery is necessary, is the surgeon who calls in the super-competent dodgy doc – but supervises his operation because she knows that he is suspect. Her good character means she recognises where her skills aren’t as good as his, but she doesn’t abandon her responsibility for her patient to the man of poor character.

When it comes to producing results, the two – competence and character – are inextricably interlinked but they do not, necessarily, have to exist in one person. They can exist within a carefully, ethically managed team. One that communicates, and one that knows the strengths and weaknesses within itself – and manages them in such a way as to make the weaknesses of individuals irrelevant to the whole team.

From a time management perspective this means that doing things right the first time, as a result of an individual with both great character and super competence or as a result of a team possessing those traits between them, saves a lot of do-overs, apologies, law-suits and recriminations. That is a LOT of time saved!

Endeavour to possess both character and competence but recognise when you lack the latter and seek the complementary strength required to fill that gap.

Ain’t no shame in that.

You really can’t wait to learn what you need to know now.

23 Sunday Oct 2016

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“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.” Mahatma Gandhi

One of the fascinating things I have learned in trying to start a personal development training and coaching business is how many such businesses exist, even in my out-of-the-way, not-quite-rural part of the world. I am somewhat under-whelmed in the levels of interest shown in my own services, but if the proliferation of such businesses is a reflection of a need for such help, it must in turn represent some kind of insidious internal disquiet in people about where they are now, compared to where they want to be. They are willing to pay stupid money to some companies (while resisting inexpensive little me) in order to find something they seem unable to discover for themselves.

On the other side of the scales, however, there are those who absolutely dismiss the potential benefits of training, whether it be for them or for the people they manage, work for, or even live with.

I read a great story that might illustrate what I see to be the benefit of self-leadership training. It concerns a middle aged man, shall we say in his early 50s, who was sat at his father’s bedside as the septuagenarian drew close to death. As the old man ebbed away, he managed to impart one more piece of wisdom to his son. He said, “Don’t do it like I did it, son. I was wrong. Live life better than I did.” Then he sighed, and left.

The son was bereft, partly because his father was gone but, as he disclosed to a confidante, also because he realised something else. To that confidante he said, “I am 55 years old, and my father says I’ve being doing it all wrong. I am half way, if not more through life. What the hell can I do with the knowledge that I’ve been doing it wrong?”

The confidante smiled wisely. He said, “How old is your son?”

“Twenty-five, why?”

“What your father learned by his seventies, you learned in your fifties, and you can teach your son in his twenties. In turn, he can teach his children from the day they are born. 70 years’ wisdom available to a child. That is what you can do.”

The purpose of coaching and training is to provide the student, Oh Padawan, with a short cut to the wisdom that they may find for themselves – but now. So they can use it, now. Not when it is too late.

A coach is not there to tell you what to do. S/he is there to help you discover where to look and to open your eyes to alternatives. The coach’s job is to assist you in your relentless search to be better than you already are. On your own terms and in your own circumstances.

Seek it and use it.

My rates are pretty good………………

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Commit to Excellence. Goethe said so.

16 Saturday Apr 2016

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The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavour.” Vince Lombardi

Unfortunately, excellence is often in the eye of the beholder.

That caveat doesn’t undermine Lombardi’s tenet. He spoke of commitment to excellence, to trying at all times to do the best one can, whatever one is doing in the moment. It means overcoming the temptation to go, “That’ll do” as a matter of routine (while acknowledging that time and other external influences occasionally means that what is done is all that can be done – quality sometimes has to wait).

Stephen Covey often paraphrased Goethe, who stated, “Commonplaceness, the surrender to the average, that good which is not bad but still the enemy of the best – That is our besetting danger.” Covey’s slightly more prosaic, simple version was “The enemy of the best is the good.”

For his own part, in his book, The Success Principles, Jack Canfield quotes some statistics to show how what might be considered ‘good’ was not so. One might be forgiven for thinking that 99% ‘perfection’ is a desirable achievement. He wrote of what would happen if we achieved that lofty goal in certain sectors. We would get:

  • 32,000 missing heart beats a year
  • 500 surgical mistakes a week
  • An hour of unsafe drinking water each month
  • 2 unsafe landings at major airports a day

Still, 99% is ‘good enough’, eh?

However, as I suggested, striving for 100% excellence IS enough. In acknowledging that perfection is elusive, we also recognise that what ‘I’ think is perfect may not be judged as highly by someone with greater knowledge, skill, experience or insight than me. (Or from someone who shows a propensity for criticism that is inversely proportional to his/her possession of any of those traits……) Those who criticise us objectively, based on their possession of those characteristics, are people we can learn from if we are prepared to listen.

All of the above provides us with two important lessons.

One: we should try for excellence but acknowledge that we still have much to learn.

Two: the same rules apply to those around us.

Which means that criticism of others’ actions, standards, behaviours and so on should be objectively assessed only by those who know better – not by those who just think they do (including me).

We should recognise that when someone in authority makes a decision, it is based on their knowledge, experience, skills and the data they possess. Which we may not. And we should also acknowledge that as the making of a decision implies the result of consideration of more than one option, the mere fact that they took a different option than we would does not make them stupid, or not good enough. It just means they made a different decision.

Provided what they are seeking is excellence, we should live and work with what has been decided. And then focus on our own commitment to excellence in doing so.

For more on Character and Self Leadership, go HERE and buy a copy of The Three Resolutions. (Or HERE for Kindle.)

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Self-Leadership. The ‘Missing Element’ in Management Training?

13 Wednesday Apr 2016

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The KEY to Leadership is SELF-Leadership.

I’m going to be a bit critical here, based on anecdotal evidence and viewing the syllabi of management courses that have come across my path, or which I have seen in the books which gave rise to those courses. My criticism is that, in the main, they focus on teaching methodologies that are getting other people to do the things that need to be done. My belief, based on this observation, is not that this is wrong, only that it starts ‘in the middle’.

The greater leadership/management books I have read start where management truly starts, and that is with the character, and not the competence, of the person upon whom managerial and leadership responsibilities lay.

Management specifically, and leadership to a greater degree than one might think, are skill sets that can be taught to anyone intelligent enough to understand and apply them. Including people like Hitler, Mugabe and Gadhafi. Character is something one can develop, certainly, but before you can develop good character fully – you have to either possess good character, or genuinely desire good character. Which means you already have some.

In other words, wanting to be a leader for selfish reasons may get you there, but the people following you will do so because they have to, not because they want to. Leading to benefit others, to improve things for the ‘things’ sake and not your own, results in people wanting to follow you because they want to, even if they have to. The quality and longevity of the results of any team is a reflection of whether a leader has good, or selfish character.

What the aforementioned training courses omit is the training that a potential manager or leader is not absolutely required to follow poor examples – or even good examples. The courses omit input on values and how they affect how we think and behave, and how values differ between people. How recognising and respecting those differences can improve relationships. How adhering to the values that (according to Rushworth M Kidder in the book, “Moral Courage”, Morrow Books, 2005) all people/groups identify as desirable and effective, but which so many leaders and managers ‘forget’ in the moment when it seems more expedient to capitulate and compromise their ethics rather than deal with conflict. (How many managers have you perceived have compromised their ethics because someone above them in the hierarchy is ‘too important’ to challenge?)

Kidder’s example surveys showed that there were 5 universal principles people wanted to demonstrate (and certainly which they expect to see shown by others!). They were essentially Honesty, Respect, Responsibility, Self-Respect (integrity?) and Compassion. Different terms were often used but these were the essential synonyms.

‘Proper’ Self-leadership training reinforces that a trainee has values that they know are representative of good character, starting with those five. It reinforces the need for trainees to be willing to stand up for those principles, or to fall on the self-destructive sword of capitulation and compromise. It helps trainees discover ethics – not situational ethics, real ethics – that will direct their behaviour.

That is how the world can be improved. Not by teaching a skill set, but by reinforcing good character in people, who then stand up for it.

Argue

For more on Character and Self Leadership, go HERE and buy a copy of The Three Resolutions. (Or HERE for Kindle.)

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Know WHY you act as you do – so you can do it better.

03 Friday Jul 2015

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“Out of private victories, public victories come. Stephen R Covey

Both the 7 Habits and The Three Resolutions promote the concept of ‘progression of competence’, whereby while seeing that we develop along a continuum from a low level of execution of each (Habit or Resolution) to wards excellence, we accept the simultaneous presence of the traits of each (Habit or Resolution) at different levels of execution regardless of the individual’s acknowledgement or recognition of any of them. By that I mean whether you know it or not, you have a level of competence in each Habit or Resolution, whether you like it or not, and whether you pursue it or not.

This means you don’t have to learn the Habits/Resolutions in order because you are already applying each, all the time, and at varying levels of skill. You may not be very proactive (Habit 1) but might have a passionate purpose around which you manage your time fairly well (Habits 2 and 3), and you might be disciplined in exercising your body while being a poor manager of a service organisation to which you are dedicated. You are exercising all facets of the concepts (7H-3R),  but at varying levels of skill.

But because you have no understanding of the progression of the concepts, you are not performing as well as you might – and probably want to.

In both cases, fully understanding and executing on a Habit/Resolution will have massive impact on your ultimate success. To use a poor analogy, you might be able to read, but if you don’t understand the big words then you’ll get by, but you won’t thrive intellectually as much as you might. ‘Those who don’t read (well) are little better off than those who can’t read’.

(I like the title ‘NLP Practitioner’, used by those certified in NLP. My understanding of NLP is that we are all ‘practising it’ – we have to, it’s psychology allied to physiology – but not having paid the £2,000 to get the course, we aren’t official ‘Practitioners’.)

With either the Three Resolutions or The 7 Habits, I encourage you to read and understand the ideas. Both provide a continuum from self-mastery to inter-personal success, which means knowing and deciding (designing) who you are so that you can serve others better.

And when the others know you as well as you know yourself – the world will be your lobster because you’ll be accepted, respected, acknowledged – and trusted.

Mini-Blog 2 – Self-Leadership before hierarchal leadership.

01 Wednesday Oct 2014

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People who can’t lead themselves will never be true leaders because those whom they are supposed to lead will see that incongruence.

I recall one colleague who, when in the CID, draped his clean shirts on hangers off the (open) office noticeboard and kept his collection of breakfast cereals in the top of his in-trays. Not pretty, not professional. (He was a worker, I’ll give him that.)

When he was promoted, the first tangible thing he did was put a notice on the door of the men’s  locker room door (i.e. private and out of the view of everyone else) stating that items hanging off locker doors MUST be stored away tidily or they would be removed. Now tell me what I thought of him as a leader.

Are you consistent with your behaviour? Do your actions reflect your word? If not, in the words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard – “Make It So!”