The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey, 2004) has become the cornerstone of leadership and management wisdom. The habits emphasize personal responsibility and personal leadership. There is challenge in living everyday under the guidance of the habits but there is also great benefit as living the habits can influence everything we do in life. I was introduced to Covey’s seven habits through a one day seminar at my workplace several years ago. I learned some of the terminology and a few of the concepts but never really understood the power of the practical application of the habits. Reading the Covey materials has taught me that life is not about all the tasks that I accomplish but instead about accomplishing the tasks that support what is important to me. Covey has taught me that there are elemental components that are applicable across the many roles that I have in my life. Those universal elements are integrity, vision, discipline, and passion. Embracing these ideas has opened my eyes to the endless applications and benefits of living the seven habits. Being proactive is the first step in the seven habit journey. I thought I was proactive because I always had to plan everything in my life. Family vacations, work schedules, continuing education all were events that I was proud to say I planned right down to the last detail. Reading the Covey material I realized that being proactive went much deeper than just planning life events. Being proactive involves choosing my attitude, focusing on my circle of influence and not my circle of concern, and turning setbacks into triumphs. Being proactive means to act based on principles not emotions. We all need a pause button that would allow us to stop during that time between... ... middle of paper ... ...o put Covey into our family life as my son grows into manhood and my husband and I find ourselves rediscovering each other. I have posted my mission statement where I can see everyday and beside it are the seven habits. I know I must make these habits and the principles listed in my mission statement a part of my life and the only way to do that is to live them. Covey has taught me that there are elemental components that are applicable across the many roles that I have in my life. Those universal elements are integrity, vision, discipline, and passion. Embracing these ideas has opened my eyes to the endless applications and benefits of living the seven habits. References Covey, S. R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people. New York, NY. Free Press. Covey, S. R. (2003), The 7 habits of highly effective people personal workbook. New York, NY. Fireside.
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"Stephen R. Covey Quotes." Stephen R. Covey Quotes (Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
Covey, S. R. (2004). The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. New York, NY: Free Press.
Mullins, L. J. (2005). Management and organizational behavior (7th ed.). Harlow, England: Prentice Hall/Financial Times.
This was not as easy a read for me. I suppose I am a victim of my generational upbringing, in that, I feel the need to be informed in an entertaining manner. This book has good information, but I had to continually check my focus. Those times when I was truly drawn in were the times when the writer was relating back to a story from his life or others and how it worked in to the particular habit he was teaching at that time. That being said, the following areas are where I believe I can use to make myself and my team better.
pp. 146-170. Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A., (2004). Organizational Behavior (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
People need to read books about leadership, time control and effective behavior because these books can guide people to think logically and reasonably. In addition to logical and reasonable thinking, these books show people a way of successful life. These books can make it possible for normal people learn about successful people’s behavior. The most famous and outstanding book based on logical thinking is Stephen Covey’s ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’. This book is good for the people who want to live a more productive and wholesome life. ‘The 7 Habits of highly effective people’ can be divided two parts. The first part is paradigm shift. Covey defines the meaning of paradigm is fixed thinking of people’s own world. He points the problems that people’s behavior results from their paradigms of the world. Covey shows the best example of a paradigm shift. Once he was traveling in a subway, a man gets in with his two so...
Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge is an organizational management book written by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus for those who aim to become better leaders. The authors emphasize that having executive positions or being a manager does not automatically make one a leader. A leader is one who inspires his staff, help them find purpose in their work, and effectively implement their plans. They separate the book not quite into chapters on different topics, but rather by four strategies that they have determined are vital for any leader to take on. The strategies are effectively concluded as attention through vision, meaning through communication, trust through positioning, and the deployment of self. A prominent feature of Leaders is the various
Bacal, Robert. Manager's Guide to Performance Management. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.
“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” was written by Sean Covey. The main purpose of this book is to inspire teenagers to improve their choices now in order to become well-rounded adults. Like his Father Stephen R. Covey, who wrote “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Sean’s work is essentially similar to his father’s work, but unlike his father, Sean wrote this book specifically for teens to inform them on how to live a more effective lifestyle. As part of my course “Personal Development & Leadership” that I’m currently taking this semester, I was given the task to read the book in question with aim of to understand the motive of the book and eventually find ways to improve certain aspects of my live in a positive manner. As I was
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2011). Essentials of Organizational Behavior. Harlow England: Pearson Education Limited.
Bliss, Edwin C. Getting Things Done: The ABC's of Time Management. New York: Scribner, 1993. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.
understand that being proactive is one of the most powerful ways to ensure my success. One of the keys to my success is the ability to think about my own thought process. This is called self awareness, and this is the reason humanity can make significant advances from generation to generation. Self awareness allows me to evaluate and learn from my own experiences and the experiences of others. This is the key to making and breaking my habits. Only when I take how I see myself into account will I be able to access my full personal potential and my ability to relate to others. Thanks to self awareness, I can examine my paradigms and determine if they are based in reality. The key to being self aware is to reject the social mirror that feeds
Conscientiousness is the tendency to be purposeful, determined, dependable, and attentive to detail. The advantages of conscientiousness is that it tends to have the strongest association to overall job performance. All the more, conscientiousness appears to be highly useful across an extensive scope of jobs. Likewise, conscientiousness and core-self evaluations which is a reflection of individuals self confidence and self worth has also been linked to job performance. The core self evaluation are predictive of job performance and the core self evaluation scale appears to have validity equivalent to that of conscientiousness. A further advantage is that it is free (Heneman, Judge, & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012).