Habits 1 begins with the notion of "Proactivity"; we need to work towards our desired outcomes

rather than waiting for them just to "happen".

Described is how we have we have our own "Circle of Influence", an area of our lives that we
have personal control over and can do something about if we're unhappy about an area of our
lives.

The size of our circle of influence depends on how proactive we are; the less proactive, the
smaller the circle of influence; the more proactive, the larger the circle of influence.

It is also described how we also have a "Circle of Concern", areas of our lives over which we
have no control. To illustrate these two circles that affects our lives:

Circle of Influence

• Having an annoying co-worker/boss

• Wanting a new car
• Learning a new skill
• Making more friends/meeting new people

Circle of Concern

• Natural disasters
• The global "Credit Crunch"
• Governmental decisions
• Traffic Jams

Too often we focus on our circle of concern, things that we have no control over and have no
chance of affecting, rather than our circle of influence which we can directly control.

Why do we do this? I personally think that it's because we fear taking responsibility for our
actions. On the other hand, seems to attribute it to the fact that we're "conditioned" into thinking
that our circumstances (work, financial, relationships etc.) are beyond our control and we're
essentially stuck with what we have.
We will be spending a great deal of the chapter discussing paradigms - the "maps" and belief
systems that govern the way that we live our lives. An excellent example given is that if you
were asked to find a certain place in City A, but were given a map to City B, there is no way you
could reach your destination - except by accident and it would take a long time! We'd end up
wandering aimlessly blaming poor street signage and the like rather than the map (and
ourselves).

If we were to be more "effective" then we'd use the pro-activity habit; we'd be pro-active and ask
someone for directions; we'd realize we were using the wrong map and buy or borrow a new one.

What I learned from Habit One

The main thing I took away from this chapter is that we seem to be lacking a sense of personal
responsibility, that everyone else is to blame. This chapter drives home the fact that it's not them,
it's me; it's not I can't, it's I won't.

If I am unhappy with a situation, it's up to me to change that situation, it's within my circle of
influence so it's up to me to do something about it. I could sit and wait for a change to magically
happen and when it doesn't I can blame my circumstances, family, friends, work - everything but
the root cause of the problem - me and my inaction.
It's an inbuilt human function to apportion blame on anyone but ourselves - part of the fight or
flight mentality that we have had since our caveman days.

What are we going to do about it?

We've already started to change the way we are thinking; We shifted to looking at situations
differently, seeing if the way We react, is in a proactive enough way. More often than not, WE
ARE NOT!

A couple of "tests" to do and one is to discuss the idea of pro-activity with people around you -
friends, family and colleagues.

We've done this on a couple of occasions and have been pleasantly surprised by the positive
reaction of people which has generally been along the lines of "Wow! Why hadn't I thought of
that before?"

We really are buying into being more proactive in situations and have been analyzing our actions
a lot more and as a consequence, we realize now a lot of the issues we face are within our circle
of influence, it's our responsibility and that nothing will change if we don't personally take
control and do something about it.

People around us have also started to notice this shift in our paradigms and we, in turn, have
begun to notice other peoples’ inaction, but we know we can only influence and help these
people to a certain extent and they hover in the grey area between by circle of influence and
circle of concern.

Hopefully we'll now be able to continue with this new-found self awareness and start affecting
the outcomes of things we have previously felt were other people's problems.
Habit 2 begins with the task of trying to visualize our own funeral. We have to imagine what
friends and family might say in their elegies.

The idea of this is that if we know the type of thing we'd want them to say - "He was a good
man..." or "She was always willing to help..." you have end goals in mind that you can aim for.

It states that everything (thoughts, actions etc.) are created twice; First as a mental creation (the
idea of what your goal is) and secondly as a physical creation (the actions you do to achieve your
goal).

We need to get the first mental creation right in order to be able to create and fulfill the physical
creation.

It gives a nice example of this process in asking us to imagine that we're building a house. The
first step is to create and refine the blueprints of our dream home. If we don't do this, and get the
design exactly right, the second phase of building the house will require tremendous time and
costly reworking to put the problems right.

Habit 2 then moves on to the concept of "Personal Leadership", which this habit is based on. It
stresses that leadership (the first creation) isn't management (the second creation) - you can't
manage without leadership:

Management is doing things right

Leadership is doing the right things

In order to manage ourselves (and others) effectively we need leadership. And in order to lead
we need to know what the right thing to do is, as based on our paradigms and where we feel we
want to be/achieve.

This brings us straight back to the paradigms that we had a look at in Habit 1 - in order to create
a successful, workable and relevant paradigm we need to figure out what the desired end result
is.

The task in this habit is to create a "Personal Mission Statement" - a list of values that we wish to
follow that will help us reach our desired destination. Our circle of influence and level of
proactivity will help form these values, as will our roles and responsibilities (husband, father,
manager etc.)

Another thing that will affect our core values is our position of, "centeredness".
We usually think of centeredness in terms of "self" as in only thinking of your self. It goes on to
break this down further into more granular groups:

• Spouse
• Family
• Money
• Work
• Possessions
• Pleasure
• Friend
• Enemy
• Church
• Self

A person can be in one or more of these groups and ideally we need to find a balance between all
centers as this will lead us to our core values and principles on which we will base our paradigms
and mission statement.

Circle of Centers

What I learned from Habit 2

I have to admit I didn't really take away a great deal from this chapter, it certainly didn't have the
"wow" factor of Habit 1.
I also struggled with the concept of the personal mission statement which Covey likened to the
American Constitution which is where he lost me somewhat - being English that analogy is
irrelevant to me. Also, the concept of a personal mission statement isn't new to me, I remember
having to write one at school about 20 years ago!

What am I going to do about it?

This is a difficult one! I'm really struggling with deciding on my "End" and without the end I
have no starting point! I'm going to have to sit down and think really hard about what I want and
where I want to go which will not be easy as I've never been big on introspection. Also, being
fairly young, we are not necessarily sure what the best path for us to take.

I have a feeling that this is going to be the hardest of the habits for me to master and I'm going to
have to really knuckle down in order to create a workable and honest personal mission-
statement.

Habit 3 begins with looking back over the previous two habits providing a re-cap of what
we've learned so far.
 • Habit 1 - I can do it, I'm in charge
• Habit 2 - The vision to see the results and potential (The first creation).
• Habit 3 - I am doing it (The second creation)

In previous habits we've used our "right brain" to instill personal leadership in ourselves by
defining our beliefs and destination. Habit 3 teaches us to become "personally effective", to
manage ourselves. In order for us to understand how this fits into the overall scheme of things, it
cited the personal effectiveness maxim:

Manage from the left [brain];

Lead from the right [brain].

This habit centers mainly around the notion that personal effectiveness equals a good work/life
balance. We can use a time management matrix to illustrate the point.

Apparently, in order to be personally effective, we need to spend most of our time in quadrant 2 -
"Important but not urgent".

Okay, we can see the point here but we can't really say that we could possibly spend the majority
of my time in this quadrant - in fact we don't see how anyone could say they spend most of their
time here - unless they change their definitions of urgent so that urgent becomes "Argh! My
house is on fire!"

A lot of this chapter revolves around time management, but to be honest it doesn't cover it in
enough depth to be of any real use; but them we could just be saying that because we've done a
lot of reading around the subject and for a novice it would be considered adequate.

Habit 3 looks at goal setting again for each area of our responsibility (home, work, relationships
etc.) and ensure goals (our first things first) are balanced to enable us to move into quadrant 2.
Discussed are roles, delegation and learning to say "No" which again we’re quite familiar with,
so it didn't have a huge impact on us and again we found the approach quite simplistic but it did
make for a nice refresher.

What I learned from Habit 3

To be honest, not a lot! I did like the time planner that was produced - which is actually quite
similar to the one I came up with over 2 years ago and it's given me a couple of ideas of how to
revise it, but I think I'll keep managing myself the way I currently am - it seems to be working
for me at the moment!

What am I going to do about it?

Er... Not a lot! I think that I'm pretty "effective" anyway but I will examine how I'm handling
things and try to determine what quadrant they're fitting into.
Habit 4, this is the habit of creating effective interpersonal leadership. In order to manage our
relationships with others properly we need to think "Win/Win". This isn't just a technique that
you can apply to every day situations and relationships, it's a philosophy - a whole way of
thinking and being.

This philosophy is based on 6 paradigms of interaction. Basically, every time we interact with
others it fits into one of these categories:

• Win/Win
• Win/Lose
• Lose/Win
• Lose/Lose
• Win
• Win/Win or No Deal

Let's look at each of these types of interactions described below:

Win/Win - Mutually beneficial and co-operative. All parties come out on top

Win/Lose - "If I win, you lose." This is very authoritarian in style and can be seen as overlay
competitive. It's a win at all costs mentality which is usually instilled from childhood.

Lose/Win - "If I lose, you win." This is usually the attitude of people who want to keep the
peace and not upset the applecart. The problem with Lose/Win is that whilst you may feel happy
your friend/colleague etc. has come out on top, this can however lead to an eventual breakdown
in relationships as resentment builds up.

Lose/Lose - This happens when two Win/Lose people clash, it leads to a stubborn impasse as
they try to beat each other at all costs.

Win - Don't really want anyone to lose they just want everyone to come out on top. It's an
"every man for himself" mentality.

Win/WIn or No Deal - This is where, if a mutually beneficial outcome cannot be reached, then
you know it's okay to walk away with no hard feelings.

What's the best option?

The best option really depends on what situation we are in at the time, what we want to achieve,
and what the other person wants to achieve.

If we value a relationship, we may opt for Lose/Win in order to keep the peace. If we want to
increase competition (in your sales force for example) we may go for a Win/Lose strategy.

In an interdependent relationship, Win/Lose doesn't work. If I Win I will make you feel bad
which leads to a withdrawl from my emotional bank account. The same goes for Lose/WIn - We
stop caring about you because you don't care - and Lose/Lose - we both make withdrawls from
each others accounts. The only viable option is Win/Win, or Win/Win/No Deal.

How do you achieve a Win/Win situation?

The are 5 "dimensions to achieving a Win/Win situation, which each build up on each other to
form effective interpersonal leadership:

So character builds relationships, which leads to an agreement within an agreed system and
manner of process. Note that in the diagram above, an agreement is required before you decide
on the system and processes. This leads back to the habit of putting first things first - if we
don't know what we want then we can't achieve it.

It uses a great analogy regarding creating agreements:

Developing a Win/Win performance agreement is the central activity of management. With an

agreement in place, employees can manage themselves within the framework of that agreement.
The manager can then serve like a pace car in a race. He can get things going and then get out of
the way. His job from then on is to remove the oil spills.

Systems need to exist in order to allow a Win/Win situation to take place. If you think Win/Win
but the system rewards Win/Lose then everyone loses faith and the system collapses. Reward
systems need to be aligned with the goals and beliefs of the organizations.
All systems need to be Win/Win if this is the goal of the organization. You can't just rely on the
rewards system motivating employees to think Win/Win, you need to include planning,
communication strategy, budgeting, training - every aspect of the organization needs to be
thinking the same way.

It is also to be noted that “ if you put good people into a bad system you get bad results”, the
whole path to a Win/Win situation is built from the ground up on the 5 dimensions, you can't
ignore one and hope the others fall into place.

What have we learned from this habit?

I've learned that it's not what I want from a situation, it's more about what others want. We can
never reach a mutually acceptable solution if we don't know what each other want to get out of it.

I've also learned that it's okay to walk away from a situation - assuming that the other party is
okay with this - you don't lose face and it enables you to revisit the situation further down the
road with no animosity.

What are we going to do about it?

We need to ask myself and others what they want from a situation - and of course, being the
proactive person we now are, we can do that!

To recap what we've covered before, we've looked at:

 • Habit 1 - Be Proactive - Here we learn to take charge of situations and work towards our
desired outcomes

• Habit 2 - Start with the end in mind - We need to know where we're going in order to
get there

• Habit 3 - Put First Things First - How to become "personally effective"

• The Public Victory Phase - We begin to move from our own private area of influence
into the public arena

• Habit 4 - Think Win/Win - We need to reach mutually beneficial outcomes to become

more personally effective and build up our "Emotional Bank Account"

The above should give us a nice round-up of what it's all about.

No we move on to Habit 5 - "Seek first to understand then to be understood"

Habit 5 centers around the understanding of the other person - what they want, need and aspire
to as well as what their motivations and mindset are.

It sets out in Habit 5 to change the way we interact with people by changing the way that we
listen to them. We need to be non-judgmental and not make assumptions (assume makes an ASS
of U and ME remember!).

In order to reach a Win/Win situation ( Habit 4) and be able to influence people and the outcome
we need to understand the other person first. We have to admit we were a bit surprised that it
uses the term "Influence". It is sort of nasty, Machiavellian connotations; I think he really should
have discussed a mutually beneficial outcome here (which he gets on to much later in the
chapter) rather than jump right into the "benefits" of influencing people.

When we want to control or guide a situation into a mutually beneficial outcome, you can't just
use technique as this will seem cold, unfeeling and manipulative. Just think of Counsellor Troi in
Star Trek: The Next Generation. When you think about it, she was a rubbish listener! Stock
phrases such as "How does that make you feel?" seem hollow and automatic; they don't really
show that you feel empathy for the individual at all.

Habit 5 isn't just about purely learning to listen to the other person though. It's essentially the
culmination of the techniques in the first 4 habits. These habits need to be in place and
understood for you to be truly able to understand and then be understood.

Generally when we listen we don't understand at all. We may think we do, but we don't. Usually,
when we listen, everything is "understood" within our own frame of reference, a sort of "been
there, done that, bought the tee-shirt" mentality. Therefore when people have a problem, or ask
for advice, we see it from our point of view not theirs; we've failed to understand completely.

Unless we understand them, we can't help or influence the situation as we can't see the world
through their eyes. I guess that old saying of "In order to understand someone you have to walk
100 miles in their shoes" (or something like that) should be rephrased slightly!

It goes on to describe 5 different types of listening styles. Generally, we only use one of the first
four however the 5th is the one that we should be using:

1. Ignoring

2. Pretending

3. Selective Hearing

4. Attentive

5. Empathic

Empathic listening isn't about agreeing with the other person, it's about understanding them
emotionally, behaviorally, physically (i.e. body cues) and intellectually. You full understand
their motivations and where they're coming from and this is the key to building up your
emotional bank account with this person. Using any of the other 4 listening techniques could (or
should I say probably would) be seen as cold, uncaring and manipulative which leads to a
withdrawal from your emotional bank account.

Empathic listening gives the other person an emotional boost (this is referred to as
"Psychological Air"), they start feeling better about themselves so feel better about you and
begin to open up more; we've opened them up so you can problem solve (influence).

There is a downside to an Empathic listening, you have the ability to be influenced as well as
influence. Going back to the Star Trek analogy again, think about the number of times Troi was
taken over, influenced etc. due to her empathic nature. We need the foundations of habits 1, 2
and 3 to be able to avoid this influence - or only accept it if we're happy with it.

As well of 5 ways of listening, there are 4 ways of responding to what we've heard:

1. Evaluate - Do we agree or not?

2. Probing - Asking questions

3. Advising - Giving advice based on our own experiences

4. Interpreting - Interpret their motives based on our own motives/behavior

This is all well and good, but it doesn't really help the person that we're listening to, everything's
coming from our frame of reference not from theirs which is at the core of empathic listening.
There are 4 stages to empathic listening, each building on the one before it. So essentially you
start at step one and as they open up more when moving to the next step:

1. Mimic - Repeat what the other person said

2. Rephrase - Rephrase their comments to show that you've understood

3. Reflect - Put their feelings into words for them

4. Rephrase and Reflect - Combine steps 2 and 3

When the other person's response starts to get emotional, as it may do if you're at stage 4 of
empathic listening - you need to drop back down to step one so that you can begin to understand
again the root cause of their problem and what needs to be done to reach a mutually beneficial
outcome.

As well as understanding, we too need to be understood, which, is the second half of Habit 5. It
is said that "Seeking to understand requires consideration; seeking to be understood
requires courage." You need to base your desires around the other's frame of reference and
have the conviction to get your points across in a way that's mutually beneficial to all parties.

Habit 5 sits right in the middle of our circle of influence. Many of the factors within this habit
lie within our circle of concern. The area we're aware of but can't do anything about it. Empathic
listening allows us to move these items into our circle of influence so that we can do something
about them.

It's also important to remember that people don't necessarily have to open up in order for you to
have a deposit made into your emotional bank account. Just showing empathy and that you care
should be enough.

The main thing to take note of here is that whatever we do, don't push them and try to force them
into opening up to us. This will most certainly lead to a withdrawal from our emotional bank
account as we'll actually seem cold, unfeeling and manipulative.

We also don't have to wait for people to come to us with problems, or notice that they're having
an issue, we can be proactive and act before something comes up. For example: WE could hold
regular 1-2-1 meetings with our team members. Listening with empathy and understanding will
greatly increase our emotional bank balance and inspire great loyalty among our staff.
What have we learned from this chapter?
We learned that all listening is not created equal. We also learned that we’re guilty of step 4
Attentive listening rather than being Empathic as we thought we were being.

We've also learned that just because we think we may have a solution to someone's problem we
shouldn't verbalize this until we really understand where they're coming from and what they
want.

What are we going to do about it?

We are really going to try and be better listeners. It's going to be quite hard not to jump in and be
judgmental without a frame of reference but we will try as much as we can.

It's going to feel a bit awkward at first to use empathic listening rephrasing other's people's
sentences can have the unfortunate side effect of sounding sarcastic, and as we are sarcastic by
nature, people may think we are taking advantage if we are not too careful.
Habit 6

syn-er-gy (noun)

plural -gies.

1. Combined action or functioning; synergism.

2. The cooperative action of two or more muscles, nerves, or the like.
3. The cooperative action of two or more stimuli or drugs.

The start of the chapter explains how all of the previous habits build up to reach this point of
where we can interact in a "synergistic" way with others as synergy, it is the essence of
"principle-centered leadership".

The idea of synergy and slightly more fitting way than the dictionary definition:

The whole is greated than the sum of its parts, so….

One plus one equals 3 or more

Basically, synergistic communication and interaction is all about going off the beaten track and
finding new ways of doing things.

At the start of the chapter, with the enthusiasm and vigor that is launched into the subject which
is a bit over the top for the way of looking at things; but once we get over it, it will actually start
to sound quite interesting.

Basically, what we are trying to get across is the importance of cooperation, not just the act itself,
but the spirit of it and how it usually only happens in unusual circumstances (like natural
disasters, wartime etc).

We are surrounded by co-operation, constantly and in all walks of life.

It is correct to say that if the majority of people never reach a cooperative stage consistently then
that's a real shame in our view, but hey, we’re obviously one of the lucky ones!

That aside, it makes some interesting points as to what synergy is and how you achieve it.

• WE need to be authentic and genuine

• WE need to be open about your thought, feelings and fears

• WE need to be open about the thoughts, feelings and fears of others

• WE can't be judgmental
 • WE need to thin Win/Win or Win/Draw

If we can achieve this, and begin to communicate synergistically, then the possibilities are
endless. Synergy breeds creativity of thought and acts as people become more open as they
receive more "Psychological air".

An added benefit of communicating synergistically, to some analyst, is that it increases trust

levels. It is explained with this simple graph:

The linear approach doesn't quite sit that well. It's all too neat, simple and ordered when you
consider how wacky and irrational we humans are.

If people are overly cooperative and surely you know the type; eager to please, drop things at a
moments notice, while it is initially nice, it can:

• Become rather irritating after a while

• Makes us wonder "What's in it for them"

Okay, let us admit that this goes against the whole idea of the former's "Synergy Habit" but it’s
quite cynical so we can't help it. Here's the take on the trust/communication relationship:

There's a plateau of trust - sort of a maximum amount you can earn. Once we’ve reach that level
and keep on trying to pile it on and earn credits in your "Emotional Bank Account" it can begin
to turn into feelings of mistrust and even become a lose/lose situation again as you start thinking
"Why are they helping us? What are they getting out of this? What will they want in return?"

This actually moves us quite nicely into to take on the "Negative Synergy" which is pretty much
how everything is!

Negative Synergy is where we assist people purely because we're in "cover my own ass" mode.
We document everything, slag people off behind their backs and try to beat other people down.
It's basically a false representation of Synergizing communication - we're acting on it but we're
not in the spirit of it.

If we've mastered the first 5 Habits, then we've moved above this negative synergy and can see
the benefit of the whole rather than the one. - or to quote "The needs of the many outweighed the
needs of the few, or the one."

If we think, act and interact synergetically, we learn to value and embrace differences. We may
have a difference of opinion but still both be correct; it doesn't matter though as we're on the
same side ultimately and those differences will lead to various opportunities to come up with
solutions and lead us in new directions.
Habit 7 is the habit that makes all others possible. Basically "Sharpening the saw" is the
process of learning, evolving and building on the habits that we've mastered; It's self-
improvement and self growth in all areas of our lives.

This habit sees us applying learning and growth over 4 main areas:

• Physical (exercise, nutrition, stress management)

• Social/Emotional (Service, Empathy, Synergy, Intrinsic Security)

• Spiritual (Value Clarification & Commitment, Study & Meditation)

• Mental (Reading, Visualizing, Planning, Writing)

In order to "Sharpen the saw", we need to practice improving the Physical, Social/Emotional,
Spiritual and Mental aspects of our lives. We can break this down into sections and gives us
pointers on what we could be improving in each of these areas:

Physical
Looking after ourselves
Eating properly
Resting properly
Exercise (tying mental and physical activity together)
Spiritual
This is highly related to Habit 2 (Start with the end in mind)
Meditation
Self Discovery
Self Examination of our inner selves and motivations
This links back to our "Personal Mission Statement", we use this time to review and renew
ourselves.
Mental
Growing rather than stagnating
Continuing to learn - doesn't necessarily mean a classroom or in a formal setting
Trying new things - pushing the boundaries, going past our "comfort zone"
Keeping a diary
Social/Emotional
This area leans more on Habits four (think Win/Win), five and six
Centers around relationship building
Co-operating and making a difference
Creates Meaning and purpose
Serving the "Greater Good"
Bringing together the first 6 habits not only helps us to improve ourselves but other as well. This
is the "Scripting" which sounds a lot better than the previous use of the term "Influence".
When we "Script" people, we can begin to start molding their outlook on life, giving them
"Psychological Air" and building up our emotional bank balance with them. This moves the
other person into our Circle of Influence.
It begins to wind down the chapter with a quote from Goethe which is quite an apt way to
illustrate the points:

Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is.

Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.

We need to ensure that we balance our self-renewal and growth across all four aspects, negativity
in one area impacts all of the other areas. Improving one aspect should have a positive impact
across the other areas but we need to ensure that we don't ignore other aspects that we may not
feel comfortable with. It is called the "Private Victory", which ideally should be practiced an
hour a day, this then creates an "Upward spiral of "Learn - Commit - Do".

What we’ve learned from Habit Seven

We have to admit, not a lot. We think the only thing that we don't look after properly in this habit
is Exercise - we know we can do more but we never seem to have the time or inclination for it!

What are we going to do about it?

Not a lot really! We should think to keep on doing what we’re doing and maybe think about
exercising a bit more!