Successful Habits
Recognized as one of America's 25 most influential individuals by Time magazine, Stephen R. Covey (MBA '57) is the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which has sold more than 10 million copies in 28 languages in 40 countries. Cochairman of the Utah-based Franklin Covey Co., he recently published The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families. Writer Orna Feldman recently spoke with Covey.
What explains the success of your 7 Habits books?
Pain. People have broken relationships. They live in a mistrustful
culture. Their lives are out of balance. So people respond to the
fundamental principles we espouse for taking control of one's life -
steps such as being proactive, putting first things first, and
establishing clearly what you want to achieve. The universality of these
principles resonates with people.
Which habit have you found the most difficult for companies to achieve?
Habit 5, which is "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."
Most people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. Once
people think they know and stop listening, they're no longer dealing
with reality and so their prescriptions are doomed to be off target.
That's what ails a lot of businesses in this country. Without listening,
the organization (and its stakeholders) can't properly adapt to
customers or the marketplace.
How do you motivate business leaders who are not good listeners to
become so?
Force of circumstance is a powerful motivator: if they don't listen,
they don't survive. Another force is unsatisfactory personal
relationships. I asked a CEO of a major multinational why he had his
35,000 employees trained in the 7 Habits. He said, "My wife had told me
I didn't listen to our daughter." After he honed his listening skills,
he and his daughter grew closer, and he realized the value of listening
as applied to business.
You call one of your habits "sharpening the saw," or taking the time to
reflect and renew the self. How do you convince Type-A people to do
that?
With great difficulty. The Western personality is action-oriented.
People feel uneasy, even guilty, about taking the time for reflection,
careful analysis, or long-term planning. Many actually get turned on by
"firefighting" and crises; they have an emergency addiction. But when
people compromise their integrity and burn themselves out, they
experience loss in every area of their lives, including their health and
relationships. It's then they often become more disposed to change.
In recent years, what's been the most positive development in business?
The global economy. "Excellence" in local or regional terms is usually a
limited concept. True excellence doesn't begin to emerge until you have
to compete at a global level and maintain a world-class standard of
quality.
What's the biggest shortcoming of American business?
Its low-trust culture, characterized by defensive and protective
communication, hidden agendas, internal politics, and underutilized
human talent. When I address audiences, they routinely tell me that 90
percent of the people in their organization have more creative ability,
talent, resourcefulness, and intelligence than their present jobs
require or allow. People also tell me they spend far too much time
dealing with defensive communication, personal conflicts, and
interdepartmental rivalries. That's the high cost of low trust.
What can be done about this trust problem?
Companies have to change their paradigms and recognize the overriding
importance of trust. The only thing that can build trust is
trustworthiness, which comes from always living - or conducting business
- according to certain principles: honesty, integrity, respect,
kindness, meaningful work, fairness, and justice. These are the classic,
self-evident principles we incorporate into our 7 Habits; we believe
they are fundamental to creating a positive paradigm, either in an
organizational context or in a person's life.
photo courtesy Stephen Covey