The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Download this executive summary in PDF: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

PART ONE: PARADIGMS AND PRINCIPLES

Inside-Out

• Character Ethic: success and happiness require these principles, integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, and modesty.
• Personality Ethic: success depends on personality, skills, attitude, and techniques.
• There are two kinds of maps, realities, and values that guide our decisions, and they influence our perception of the world and our behavior.
• Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value.
• Inside-Out, start with self, with our character, motives, and paradigms.

The 7 Habits—An Overview 

• Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do, why), skill (how to), and desire (want to). 
• Maturity continuum: dependence (you take care of me), independence (I am responsible), interdependence (we cooperate).
• Effectiveness is the balance between the production of desired results and the production capability (goose and golden egg story).
• Three kinds of assets: physical, financial, and human.
• The assets are the production capabilities, protect and nurture them.
  
  

PART TWO: PRIVATE VICTORY

HABIT 1: Be Proactive 

Principles of Personal Vision

• Self-awareness is the ability to think about your very thought process. 
• People are conditioned by genetic determinism, psychic determinism, and environmental determinism.
• Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.
• Proactivity, our behavior is a function of our decisions based on values, not our conditions. 
• Reactive people are affected by their social environment and the behaviors of others.
• Taking the initiative, recognizing our responsibility to make things happen.
• I have to vs I choose to.
• Love is a verb, not only a feeling. Show love by doing more.
• Proactive people focus their energy on the circle of influence, on things they can control.
• Reactive people spend their energy on the circle of concern, on circumstances they have no control over.
  
  

HABIT 2: Begin with the End in Mind 

Principles of Personal Leadership 

• Begin with the end in mind, how do you define success when you have already passed away.
• All things are created twice, you plan then you do, and you have a business plan before creating the business. 
• Take charge of the first creation according to your principles.
• Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
• People have the conscience and imagination to write their scripts.
• Write a personal mission statement like the Constitution to be your compass when you have to make a decision.
• Security, guidance, wisdom, and power are the interdependent factors at the center of our life that define our life.
• Security: personal sense of worth, self-esteem, emotional anchorage.
• Guidance: principles, direction in life, standards.
• Wisdom: a perspective on life, judgment, discernment, comprehension.
• Power: capacity to act, strength to accomplish something
• There are different kinds of centers: spouse-centered, family-centered, money-centered, work-centered, possession-centered, pleasure-ventured, friend-ventured, enemy-centered, church-centered, self-centered, and principle-centered.
• As a principled-centered person, you perceive each experience and decision through the lens of your principles. 
• The left brain is logical/verbal, the right brain is intuitive/creative.
• Write your personal mission statement with personal, positive, present tense, visual, and emotional sentences.
• Writing the mission statement must involve everyone if you want a commitment to the company.
  
  

HABIT 3: Put First Things First 

Principles of Personal Management 

• Independent will is the ability to make decisions and to act in accordance with them.
• Integrity is the capacity to walk the talk, to realize what our independent will planned to do.
• With discipline, you are the follower of your values. You subordinate your feelings and emotions to those values.
• The common denominator of success is being able to do even when you don’t want to.
• Time management: organize and execute around priorities.
• Effectiveness increases when you focus on important priorities (urgent and not urgent).
• Learn to say “no” to not important tasks.
• Coherence between your goals/missions and your important tasks.
• A balance between health, family, work, and personal development.
• Flexibility, you are the master of your important tasks.
• Your schedule is built around your values and priorities, it is not a prison.
• Delegate effectively with clear desired results, guidelines, resources, standards of performance, and consequences.
  
  

PART THREE: PUBLIC VICTORY 

Paradigms of Interdependence 

• Self-mastery is the foundation of good relationships with others.
• Building trust takes time, same as a bank account, making a deposit of trust builds up the reserve from which we can make withdrawals.
• When the trust is very low, the relationship deteriorates.
• Understand the person and what really matters to him.
• Little acts of kindness and courtesy, keeping commitments, clarifying expectations, showing personal integrity, and apologizing sincerely build up trust.
  
  

HABIT 4: Think Win/Win 

Principles of Interpersonal Leadership 

• Win/Win is the habit of interpersonal leadership that involves character, relationships, and agreements.
• The three traits of character are integrity, maturity (balance between courage to confront and consideration to empathically understand), and abundance mentality (there is plenty for everybody). 
• Relationships are built on trust, credibility, and mutual learning. Even if we have a different view, we will find a solution beneficial for both parties.
• A clear agreement gives the standards and manages expectations between people.
• Set up a system that serves Win/Win relationships: “If you put good people in a bad system, you get bad results.”
  
  

HABIT 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood 

Principles of Empathic Communication 

• Listen to understand the other person, not to reply.
• Diagnose before you prescribe.
• Four autobiographical responses: evaluate (agree/disagree), probe, advise, interpret with on our own experience.
• Good listening is rephrasing the content and reflecting the feeling.
• Ethos (personal credibility, integrity, competency), pathos (emotion), logos (logic). Effective communication is in this order.
  
  

HABIT 6: Synergize 

Principles of Creative Cooperation 

• Parties in synergetic communication gain more insight and learn more.
• Three levels of communication: defensive with low trust (Win/Lose or Lose/Lose), respectful but not creative (low Win/Win), and synergetic (Win/Win).
• You can exercise courage to be open and express your feelings to encourage others to do so.
• Value the difference in other people.
• Look for a third alternative for a Win/Win relationship.
  
  

PART FOUR: RENEWAL 

HABIT 7: Sharpen the Saw 

Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal 

• Four dimensions of renewal: physical (exercise, nutrition, stress management), spiritual (clarification, commitment, study, meditation), mental (reading, visualizing, planning, writing), and social/emotional (service, empathy, synergy, intrinsic security).
• Balanced self-renewal is synergetic. Each dimension has a positive impact on the three others.
  
  

Inside-Out Again 

Download this executive summary in PDF: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey