Stephen Covey is internationally respected as a teacher of leadership development and organisational health. His most popular book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has sold over 20 million copies over 35 years and establishes a character-based approach to effectiveness and leadership as influence.
The 8th Habit builds around the 7 habits and is about finding your voice and inspiring others to find theirs. Voice is about vocation or calling; where our talents, passion and conscience intersect with the world’s needs. Covey says discovering your voice is the path to unleash your greatest potential.
I valued reading this book 15 years ago but have returned to it to reflect on leadership development and values as a Chaplain.
Whole-person paradigm for an Information Age
We are in a new “information age” or “Knowledge worker age” and challenges are of a new order of magnitude. Instead of focusing on “command and control” type management, Covey argues it is time to celebrate and release human potential. Any organisation can be over-managed and under-led, and he appeals for leading people as people rather than managing them as things.
Covey advocates a whole-person paradigm that recognises people’s body, heart, mind and soul; and their need to live, to love, to learn and to leave a legacy. For example, he counsels making four assumptions to help live a holistic and balanced life that demonstrates physical intelligence as well as mental, emotional and spiritual intelligence (p.58):
- For the body – assume you’ve had a heart attack; now live accordingly.
- For the mind – assume the half-life of your profession is two years; now prepare accordingly.
- For the heart – assume everything you say about another, they can overhear; now speak accordingly.
- For the spirit – assume you have a one-on-one visit with your Creator every quarter; now live accordingly.
Covey suggests we can find our voice through discipline, vision, passion and conscience – the highest manifestations of the four intelligences.
And to inspire others to find their voice, we need to exercise:
- Modelling of trustworthiness
- Pathfinding to build common vision and values
- Aligning goals and structures
- Empowering people and team
While the 7 Habits shape who and what you are and so are essential when it comes to character, then these 4 roles of leadership describe what you do in leadership and essential for good teamwork and leadership as we navigate change.
Modelling of trustworthiness
The first role of leadership is modelling. Leadership is not just about competence but also about character – both are necessary and form the basis for trustworthiness and wisdom. That’s where the 7 habits are so essential – be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek first to understand then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw. Covey uses the image of being a trim-tab, the small rudder that turns the large rudder that turns the ship, to encourage workers to take appropriate initiative to expand influence and make the personal changes that can help steer the organisation.
Trust is critical in any relationships. With it, you can overcome challenges and even misunderstandings; without it even the smallest obstacles can derail our efforts. Trust builds in people’s emotional bank accounts when we make and keep promises, demonstrate honesty and integrity, show kindnesses and courtesies, think win-win or no deal, clarify expectations, be loyal to those not present, apologize, give and receive feedback, and demonstrate forgiveness. It’s not just about technical skills and having an awesome vision, but having the people skills and emotional intelligence to work with people and help them find their voice, to know we believe in and support them.
When negotiating and arguing for something, it is great to strive for a third alternative or win-win for both parties to win as much as possible. Covey discuses using active listening, and the Indian Talking Stick, to enhance communication. To achieve synergy and search for the third alternative, Covey suggests asking two questions:
- Would you be willing to search for a solution that is better than what either one of you (us) have proposed?
- Would you agree to a simple ground rule: No one can make his or her point until they have restated the other person’s point to his or her satisfaction (p.201).
Pathfinding to values Vocational voice or Hedgehog Concept
Part of finding and communicating vision is the leadership role of “pathfinding” towards shared vision, values and strategy. The key in the new paradigm of leadership as covey describes it is not to go away with a small upper-management team and come up with a mission statement, but to utilise everyone’s valuable contribution and invite their ownership; to cultivate vision from grassroots involvement.
To focus vision, Covey encourages us to think about our voice. It is similar to Jim Collins in Good to Great who discusses the Hedgehog Concept with three questions
- What are you really good at perhaps even potentially the best in the world?
- What are you deeply passionate about?
- And what will people pay for (showing that their needs and wants are being met)?
- Covey adds, to bring spirit into the balance, what does your conscience counsel?
These are key questions for leaders and organisations to address to their people if they value their development.
Alignment
A third key leadership task is alignment – the challenge of going beyond ideas to execution and aligning goals and systems for results. An educational or workplace system that rewards independence, for example, cannot expect people to strive for cooperative and interdependent action. This is why collaborative assignments are important in education, not just individual essays.
A crucial activity is getting the right people into the right positions. Covey counsels strategic hiring: “Pay the price to really build a relationship with possible candidates to the point that they are authentic and transparent and have the time to decide whether their own vision, value and voice are in alignment with the strategic criteria of their future work” (p.247). Then he counsels asking people to reflect on their life experiences and what they most liked doing and did well, to help discern where their voice and best contribution is focused.
Empowering teams to release passion and talent
Empowering people is a final key leadership task. Giving up control can be challenging for some personality-types, and counter-cultural in some work contexts, but is essential for cultivating quality. Workers should be permitted and encouraged to practice “the doctrine of stubborn refusal”, for which Covey cites military guidelines. If someone knows something is wrong and detrimental to the overall mission, it is their duty to respectfully push back. Harold Geneen, former Chairman of ITT, addresses the importance of empowerment: “The best way to inspire people to a superior performance is to convince them by everything you do and by your everyday attitude that you are wholeheartedly supporting them.”
Practising the 8th Habit will lead us to our “sweet spot”. The sweet spot, as with a sports racquet or bat or golf club, releases a burst of energy and power that will send the ball soaring towards our goals. This takes discipline to:
- Focus on the wildly important (with a narrow focus and don’t divide your attention)
- Create a compelling scoreboard (measuring how we are going according to what is important)
- Translate lofty goals into specific actions (need to know what specifically to do to work towards the goals set)
- Hold each other accountable – all the time (meeting and opening up to one another as regularly as possible).
Teams need focus (discerning what matters most) and execution (making it happen). As with the London Underground, we need to beware the gap between our rhetoric and our reality. This is an important lesson when reflecting on organizational values; what do we espouse and what do we actually practice and affirm? Covey says often, “To know and not to do, is really not to know.” Execution gaps can appear over lack of clarity, commitment, translation, enabling, synergy and/or accountability.
The age of wisdom is where we choose our purpose and obey natural principles, where information and knowledge are impregnated with principles and purpose. Covey suggests the buzz word is moving on from innovation to wisdom, in this “wisdom age” where the essence of leadership is to be a servant leader.
Should we pursue these principles and ways of operating, Covey says be careful what you ask and differentiate what you are asking:
- Should I do it? (Value question)
- Do I want to do it? (Motivation question)
- Can I do it? (Competency question)
An individual can ask these questions, but so can teams as they discern together what they should do, and what they want to and can do.
Inspirational quotes
The 8th Habit is full of inspiring stories of character-based and effective leadership, and of quotes from significant leaders. I plan to draw on some of these to illustrate ADF values and sources of resilience in character training. For example:
Re Service
“I slept and dreamed that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted, and behold, service was joy.”
(Rabindranath Tagore)
“To every man there comes in his life-time that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a very special thing, unique to him and fitted to his talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour.”
(Winston Churchill)
Re Courage
“Self-knowledge is best learned, not by contemplation, but by action.
Strive to do your duty and you will soon discover of what stuff you are made.”
(Johann Goethe)
“Leaders do not avoid, repress, or deny conflict, but rather see it as an opportunity.”
(Warren Bennis)
“Creative thinking involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in different ways.”
(Edward De Bono)
Re Respect
“At first, as a student, I wanted freedom only for myself, the transitory freedoms of being able to stay out at night, read what I pleased, and go where I chose. Later as a young man in Johannesburg, I yearned for the basic and honourable freedoms of achieving my potential, of earning my keep, of marrying and having a family – the freedom not to be obstructed in a lawful life. But I then slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers and sisters were not free … that is when the hunger for my own freedom became the greater hunger for the freedom of my people. It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal, that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home. … I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that I could not even enjoy the poor and limited freedoms I was allowed when I knew my people were not free.”
(Nelson Mandela)
Re Integrity
“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.”
(Dwight David Eisenhower)
“It is a greater compliment to be trusted than to be loved.”
(George MacDonald)
Re Excellence
“The best way to inspire people to a superior performance is to convince them by everything you do and by your everyday attitude that you are wholeheartedly supporting them.”
(Harold S Geneen, Former Chairman of ITT)
“Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt.
Give the world your best anyway.”
(Mother Theresa)
“The difference between what we are doing and what we’re capable of doing would solve most of the world’s problems.”
(Mahatma Gandhi)
Re resilience
“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”
(Albert Schweitzer)
“When the morning’s freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles quiver under the strain, the climb seems endless, and, suddenly, nothing will go quite as you wish – it is then that you must not hesitate.”
(Dag Hammarskjold)
Ultimately the challenge of the 8th Habit is captured in Covey’s definition of leadership: “communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves” (p.98). This sort of leadership is not about position but influencing people from wherever you are in (or outside) an organisation. Covey urges me to consider how can I most effectively clearly communicate the worth and potential of people I am closest to – my family and friends, as well as colleagues and members I support.
Notes:
An earlier version of this review was published by John Mark Ministries (March 16, 2009). The book’s publisher details are Simon & Schuster, 2004.
About the Reviewer
Darren Cronshaw is a Chaplain who has served at Army School of Transport, Puckapunyal, 1st Recruit Training Battalion, Kapooka and Defence Force School of Signals. He is also Professor of Practical and Intercultural Theology with the Australian College of Ministries (Sydney College of Divinity). His hobby is pushing the boundaries of resilience in Ironman triathlons.