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FranklinCovey Principle-Centered Leadership - Softcover Paperback – October 1, 1992
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How do individuals and organizations survive and thrive amid tremendous change?
Why are efforts to improve organizations failing despite the millions of dollars in time, capital, and human effort being spent on them?
How do we unleash creativity, talent, and energy within ourselves—and others—in the midst of pressure?
Is it realistic to believe that balance among personal, family, and professional life is possible?
Stephen R. Covey demonstrates that the answer to these and other dilemmas is principle-centered leadership, a long-term, inside-out approach to developing people and organizations. The key to dealing with the challenges that face us today is to develop a principle-centered core within both ourselves and our organizations. Dr. Covey offers insights and guidelines that can help you apply these principles both at work and at home—leading not just to a new understanding of how to increase quality and productivity, but also to a new appreciation of the importance of building personal and professional relationships. The result is a more balanced, more rewarding, and more effective life.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFranklinCovey
- Publication dateOctober 1, 1992
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.9 x 8.44 inches
- ISBN-109780671792800
- ISBN-13978-0671792800
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Catherine Crier CNN News Anchor The world is in dire need of a paradigm shift in attitudes and values. Stephen Covey gives us the blueprint with which to create a better personal, business, and political environment and produce this fundamental change. All we need do -- is act!
Thomas R. Horton Chairman, American Management Association As if Covey's first book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, was not enough, his new book Principle-Centered Leadership is a real tour de force.
Phyllis J. Dudenhoffer International President, General Federation of Women's Clubs Principle-Centered Leadership gave me new insights into working with and for our volunteers. The ideas are basic, yet as we go through our life's work we sometimes overlook the simple basic truth. This book inspires me to build a better life.
Joshua Hammond President, American Quality Foundation We consider Stephen R. Covey to be one of the five most important contributors to shaping America's next level of thinking in quality.
Willard Jule Total Quality Manager, Westinghouse While the works of Deming and Juran have had a big impact on total quality, they give merely the pieces -- the 'things' part; Covey brings the 'people' part -- the glue that holds the pieces together -- that goes way beyond the 'things' and creates an exponential impact by empowering people.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Characteristics of Principle-Centered Leaders
From study and observation and from my own strivings, I have isolated eight discernible characteristics of people who are principle-centered leaders. These traits not only characterize effective leaders, they also serve as signs of progress for all of us. I will briefly discuss each in turn.
They Are Continually Learning
Principle-centered people are constantly educated by their experiences. They read, they seek training, they take classes, they listen to others, they learn through both their ears and their eyes. They are curious, always asking questions. They continually expand their competence, their ability to do things. They develop new skills, new interests. They discover that the more they know, the more they realize they don't know; that as their circle of knowledge grows, so does its outside edge of ignorance. Most of this learning and growth energy is self-initiated and feeds upon itself.
You will develop your abilities faster by learning to make and keep promises or commitments. Start by making a small promise to yourself; continue fulfilling that promise until you have a sense that you have a little more control over yourself. Now take the next level of challenge. Make yourself a promise and keep it until you have established control at that level. Now move to the next level; make the promise, keep it. As you do this, your sense of personal worth will increase; your sense of self-mastery will grow, as will your confidence that you can master the next level.
Be serious and intent in the whole process, however, because if you make this commitment to yourself and then break it, your self-esteem will be weakened and your capacity to make and keep another promise will be decreased.
They Are Service-Oriented
Those striving to be principle-centered see life as a mission, not as a career. Their nurturing sources have armed and prepared them for service. In effect, every morning they "yoke up" and put on the harness of service, thinking of others.
See yourself each morning yoking up, putting on the harness of service in your various stewardships. See yourself taking the straps and connecting them around your shoulders as you prepare to do the work assigned to you that day. See yourself allowing someone else to adjust the yoke or harness. See yourself yoked up to another person at your side -- a co-worker or spouse -- and learning to pull together with that person.
I emphasize this principle of service or yoking up because I have come to believe that effort to become principle-centered without a load to carry simply will not succeed. We may attempt to do it as a kind of intellectual or moral exercise, but if we don't have a sense of responsibility, of service, of contribution, something we need to pull or push, it becomes a futile endeavor.
They Radiate Positive Energy
The countenances of principle-centered people are cheerful, pleasant, happy. Their attitude is optimistic, positive, upbeat. Their spirit is enthusiastic, hopeful, believing.
This positive energy is like an energy field or an aura that surrounds them and that similarly charges or changes weaker, negative energy fields around them. They also attract and magnify smaller positive energy fields. When they come into contact with strong, negative energy sources, they tend either to neutralize or to sidestep this negative energy. Sometimes they will simply leave it, walking away from its poisonous orbit. Wisdom gives them a sense of how strong it is and a sense of humor and of timing in dealing with it.
Be aware of the effect of your own energy and understand how you radiate and direct it. And in the middle of confusion or contention or negative energy, strive to be a peacemaker, a harmonizer, to undo or reverse destructive energy. You will discover what a self-fulfilling prophecy positive energy is when combined with the next characteristic.
They Believe In Other People
Principle-centered people don't overreact to negative behaviors, criticism, or human weaknesses. They don't feel built up when they discover the weaknesses of others. They are not naive; they are aware of weakness. But they realize that behavior and potential are two different things. They believe in the unseen potential of all people. They feel grateful for their blessings and feel naturally to compassionately forgive and forget the offenses of others. They don't carry grudges. They refuse to label other people, to stereotype, categorize, and prejudge. Rather, they see the oak tree in the acorn and understand the process of helping the acorn become a great oak.
Once my wife and I felt uneasy about the labels we and others had attached to one of our sons, even though these labels were justified by his behavior. By visualizing his potential, we gradually came to see him differently. When we believed in the unseen potential, the old labels vanished naturally, and we stopped trying to change him overnight. We simply knew that his talent and potential would come in its own time. And it did, to the astonishment, frankly, of others, including other family members. We were not surprised because we knew who he was.
Truly, believing is seeing. We must, therefore, seek to believe in the unseen potential. This creates a climate for growth and opportunity. Self-centered people believe that the key lies in them, in their techniques, in doing "their thing" to others. This works only temporarily. If you believe it's "in" them, not "in" you, you relax, accept, affirm, and let it happen. Either way it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
They Lead Balanced Lives
They read the best literature and magazines and keep up with current affairs and events. They are active socially, having many friends and a few confidants. They are active intellectually, having many interests. They read, watch, observe, and learn. Within the limits of age and health, they are active physically. They have a lot of fun. They enjoy themselves. They have a healthy sense of humor, particularly laughing at themselves and not at others' expense. You can sense they have a healthy regard for and honesty about themselves.
They can feel their own worth, which is manifest by their courage and integrity and by the absence of a need to brag, to drop names, to borrow strength from possessions or credentials or titles or past achievements. They are open in their communication, simple, direct, non-manipulative. They also have a sense of what is appropriate, and they would sooner err on the side of understatement than on the side of exaggeration.
They are not extremists -- they do not make everything all or nothing. They do not divide everything into two parts, seeing everything as good or bad, as either/or. They think in terms of continuums, priorities, hierarchies. They have the power to discriminate, to sense the similarities and differences in each situation. This does not mean they see everything in terms of situational ethics. They fully recognize absolutes and courageously condemn the bad and champion the good.
Their actions and attitudes are proportionate to the situation -- balanced, temperate, moderate, wise. For instance, they're not workaholics, religious zealots, political fanatics, diet crashers, food bingers, pleasure addicts, or fasting martyrs. They're not slavishly chained to their plans and schedules. They don't condemn themselves for every foolish mistake or social blunder. They don't brood about yesterday or daydream about tomorrow. They live sensibly in the present, carefully plan the future, and flexibly adapt to changing circumstances. Their self-honesty is revealed by their sense of humor, their willingness to admit and then forget mistakes, and to cheerfully do the things ahead that lie within their power.
They have no need to manipulate through either intimidating anger or self-pitying martyrdom. They are genuinely happy for others' successes and do not feel in any sense that these take anything from them. They take both praise and blame proportionately without head trips or overreactions. They see success on the far side of failure. The only real failure for them is the experience not learned from.
They See Life As An Adventure
Principle-centered people savor life. Because their security comes from within instead of from without, they have no need to categorize and stereotype everything and everybody in life to give them a sense of certainty and predictability. They see old faces freshly, old scenes as if for the first time. They are like courageous explorers going on an expedition into uncharted territories; they are really not sure what is going to happen, but they are confident it will be exciting and growth producing and that they will discover new territory and make new contributions. Their security lies in their initiative, resourcefulness, creativity, willpower, courage, stamina, and native intelligence rather than in the safety, protection, and abundance of their home camps, of their comfort zones.
They rediscover people each time they meet them. They are interested in them. They ask questions and get involved. They are completely present when they listen. They learn from them. They don't label them from past successes or failures. They see no one bigger than life. They are not overawed by top government figures or celebrities. They resist becoming any person's disciple. They are basically unflappable and capable of adapting virtually to anything that comes along. One of their fixed principles is flexibility. They truly lead the abundant life.
They Are Synergistic
Synergy is the state in which the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Principle-centered people are synergistic. They are change catalysts. They improve almost any situation they get into. They work as smart as they work hard. They are amazingly productive, but in new and creative ways.
In team endeavors they build on their strengths and strive to complement their weaknesses with the strengths of others. Delegation for results is easy and natural to them, since they believe in others' strengths and capacities. And since they are not threatened by the fact that others are better in some ways, they feel no need to supervise them closely.
When principle-centered people negotiate and communicate with others in seemingly adversarial situations, they learn to separate the people from the problem. They focus on the other person's interests and concerns rather than fight over positions. Gradually others discover their sincerity and become part of a creative problem-solving process. Together they arrive at synergistic solutions, which are usually much better than any of the original proposals, as opposed to compromise solutions wherein both parties give and take a little.
They Exercise For Self-Renewal
Finally, they regularly exercise the four dimensions of the human personality: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
They participate in some kind of balanced, moderate, regular program of aerobic exercise, meaning cardiovascular exercise -- using the large leg muscles and working the heart and lungs. This provides endurance -- improving the capacity of the body and brain to use oxygen -- along with many other physical and mental benefits. Also valuable are stretching exercises for flexibility and resistance exercises for strength and muscle tone.
They exercise their minds through reading, creative problem-solving, writing, and visualizing. Emotionally they make an effort to be patient, to listen to others with genuine empathy, to show unconditional love, and to accept responsibility for their own lives and decisions and reactions. Spiritually they focus on prayer, scripture study, meditation, and fasting.
I'm convinced that if a person will spend one hour a day on these basic exercises, he or she will improve the quality, productivity, and satisfaction of every other hour of the day, including the depth and restfulness of sleep.
No other single hour of your day will return as much as the hour you invest in sharpening the saw -- that is, in exercising these four dimensions of the human personality. If you will do this daily, you will soon experience the impact for good on your life.
Some of these activities may be done in the normal course of the day; others will need to be scheduled into the day. They take some time, but in the long run they save us a great deal of time. We must never get too busy sawing to take time to sharpen the saw, never too busy driving to take time to get gas.
I find that if I do this hour of exercise early in the morning, it is like a private victory and just about guarantees public victories throughout the day. But if I take the course of least resistance and neglect all or part of this program, I forfeit that private victory and find myself uprooted by public pressures and stresses through the day.
These principles of self-renewal will gradually produce a strong and healthy character with a powerfully disciplined, service-focused will.
Copyright © 1990, 1991 by Stephen R. Covey
Product details
- ASIN : 0671792806
- Publisher : FranklinCovey; Reprint edition (October 1, 1992)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780671792800
- ISBN-13 : 978-0671792800
- Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.44 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #280,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,795 in Business Management (Books)
- #3,716 in Leadership & Motivation
- #3,941 in Success Self-Help
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Stephen R. Covey is a renowned leadership authority, family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, and co-founder of FranklinCovey Co. He is author of several international bestsellers, including The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which has sold over 20 million copies. He was named one of TIME Magazine's 25 Most Influential Americans. Dr. Covey holds the Jon M. Huntsman Presidential Chair in Leadership at the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University.
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Highly Recommend.
Dr. Covey (a devout Mormon), who has his MBA from Harvard and a Doctor of Religious Education degree from BYU, practiced what he taught because both books are a distillation of Mormon values.
Dr. Covey was professionally influenced by Peter Drucker’s work – how people are organized across the spectra of business, government, and non-government sections of society. Drucker was a life-long proponent of ‘the knowledge/ life-long learner’, which Covey also espoused.
Stephen Covey was a professor at the Marriott School of Management at BYU and was also an assistant to the President of the university. Later, he went back to full-time academic duties as a professor of the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University in Logan.
My main copy of this book (I have several) has many dog-eared, red-pen marked passages that are meaningful to me; it also has many mini Post-It note pages that I use as marked tabs of important main topics, arranged both at the top and side of the book that I use for fast reference look-ups.
The front inside book cover lists 10 main themes in question format for all readers to consider. These deal with organizing and solving problems in behavioral leadership. The book has useful graphics to explain main ideas, but the amount of graphics is much less than those used in his 7 Habits book. As such, I would suggest having this book, too, for easy reference and a plethora of graphics, which also highlight leadership themes in managing change.
What is so ground-breaking about this book is that it casts a net of personal values ownership over the workplace environment, especially during tremendous change in the workforce. Principle-Centered Leadership stresses the value of strong, interpersonal work relationships, resting on a main saw in his 7 Habits book: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
Problem-solving with members of any group is key. All members want to be valued, respected, and part of a winning team that produces good work, especially in business, because profit is the main driver for having the team working together and gainfully employed in the first place. This book gives concise examples that Dr. Covey uses from his personal experience in leading seminars in ‘Big Business’ environments, but he also uses personal anecdotes to describe how he deals with his own personal, organized unit: the family unit with his wife and family. He describes how his family unit encounters, deals with, and resolves problems. As head of his family, he respectfully utilizes a co-leadership role with his wife and engages his children, as team members, in the process, too.
Unlike the workforce environment, in which much time and effort has first been spent to map out what needs to be done and in a given time-frame, family problems can crop up out-of-the-blue and need to be resolved, many times, on the spot. He discusses this, too.
Note that the process of principle-centered leadership is time-consuming at first when team members are first learning the tools of the organizational behavior trade and utilizing them in meaningful ways. However, after these tools become automatic, they are some of the best ways to interact with others – at home, at work, during involvement with team sports or other endeavors. These interactions will allow members to sail through rough waters and ensure that all members come out safely at the other side after having mastered how to set up a major saw: “Start with the end in mind.”
This saw is exactly what educators learn to do to write lesson plans and academic curricula: 1. listing the specific behavioral outcomes of learning (the desired behavior at the end) first and then 2. listing the specific instructional objectives for students to be able to exhibit this behavior (the ‘how to get to the desired behavior’ at the beginning and throughout the plan). Both of these concepts are created before a full lesson plan is written to ensure that the outcomes are attained. In other words, the outcome and the objectives drive the plan. This process is also a way for educators and others to pre-think possible problems that could crop up along the way and be ready for them if and when they do.
Those of us educators who are professionally licensed with state teaching certificates, who have graduated from an accredited university College of Education, have been taught how to do this and have done student teaching in classes under the wing of a master teacher/ mentor before we could even step one foot into a classroom.
This book will become a well-utilized staple in your own personal library. Read it, buy copies for others, and have discussions with them about being principled in dealing with others. Note that most of us as adults are like Covey: leaders/ co-leaders of the family and leaders/ non-leaders at work.
I thoroughly recommend this book for all people to learn how to be principled in their dealings with others at work, at home, and at play. Covey’s earlier book, the 7 Habits is a pre-cursor for this book, and I recommend that people buy that, too and read it before they read this book or at least use it as a reference to this one. This book is one of the books that I buy in bulk and pass out to teams of people in many of the groups of which I am a member, so that we all have a common framework for getting work done, in time to make corrections/ edits (before publication), and in a mutually-respectful and professional way, so that all team members benefit from the combined work output. It is especially valuable for whomever is in a leadership position in the group.
The abridged version is a solid and interesting listen and can be completed in just a couple of hours. Worth buying.
If you want to feel rooted and comfortable making organizational decisions, the author points out that this must be done in the context of human needs at the fore. Be prepared to re-invent yourself, and use this book as your guide. I use the word "organizational" so that readers of this review don't misconstrue it as a business book. An organization is described in the text as a group of two or more with a common purpose: read - family, marriage, friendship, school, etc.
Be prepared to review and reflect iteratively, as many of the points made are difficult to grasp on the first pass. This difficulty is likely caused by trying to relate to the material from a faulty and deep-rooted paradigm - I was guilty - , but persevere - it it well worth it in the end.
If you are looking for a "7-Habits" and "Principle-Centered Leadership" rolled into one book, "The Eighth Habit' may be your best bet. I strongly recommend all three in sequence.
Covey is simply the best, if you are prepared to do the hard work... on yourself.
Dave Day