Personal Response To Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People

Write a Personal response to Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

The essay will discuss in detail about my personal response and learning from the book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal change. The book is written by Stephen Covey and he has discussed the proven practices in order to bring some transformation through this best selling work in the form of book. This is considered as one of those work consisting facts of life that has transformed the life of the people forever.  The book presents a holistic approach which is integrated and focused on principles in order to solver personal as well as professional issues (Covey, 2008). The books is primarily based on different principles and these principles gives a simple yet trusted solution to easily adapt good changes in life along with the right kind of wisdom and complete power to take some important benefits of the options that actually creates some good changes.

Following are the seven habits discussed in detail and by response to those habits: -

It is very crucial to be more proactive in life. The truth is the people will not achieve anything simply sitting at home and planning. For that one need to get out and be more active in deciding what one want to accomplish in life and also figuring out a proper game plan of how one is going to get there (Buse, and Harmer, 2007).

It is also important to start with the end in mindset. If an individual want to become something in life, than the first step will be to find out about skills, knowledge as well as experiences needed for the same. After achieving that information or data, one can easily compare it with the present set of knowledge, experiences and skills. Accordingly one can decide the required gaps. When the gaps can be figured out easily, it become important to gain some vital information, skills and experienced on the same and people also need it to become more qualified for the position (Buse, and Harmer, 2007). Therefore, it is crucial to start with the end and decide all the steps beforehand.

First things first should be the mantra of life. In daily lives, it is important to make a list of things quickly as most important thing one need to achieve at work. I call them my blue chip list since these are some important items that I usually prioritize with highest level of requirement. This further will force me as a person to be more attentive on finishing the crucial piece of work first and then start to understand that something are trivial by nature and they can be put on one side or can even be forgotten (Buse, and Harmer, 2007).

Importance of Character-based Ethics

Win/win situations are very important. It is always crucial to understand that it is sometimes amazing that when this approach is based on terms of a win/win solution which is better and a more creative answer was normally found.

It is important to first understand the situation than explaining yourself. The habit is specifically crucial for people on managerial position. As a manager answers to a situation it is first important for him to understand all the perspectives of the situation. After understanding it, it is important to decide the best possible answers however that can only take place after the situation is completely understood (Covey, 2014).

Synergy is crucial as it make us understand that the overall sum is much greater than the small parts. The habit of synergy is based on always important to choose to work as a team that is diverse by nature and will function well together. There are many kinds of background as well as experiences that come from diverse and often based on creative ideas when people work with one another. There is also a difference based on creativity and is often based on the present world of competition (Covey, 2014).

The last habit is one of the most influential one and the learning is that if I want move ahead in my career it is important to take some time out to upgrade the knowledge and learn new skills in the areas whenever required.

It is also very important to understand that the element of character ethics are initial featured while other like personality ethics become secondary elements for focus. The secondary traits may also assist me to understand and play the game in order to success in some particular situations to accomplish long term success. When the character is based on what is visible in long run associations (Andriole, 2007).

The issue with depending on the personality based ethics; the fundamental paradigm for the same is right and sometimes changes the external attitude which is not very impactful. The world is seen on the basis of different perspective which can also make the dramatic impact on the thing I perceive important. There are number of experiments associated with it that are conducted in two parts that are shown to two different people. The first group is shown a drawing of the young and beautiful woman and the other is shown an old woman. The first round of exposure both groups are given an abstract drawing and this specific drawing consists of the components of young and old women.  So the first group who saw first drawing saw the beautiful woman in the abstract drawing and the second group saw the old woman in the abstract drawing (Andriole, 2007). The important point is that people see thing not as what they think they are but what society condition them to see. It is very crucial to understand the significance of the past conditioning and me as an individual has experienced a shift in the way I use to see the things. In order to make crucial changes in lives of people, it is important to work on the foundation level paradigms which help in perceiving the world.

Importance of Striking a Balance between Production and Production Capacities

Then there is character based ethics which is based on the principle of that existing in every human being. There are some important examples based on the principle of fairness, integrity, honesty, quality of life, potential and overall development. These principles are completely opposite with the practices that are specific in situations and on the other hand, these principles have a universal application for the same (Andriole, 2007).

The requirement to have a right balance that exist between the production as well as production capacities actually applies on the financial, physical as well as human based assets. For instance, when in a company an individual is in charge of a specific machine and it many increase the overall production of the machine just by postponing the present scheduled level maintenance. But the rise in rapid results comes out to be at the expense of coming production in future because more maintenance means more performance on the machines at the later stage. The individual in question can further take the mess and can also be blamed for the inevitable rise in maintenance expenses and downtime (Nawrot and Doucet, 2014).

Consumer loyalty here is also an important point since it becomes an asset to which the overall production and production based capacity can be applied. A restaurant can have a reputation for serving a good amount of food however, the person in question may later determine to cut the overall costs and lower the quality of the food. It is obvious that the profits will rise immediately however, the reputation of the place will later be tarnished with the trust of the consumers that are lost and the overall level of profits is declined. 

Another concept is related to simple method associated with the quadrants and how to later characterize the concept of time in effective manner. Here it is important to understand that people who are able to manage the lives because of the overall crisis actually spend most of their time in first phase or quadrant and the remaining ten percent in fourth phase of quadrant with little attention on pat associated to II and III (Hennecke et al., 2014).

There are many other people that also spend a lot of time in third quadrant just by thinking that are in first phase.  When the people lead their life as being a part of third and fourth Quadrant specifically actually lead lives as an irresponsible citizen (Grant, 2016).

Rise in the gap between response and stimulus are based on the concept of more the space more one can develop between the response and stimulus and the more people can actually choose to be more impactful in responses since we as people are in reaction mode constantly (Redmond and Dolan, 2016). By properly developing a specific space, people can actually engage more and more in thinking process which is rational by nature and it is also able to test and assess different kind of options along with focus on the final outcomes (Smith et al., 2013).

Conclusion

The book is nothing but the inside out principle which is centered on the approach and different characters at the same time. The approach of inside out is based on the changes or transformation which initiates within first. There are so many people, where the approach shows a slow paradigm movement from the personality ethics to character based ethics (Smith et al., 2013).

Reference

Andriole, S.J., 2007. The 7 habits of highly effective technology leaders. Communications of the ACM, 50(3), pp.66-72.

Buse, K. and Harmer, A.M., 2007. Seven habits of highly effective global public–private health partnerships: practice and potential. Social science & medicine, 64(2), pp.259-271.

Covey, S., 2014. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens Personal Workbook. Simon and Schuster.

Covey, S.R., 2008. The 7 habits of highly effective people personal workbook. Simon and Schuster.

Grant, R.M., 2016. Contemporary strategy analysis: Text and cases edition. John Wiley & Sons.

Hennecke, M., Bleidorn, W., Denissen, J.J. and Wood, D., 2014. A three?part framework for self?regulated personality development across adulthood. European Journal of Personality, 28(3), pp.289-299.

Henriksen, D., 2016. The seven transdisciplinary habits of mind of creative teachers: An exploratory study of award winning teachers. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 22, pp.212-232.

Nawrot, I. and Doucet, A., 2014, April. Building engagement for MOOC students: introducing support for time management on online learning platforms. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web (pp. 1077-1082). ACM.

Redmond, S. and Dolan, P., 2016. Towards a conceptual model of youth leadership development. Child & Family Social Work, 21(3), pp.261-271.

Smith, R.C., Fortin, A.H., Dwamena, F. and Frankel, R.M., 2013. An evidence-based patient-centered method makes the biopsychosocial model scientific. Patient education and counseling, 91(3), pp.265-270.