Principle-Centered Leadership by Stephen R. Covey

• Natural laws, based upon principles, operate regardless of our awareness of them or our obedience to them.
• It’s relatively easy to work on personalities: all we have to do is learn some new skill, rearrange language patterns, adopt human relations technologies, employ visualization affirmations, or strengthen our self-esteem. But it’s comparatively hard to change habits, develop virtues, learn basic disciplines, keep promises, be faithful to vows, exercise courage, or be genuinely considerate of the feelings and convictions of others. Nonetheless, it’s the true test and manifestation of our maturity.
• Correct principles are like compasses: they are always pointing the way. And if we know how to read them, we won’t get lost, confused, or fooled by conflicting voices and values.
• One of the characteristics of authentic leaders is there humility.
• Real empowerment comes from having both the principles and the practices understood and applied at all levels of the organization.
• Practices are the what to do’s, specific applications that fit specific circumstances. Principles are the why to do’s, the elements upon which applications or practices are built.
• Throughout history, the most significant breakthroughs have been breaks with the old ways of thinking, the old models and paradigms.
• Principle-centered leadership is practiced from the inside out on four levels:
• 1) personal (my relationship with myself);
• 2) interpersonal (my relationships and interactions with others);
• 3) managerial (my responsibility to get a job done with others); and
• 4) organizational (my need to organize people--to recruit them, train them, compensate them, build teams, solve problems, and crate aligned structure, strategy, and systems).
• Trustworthiness is based on character, what you are as a person, and competence, what you can do.
• Trust--or the lack of it--is at the root of success or failure in relationships and in the bottom-line results of business, industry, education, and government.
• Principle-centered people are constantly educated by their experiences.
• The primary human endowments are 1) self-awareness or self knowledge; 2) imagination and conscience; and 3) volition or will-power. The secondary endowments are 4) an abundance mentality; 5) courage and consideration; and 6) creativity. The seventh endowment is self-renewal. All are unique human endowments; animals don’t possess any of them. But they are all on a continuum of low to high levels.
• The root cause of almost all people problems is the basic communication problem--people do not listen with empathy.
• Success begets success. Starting a day with an early victory over self leads to more victories.
• Effective people lead their lives and manage their relationships around principles; ineffective people attempt to manage their time around priorities and their tasks around goals. Think effectiveness with people; efficiency with things.
• The ethical person looks at every economic transaction as a test of his or her moral stewardship. That’s why humility is the mother of all other virtues--because it promotes stewardship.
• Unless we control our appetites, we will not be in control of our passions and emotions. We will instead become victims of our passions, seeking or aspiring our own wealth, dominion, prestige, and power.
• The key to growth is to learn to make promises and to keep them.
• Self-mastery and self-discipline are the roots of good relationships with others.
• The place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves inside our circle of influence, our own character. As we become independent--proactive, centered in correct principles, value driven, and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity--we can choose to become interdependent: capable of building rich, enduring, productive relationships with other people.
• Personal effectiveness is the foundation of interpersonal effectiveness. Private victory precedes public victory. Strength of character and independence from the foundation for authentic, effective interaction with others.
• The following three character traits are essential to primary greatness:
• Integrity
• Maturity
• Abundance Mentality
• I define integrity as the value we place on ourselves.
• I define maturity as the balance between courage and consideration.
• Our thinking is that there is plenty out there for everybody.
• Most people are deeply scripted in the scarcity mentality. The see life as a finite pie: if someone gets a big piece of the pie, it means less for everybody else. It’s the zero-sum paradigm of life.
• Lasting solutions to problems, lasting happiness and success, come from the inside out. What results from the outside in is unhappy people who feel victimized and immobilized, focus on all the weakness of other people and the circumstances they feel are responsible for their own stagnant condition.
• The deep, fundamental problems we face cannot be solved on the superficial level on which they were created. We need a new level of thinking--based on principles of effective management--to solve these deep concerns. We need a principle-centered, character-based, “inside-out” approach.
• Almost every significant breakthrough is the result of a courageous break with traditional ways of thinking.
• The word paradigm is from the Greek word paradigma: a pattern or map for understanding and explaining certain aspects of reality. While a person may make small improvements by developing new skills, quantum leaps in performance and revolutionary advances in technology require new maps, new paradigms, new ways of thinking about and seeing the world.
• Ultimately the leadership style one adopts springs from one’s core ideas and feelings about the nature of man. Whatever a person has at the center of his life--work or pleasure, friend or enemy, family or possessions, spouse or self, principles or passions--will affect his perception. And it is perception that governs beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
• People are often seen as limitations, if not liabilities, rather than advantages and assets. Thus low performance is often institutionalized in the structure and systems, procedures and processes, of the organization.
• Programs should attempt to empower people to soard, to sail, to step forward bravely into the unknown, being guided more by imagination than memory, and ultimately to reach beyond their fears and past failures.
• Overcoming the pull of the past is in large part a matter of having clear identify and strong purpose--of knowing who you are and what you want to accomplish. Poor performance can often be attributed to poor prioritization and organization. Weak resolve si easily uprooted by emotion, mood, and circumstance.
• Highly effective people carry their agenda with them. Their schedule is their servant, not their master.
• For by small means are great things accomplished.
• Starting the day with a private victory over self is one good way to break old habits and make new ones.
• Our ability to do more and perform better will increase as we exercise the discipline of doing important and difficult work first, when we are fresh, and deferring routine jobs to other times. In this way we are products of our decisions, goals, and plans, not of our moods and circumstances.
• We increase our capacity to make and break habits much as we increase our lung capacity--we begin with a program of aerobics.
• If we will do the following five things, we will have the strength to be strong in hard moments, in testing times.
• Never make a promise we will not keep.
• Make meaningful promises, resolutions, and commitments to do better and to be better-and share these with a loved one.
• Use self-knowledge and be very selective about the promises we make.
• Consider promises as a measure of our integrity and faith in ourselves.
• Remember that our personal integrity or self-mastery is the basis for our success with others.
• Actions--actual doing--can change the very fiber of our nature. Dong changes our view of ourselves. Our personal behavior is largely a product of such self-made fuel.
• All real growth and progress is made step by step, following a natural sequence of development.
• There are no shortcuts in the development of professional skills, of talents such as piano playing and public speaking, or of our minds and characters. In all of life there are stages of processes of growth and development, and at every step the concept of the sex days of creation applies.
• Progress involves accepting the fact that I am currently at day two and refusing to pretend to be anywhere else.
• People cannot pretend for long; eventually they will be found out. Often an admission of ignorance is the first step in our education.
• There are times to teach and train and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and charged with emotion, attempts to teach or train are often perceived as a form of judgement and rejection. A better approach is to be alone with the person and to discuss the principle privately. But again, this requires patience and internal control--in short, emotional maturity.
• Comparisons breed insecurity, yet we commonly make them among our children, coworkers, and other acquaintances. If our sense of worth and personal security comes from such comparisons, how insecure and anxious we will be, feeling superior one minute and inferior the next.
• There is no security in changing things. Internal security simply does not come externally.
• To improve, we must start from where we are, not from where we should be, or where someone else is, or even from where others may think we are.
• I believe that day one and day two for most of us involve getting more control over the body--getting to bed early, arising early, exercising regularly, eating in moderation, staying at our work when necessary even though tired, and so many.
• But they key to our growth and development is always to begin where we are, at our day one.
• As dangerous as a little knowledge is, even more dangerous is much knowledge without a strong, principles character. Purely intellectual development without commensurate internal character development makes as much sense as putting a high-powered sports car in the hands of a teenager who is high on drugs.
• If there is no principle, there is no true north, nothing you can depend upon. Principles are proven, enduring guidelines for human conduct. Certain principles govern human effectiveness. The six major world religions all teach the same basic core beliefs--such principles as “You reap what you sow” and “Actions are more important than words.”
• The more closely our maps are aligned with correct principles--with the realities of the territory, with things as they are--the more accurate and useful they will be. Correct maps will impact our effectiveness far more than our efforts to change attitudes and behaviors. However, when the territory is constantly changing, any map is soon obsolete.
• Peter Drucker has said: “Plans are worthless, but planning is invaluable.” And if our planning is centered on an overall purpose or visions and on a commitment to set of principles, then the people who are closest to the action in the wilderness can use that compass and their own expertise and judgment to make decisions and take actions.
• Principles are not practices. Practices are specific activities or actions that work in one circumstance but not necessarily in another.
• Real leadership power comes from an honorable character and from the exercise of certain power tools and principles. Yet most discussion of leadership focus on genetic “great man” theories, personality “trait” theories, or behavioral “style” theories.
• Coercive power is based on fear in both the leaders and the follower. Leaders tend to lean on coercive power when they are afraid they won’t get compliance.
• The leaders who controls others through fear will find that the control is reactive and temporary. It is gone when the leaders or leader’s representatives or controlling system is gone.
• Coercive power imposes a psychological and emotional burden on both leaders and followers. It encourages suspicion, deceit, dishonesty, and, in the long run, dissolution.
• Most organizations are held together by utility power. Utility power is based on a sense of equity and fairness. As long as followers feel they are receiving fairly for what they are giving, the relationship will be sustained. The compliance that is based on utility power tends to look more like influence than control.
• Legitimate power is rare. It is the mark of quality, distinction, and excellence in all relationships. It is based on honor, with the leader honoring the follower and the follower choosing to contribute because the leader is also honored. The hallmark of legitimate power is sustained, proactive influence. Power is sustained because it is not dependent on whether or not something desirable or undesirable happens to the follower.
• Legitimate power occurs when the cause or purpose or goal is believed in as deeply by the followers as by the leaders.
• The more a leader is honored, respected, and genuinely regarded by others, the more legitimate power he will have with others.
• Here are ten suggestions for processors and principles that will increase a leader’s honor and power with others: persuasions, patience, gentleness, teachableness, acceptance, kindness, openness, compassionate confrontation, consistency, integrity.
• At the root of most communication problems are perception of credibility problems. None of us see the world as it is but as we are, as our frames of reference, or “maps”, define the terrority. And our experience-induced perceptions greatly influence our feelings, beliefs, and behavior.
• Listen to understand. Speak to be understood. Start dialogue from a common point of reference or point of agreement, and move slowly into areas of disagreement.
• The key to effective communication is the one-on-one relationship. The moment we enter into this special relationship with another person, we begin to change the very nature of our communication with them. We begin to build trust and confidence in each other.
• Effective communication requires skills, and skill development takes practice.
• Effective, two-way communication demands that we capture both content and intent and learn to speak the languages of logic and emotion.
• To be effective in presenting your point of view, start by demonstrating a clear understanding of the alternative points of view. Articulate them better than their advocates can. Effective presentations begin with pre assessment.
• Effective communication is built on the cement of trust. And trust is based on trustworthiness, not politics.
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood. When we’re communicating with another, we need to give full attention, to be completely present. Then we need to empathize--to see from the other’s point of view, to “walk in his moccasins” for awhile. This takes courage, and patience, and inner sources of security. But until people feel that you understand them, they will not be open to your influence.
• Remember: We are teaching one thing or another all of the time, because we are constantly radiating what we are.
• Effective delegation takes emotional courage as we allow, to one degree or another, others to make mistakes on our time, money, and good name. This courage consists of patience, self-control, faith in the potential of others, and respect for individual differences.
• Effective delegation must be two-way: responsibility given, responsibility received.
• Professional successes can’t compensate for failure in marriage and family relationships; life’s ledger will reflect the imbalance, if not the debt.
• Relationships with spouses and with children, as with other relationships, tend toward entropy--toward disorder and dissolution.
• People identify with what they see and what they feel far more than with what they hear.
• We are powerfully influenced by our scripts, but we can learn to rewrite our scripts. We can identify with new models and have new relationships. Better scripts won’t come merely from reading correct principles in good books, but from identifying with and relating to the persons who live them.
• Correct principles cannot compensate for incorrect modeling, for bad examples.
• Refine three vital skills. Time management, communication, and problem-solving are skills needed in every phase of marriage and family life.
• The essence of time management is to set priorities and then to organize and execute around them. Setting priorities requires us to think carefully and clearly about values, about ultimate concerns.
• Communication is a prerequisite to problem-solving and one of the most fundamental skills in life.
• The main problem in communication is the “translation” problem: translating what we mean into what we say and translating what we say into what we mean.
• When trust is low, communication is extremely difficult, exhausting, and ineffective. The key to communication is trust, and the key to trust is trustworthiness. Living a life of integrity is the beast guarantee of maintaining the climate of effective communication. As with all natural processes, there are no shortcuts, no quick fixes.
• Cultivate the ability to be alone and to think deeply, to “do nothing”, to enjoy silence and solitude. Reflect, write, listen, plan, visualize, ponder, relax. A rich private life nourishes our sense of personal worth and security.
• Cultivate the habit of sharpening the saw physically, mentally, and spiritually every day.
• Regular, vigorous exercise is vital to radiant health and unquestionably influences not just the quantity of our years but the quality of life in those years.
• We must never get so busy sawing that we don’t take time to sharpen the saw.
• If you want to get anywhere long-term, identify core values and goals and get the systems aligned with these values and goals.
• I have always believed that how people feel about themselves inside is the real key to using their talent and releasing their potential. And how they feel about themselves is largely a function of how they are seen and treated by others, particularly their parents.
• Visualization is based on the principle that all things are created twice: first mentally and then physically.
• World-class athletes are almost all visualizers; they literally experience their victories in their minds long before they experience them in fact.
• Principle-centered leadership is practiced from the inside out on personal, interpersonal, managerial, and organizational levels. Each level is “necessary but insufficient.” We have to work at all four levels on the basis of certain principles.
• The one thing people don’t want to change is their lifestyle, but they generally must change if they want to deal with the chronic nature of their most serious problems.
• Trust determines the quality of the relationship between people. And in a sense, trust is a chicken-and-egg problem. If you attempt to work on building trust at the exclusion of other chronic and acute problems, you will only exacerbate your situation.
• If you want to improve in major ways--I mean dramatic, revolutionary, transformation ways--if you want to make quantum improvements, either as an individual or as an organization, change your frame of reference.
• The great breakthroughs are breaks with old ways of thinking. As the paradigm shifts, it opens up a whole new area of insight, knowledge, and understanding, resulting in a quantum difference in performance.
• People spend their creativity on their own goals and dreams--and much of that energy is lost to the organization. Negative synergy is an enormous waste of human talent.
• The formula for positive synergy is involvement + patience = commitment.
• People want to contribute to the accomplishment of worthwhile objectives. They want to be part of a mission and enterprise that transcends their individual tasks. They don’t want to work in a job that has little meaning, even though it may tap their mental capacities. They want purposes and principles that life them, ennoble them, inspire them, empower them, and encourage them to their best selves.
• The scientific management paradigm says, “Pay me well.” The human relations paradigm says, “Treat me well.” The human resources paradigm suggests, “Use me well.” The principle-centered leadership paradigm says: “Let’s talk about vision and mission, roles, and goals. I want to make a meaningful contribution.”
• Culture is only a manifestation of how people see themselves, their co-workers, and their organizations.
• The key to quality products and services is a quality person. And the key to our personal quality is character and competence and the emotional bank account we have with other people. Principle-centered people get quantity through quality, results through relationships.
• A paradigm is a model of nature. To improve a paradigm is to make an effort to get a clearer understanding of what nature is, and in every field of endeavor these are called theories or explanations or models. It doesn’t matter how good your attitude is if your paradigm is flawed.
• Real progress starts with self and works from the inside out.
• In every field of endeavour we make assumptions regarding the ultimate nature of reality. If the fundamental assumptions or premises are wrong, the conclusions will also be wrong, even when the reasoning process from those premises are right.
• Sound conclusions can come only from consistent reasoning based on a correct premise or assumption.
• These are the first four conditions of empowerment: 1) win-win agreement; 2) self-supervision; 3) helpful structure and systems; and 4) accountability.
• First, specify desired results. Discuss what results you expect. Be specific about the quantity and quality.
• The concept of win-win suggests that managers and employees clarify expectations and mutually commit themselves to getting desired results.
• Second, set some guidelines. Communicate whatever principles, policies, and procedures are considered essential to getting desired results. Mention as few procedures as possible to allow as much freedom and flexibility as possible.
• Guidelines should also identify no-no’s or failure paths that experience has identified as inimical to accomplishing organizational goals or maintaining organizational values.
• Third, identify available resources. Identify the various financial, human, technical, and organizational resources available to employees to assist them in getting desired results.
• Fourth, define accountability. Holding people accountable for results puts teeth into the win-win agreement. If there is no accountability, people gradually lose their sense of responsibility and start blaming circumstances or other people for poor performance. But when people participate in setting the exact standard of acceptable performance, they feel a deep sense of responsibility to get desired results.
• Results can be evaluated in three ways: measurement, observation, and discernment. Specify how you will evaluate performance.
• Character is what a person is; skills are what a person can do. These are the human competences required to establish and maintain the other four [conditions].
• Clarifying expectations about roles and goals is the essence of team building. The idea is to get different groups together and sharing expectations regarding roles and goals in an atmosphere that isn’t emotionally charged.
• An “empowered” organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.
• Involvement is the key to implementing change and increasing commitment. We tend to be more interested in our own ideas than in those of others. If we are not involved, we will likely resist change.
• An effective decision has two dimensions: quality and commitment. By weighing these two dimensions and multiplying them, we can determine the effectiveness factor.
• When people become involved in the problem, they become significantly and sincerely commitmented to coming up with solutions to the problem.
• Until our information system accounts for people as well as things, we will operate our organizations in the dark.
• People believe what they want to believe, and what is strongly desired is easily believed.
• The purposes of human resource accounting are continuous quality improvement, team building, and individual progression--of course, even people who get some feedback can get mired and plateaued.
• It takes an exceptional chief executive to expose himself voluntarily to external scrutiny and to set up information systems that make him accountable to the other stakeholders.
• If you measure it and post it, you will improve it.
• Accurate feedback should be highly valued.
• It’s hard for someone who’s divorced from the day-to-day operations of a company, as well as for someone who’s totally immersed in the operations, to know what’s really going on. Hence there’s a need for good feedback.
• Effective human resource management begins with effective delegation, with making the best possible use of the time and talents of people. Often we delegat out of necessity: we simply have more work to do than we can do alone.
• We simply must delegate to increase our discretionary time for high-priority tasks. Time spent delegating, in the long run, is our greatest time saved.
• The effective executive asks people to think through problems and issues and make a final recommendation.
• People cannot be held responsible for results if they are “bailed out” in the middle of the fact-finding or decision-making process.
• Use the following five-step process for getting completed staff work.
• First, provide a clear understanding of the desired results.
• Second, give a clear sense of what level of initiative people have.
• Third, clarify assumptions.
• Fourth, provide those people charged to do completed staff work with as much time, resources, and access as possible.
• Fifth, set a time and place for presenting and reviewing the completed staff work.
• In organizations, people usually perform one of three essential roles: producer, manager, or leader. Each role is vital to the success of the organization.
• If there is no producer, great ideas and high resolves are not carried out. The work simple doesn’t get done. Where there is no manager, there is role conflict and ambiguity; everyone attempts to be a producer, working independently, with few established systems or procedures. And if there is no leader, there is lack of vision and direction. People begin to lose sight of their mission.
• Although each role is important to the organization, the role of leader is most important. Without strategic leadership, people may dutifully climb the “ladder of success” but discover, upon reaching the top rung, that it is leaning against the wrong wall.
• Peter Drucker teaches that within a few years of their establishment, most organizations lose sight of their mission and essential role and become focused on methods or efficiency or doing things right rather than on effectiveness or doing the right things. It seems that people tend to codify past successful practices into rules for the future and give energy to preserving and enforcing these rules even after they no longer apply.
• Leadership focuses on the top line. Management focus on the bottom line. Leadership derives its power from values and correct principles. Management organizes resources to serve selected objectives to produce the bottom line.
• The paradigm of total quality is continuous improvement. People and companies should not be content to stay where they are, no matter how successful they seem to be. And very few people or companies could possibly be content with the status quo if they were regularly receiving accurate feedback on their performance from their stakeholders.
• Quality begins with an understanding of our stakeholders’ needs and expectations, but ultimately it means meeting or exceeding those needs and expectations.
• Proactive leadership springs from an awareness that we are not a product of our systems, that we are not a produce of our environments, that those things powerfully influence us, but we can choose our responses to them.
• Proactivity is the essence of real leadership.
• Quality will give any individual or organization a long-term competitive advantage. And if it’s in the culture of the organization, it can’t be duplicated by anyone.
• Total Quality represents the century’s most profound, comprehensive alteration in management theory and practice.
• American management has given lip service to tapping the potential of its most important resource--its people. “The greatest waste in American is failure to use the abilities of people,” laments Demming.
• Management must empower its people in the deepest sense and remove the barriers and obstacles it has created that crush and defeat the inherent commitment, creativity, and quality service that people are otherwise prepared to offer.
• Management's key objective is to stabilize all systems and accurately predict process results. Once stable and predictable, processes can be controlled and improved and variation reduced. Statistical analysis is the basic tool to understand, predict, and thus reduce variation in systems and their components.
• Proactivity is more than being aggressive or assertive. It is both taking initiative and responding to outside stimuli based on one’s principles. Leadership focuses more on people than on things; on the long term rather than the short term; on developing relationships rather than on equipment; on values and principles rather than on activities; on mission, purpose, and direction rather than on methods, techniques, and speed.
• Perhaps the most powerful principle of all human interaction; genuinely seeking to understand another deeply before being understood in return.
• At the root of all interpersonal problems is failure to thoroughly understand each other.
• Summary of Deming’s 14 Points
• Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to be competitive, to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
• Adopt the new philosophy--top management and everybody.
• Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for mass inspection by building quality into the product initially.
• End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone.
• Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
• Institute job training, to develop skills in new hires, to assist in management to understand all processes of the organization.
• Teach and institute leadership. Supervision of management and production workers should help people and machines, working together, to do a better job.
• Drive out fear to increase everyone's effectiveness. Create trust. Create a climate for innovation.
• Break down barriers between departments. Optimize toward the aims and purposes of the company the efforts of teams, groups, staff areas.
• Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and production targets for the workforce.
• Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and production targets for the workforce.
• Eliminate numerical goals and quotas for production. Instead learn and institute methods for improvement. Eliminate management by objective. Instead, learn the capabilities of processes and how to improve them.
• Remove barriers that rob hourly workers, as well as management, of their right to pride of workmanship. Eliminate the annual rating or merit system.
• Institute a rigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.
• Institute an action plan, and put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation.
• Many companies and their managers are not transforming with the trends.
• Our society values capitalism, but many organizations practice feudalism.
• A written corporate constitution can be a priceless document for both individuals and organizations.
• Mission statements, whether personal or corporate in scope, empower people to take control of their lives and thereby gain more internal security.
• If you want to get anywhere long-term, identify core values and goals and get the systems aligned with these values and goals. Work on the foundation. Make it secure.
• If you identify your essential purpose and set up shared vision and values, you can be successful with any situation that comes along.
• Principles are timeless, universal laws that empower people. Individuals who think in terms of principles think of many applications and are empowered to solve problems under myriad different conditions and circumstance.
• Keep in mind that you can never build a life greater than its most noble purpose. Your constitution can help yo be your best and perform your best each day.
• Effective senior executives give most of their time and energies to issues at the meta and macro levels of leadership. They focus on maintaining and enhancing relationships with the people they work with most.
• Meta leadership deals mainly with vision and stewardships--with what is being entrusted to you as a leader and as a manager.
• Macro leaderships deals with strategic goals and how you organize structure and systems and set up processes to meet those goals.
• To be functional, mission statements should be short so that the people can memorize and internalize them. But they also need to be comprehensive.
• Whenever someone feels like a master of something, learning seems to stop. When learning stops, people begin to protect the status quo and adopt behaviors antithetical to good positive relating. When good relations is limited, the learning environment is affected.
• People are trained to think win-lose and lose-win. Consequently their response is to give up, fight, or flee.
• In a very real sense there is no such thing as organizational behavior. There is only individual behavior. Everything else flows out of that.