Stephen Covey Quotes
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We are free to choose our response in any situation, but in doing so we chose the attendant consequence. If we pick up one end of the stick, we pick up the other.
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Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart; his heart is where his enthusiasm is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is. Treat employees as volunteers just as you treat customers as volunteers, because that's what they are. They volunteer the best parts - their hearts and minds.
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Interdependence is a higher value than independence
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There are principles that govern human effectiveness - natural laws in the human dimension that are just as real, just as unchanging and unarguably there as laws such as gravity are in the physical dimension.
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Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other.
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Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.
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The first job of a leader-at work or at home-is to inspire trust. It's to bring out the best in people by entrusting them with meaningful stewardships, and to create an environment in which high-trust interaction inspires creativity and possibility.
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Above all, success in business requires two things: a winning competitive strategy, and superb organizational execution. Distrust is the enemy of both. I submit that while high trust won't necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one.
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Perhaps the greatest role of parenting, more than directing and telling children what to do, is helping children connect with their own gifts, particularly conscience.
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How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office - or watching TV? The answer is, No one.
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If you focus on principles, you empower everyone who understands those principles to act without constant monitoring, evaluating, correcting, or controlling.
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People who end up with the good jobs are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, not problems themselves, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary to get the job done.
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He who has a why can deal with any what or how.
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Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
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During the first few minutes in lift-off, the astronauts were strictly controlled and were powerfully buffeted by the forces of nature struggling to keep them on earth. This is somewhat comparable to the pull of the flesh when our alarm goes off early in the morning. Unless we put "mind over mattress" and carry out the resolves made the night before, we will experience our first defeat that day. Not sufficient to finish. Mission aborted.
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We value the clock for its speed and efficiency. The clock has its place, efficiency has its place, after effectiveness. The symbol of effectiveness is the compass a sense of direction, purpose, vision, perspective, and balance. But the empowerment process itself is not efficient.
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What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. There are people we trust because we know their character. Whether they're eloquent or not, whether they have human-relations techniques or not, we trust them and work with them.
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Accountability breeds response-ability.
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Results matter! They matter to your credibility.
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The key to motivation is motive. It's the why. It's the deeper yes! burning inside that makes it easier to say no to the less important.
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Vision is about more than just getting things done, accomplishing some task, achieving something; it is about discovering and expanding our view of others, affirming them, believing in them, and helping them discover and realize the potential within them-helping them find their own voice.
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All things are created twice; first mentally; then physically. The key to creativity is to begin with the end in mind, with a vision and a blue print of the desired result.
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Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.
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Once you've found your own voice, the choice to expand your influence, to increase your contribution, is the choice to inspire others to find their voice.