Stephen Covey Quotes
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I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a 'transformer' in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.
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When your happiness comes primarily from the happiness of others, you know you have moved from a 'me' experience to a 'we' experience. And the whole problem-solving and opportunity-seizing process changes.
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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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I win the private victory when I have made my mind up and commit to live by correct principles and to serve worthy purposes.
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Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice.
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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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Principles are the simplicity on the far side of complexity.
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When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen.
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"If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust toward me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to. I can even make mistakes and that trust level, that emotional reserve, will compensate for it. My communication may not be clear, but you'll get my meaning anyway. You won't make me "an offender for a word." When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective."
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When we listen with the intent to understand others, rather than with the intent to reply, we begin true communication and relationship building. Opportunities to then speak openly and to be understood come much more naturally and easily.
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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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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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Consequences are governed by principles, and behavior is governed by values; therefore, value principles!
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Results matter! They matter to your credibility.
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Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves - who can take initiative and be the solution to problems.
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If we know how to listen to our own heart, we can listen to the hearts of others.
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When parents see their children's problems as opportunities to build the relationship instead of as negative, burdensome irritations, it totally changes the nature of parent-child interaction. Parents become more willing, even excited, about deeply understanding and helping their children. . . . This paradigm is powerful in business as well.
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The 8th Habit, then, is not about adding one more habit to the 7 - one that somehow got forgotten. It's about seeing and harnessing the power of a third dimension to the 7 Habits that meets the central challenge of the new Knowledge Worker Age. The 8th Habit is to Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs.
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Look at the word responsibility-"response-ability"-the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.
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In the absence of wake-up calls, many of us never really confront the critical issues of life.
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I define discipline as the ability to make + keep promises and to honor commitments.
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But with the steady disintegration of the family in modern society over the last century, the role of the school in bridging the gap has become vital!
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The problems in life come when we're sowing one thing and expecting to reap something entirely different.
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They Nazi captors had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he Viktor Frankl had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options.