Stephen Covey Quotes
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I find most meetings are a waste of time, because they are so ill-prepared and there's little opportunity for true synergy in producing better solutions than what anyone originally thought of. So I work hard to only attend those meetings that have strategic importance and miss all kinds of other seemingly urgent meetings.
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Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass. The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities - what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction - what we feel is important and how we lead our lives. In an effort to close the gap between the clock and the compass in our lives, many of us turn to the field of "time management."
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Our problems and pain are universal and increasing, and the solutions to the problems are and always will be based upon universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society throughout history.
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Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.
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Don't cheat people of their growth. Empower them to solve problems and generate ideas. Watch them grow!
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Only 20 percent of employees working in large organizations surveyed feel their strengths are in play every day. Thus, eight our of ten employees surveyed feel somewhat miscast in their role.
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Treat them all the same by treating them differently.
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Our character is basically a composite of our habits.
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Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.
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'In empathic listening you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with you eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behaviour. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel.' ... 'You have to open yourself up to be influenced'.
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If we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.
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The personal power that comes from principle-centered living is the power of a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.
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If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.
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True effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden eggs) and the producing asset (the goose).
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We exhaust ourselves more from the tension and the consequences of internal disharmony than from hard, unremitting work.
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To me, the essence of keeping the soul nourished is obedience to one's conscience. I don't think that the soul can be nourished unless people have a strong sense of conscience that they have educated and developed and soaked in the universal and timeless principles of integrity and service. This way, the individual's soul becomes part of the universal soul of service, contribution, and making a difference.
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Habit 7 is taking the time to sharpen the saw. By renewing the four dimensions of your nature - physical, spiritual, mental and social/emotional, you can work more quickly and effortlessly. To do this, we must be proactive. This is a Quadrant II (important, not urgent) activity that must be acted on. It's at the center of our Circle of Influence, so we must do it for ourselves.
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Every exaggeration of the truth once detected by others destroys our credibility and makes all that we do and say suspect.
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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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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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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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The key to creating passion in your life is to find your unique talents, and your special role and purpose in the world.
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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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While we cannot always choose what happens to us, we can choose our responses.