Stephen Covey Quotes
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Many people think in terms of either/or: either you're nice or you're tough. Win-win requires that you be both. It is a balancing act between courage and consideration. To go for win-win, you not only have to be empathic, but you also have to be confident. You not only have to be considerate and sensitive, you also have to be brave. To do that-to achieve that balance between courage and consideration-is the essence of real maturity and is fundamental to win-win.
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If you put good people in bad systems you get bad results. You have to water the flowers you want to grow.
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Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.
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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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Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.
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Trust is a function of two things: character and competence. Character includes your integrity, your motive and your intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, and your track record. Both are vital.
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The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don't have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.
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I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.
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You can buy a person's hands but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.
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The character ethic, which I believe to be the foundation of success, teaches that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.
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The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
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Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant.
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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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By centering our lives on timeless, unchanging principles, we create a fundamental paradigm of effective living. It is the center that puts all other centers in perspective.
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Leadership is a choice, not a position
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Creating a warm, caring, supportive, encouraging environment is probably the most important thing you can do for your family.
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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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Management works in the system; leadership works on the system.
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It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.
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Whenever you experience stress of any kind, look into yourself and ask, In what way am I compromising my innermost values in this situation?
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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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Effective interdependence can only be built on true independence.
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We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.
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Anytime we think the problem is 'out there,' that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us. The change paradigm is 'outside-in' - what's out there has to change before we can change. The proactive approach is to change from the 'inside-out': to be different, and by being different, to effect positive change in what's out there - I can be more resourceful, I can be more diligent, I can be more creative, I can be more cooperative.