I am sure most of you are quite familiar with Covey’s seven habits which became a bestseller.
In this new book on 8 th habit he takes us along Finding your inner voice through Inspiring others to find their voice in 15 interesting chapters.
Here are a summary of a few vital chapters.
From Chapter 1: Why an 8th Habit?
The world has profoundly changed since 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' was published in 1989. The challenges and complexity we face in our personal lives and relationships, in our families, in our professional lives, and in our organizations are of a different order of magnitude. In fact, many mark 1989-the year we witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall-as the beginning of the Information Age, the birth of a new reality, a sea change of incredible significance-truly a new era.
Many have asked whether the 7 Habits are still relevant in today's new reality. My answer is always the same: The greater the change and more difficult the challenges, the more relevant they become. You see, the 7 Habits are about becoming highly effective. They represent a complete framework of universal, timeless principles of character and human effectiveness.
Being effective as individuals is no longer optional in today's world-it's the price of entry to the playing field. But surviving, thriving, innovating, excelling and leading in this new reality will require us to build on and reach beyond effectiveness. The call and need of a new era is for greatness. It's for fulfillment, passionate execution, and significant contribution. These are on a different plane or dimension. They are different in kind-just as significance is different in kind, not in degree, from success. Tapping into the higher reaches of human genius and motivation-what we would call voice-requires a new mind-set, a new skill-set, a new tool-set…a new habit.
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 challenges of the New Knowledge Worker Age. This 8th Habit is to Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs.
The 8th Habit represents the pathway to the enormously promising side of today's reality. It stands in stark contrast to the pain and frustration I've been describing. In fact, it is a timeless reality. It is the voice of the human spirit-full of hope and intelligence, resilient by nature, boundless in its potential to serve the common good. This voice also encompasses the soul of organizations that will survive, thrive and profoundly impact the future of the world.
Voice is unique personal significance-significance that is revealed as we face our greatest challenges and which makes us equal to them.
Voice lies at the nexus of talent (your natural gifts and strengths), passion (those things that naturally energize, excite, motivate and inspire you), need (including what the world needs enough to pay you for), and conscience (that still, small voice within that assures you of what is right and that prompts you to actually do it). When you engage in work that taps your talent and fuels your passion-that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet-therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul's code.
There is a deep, innate, almost inexpressible yearning within each one of us to find our voice in life.
From Chapter 2: The Thing Mind-Set of the Industrial Age
The main assets and primary drivers of economic prosperity in the Industrial Age were machines and capital-things. People were necessary but replaceable. You could control and churn through manual workers with little consequence-supply exceeded demand. You just got more able bodies that would comply with strict procedures. People were like things-you could be efficient with them. When all you want is a person's body and you don't really want their mind, heart, or spirit (all inhibitors to the free-flowing process of the machine age), you have reduced a person to a thing.
So many of our modern management practices come from the Industrial Age.
It gave us the belief that you have to control and manage people.
It gave us our view of accounting, which makes people an expense and machines assets. Think about it. People are put on the P-and-L statement as an expense; equipment is put on the balance sheet as an investment.
It gave us our carrot-and-stick motivational philosophy-the Great Jackass technique that motivates with a carrot in front (reward) and drives with a stick from behind (fear and punishment).
It gave us centralized budgeting-where trends are extrapolated into the future and hierarchies and bureaucracies are formed to drive "getting the numbers"-an obsolete reactive process that produces "kiss-up" cultures bent on "spending it so we won't lose it next year" and protecting the backside of your department.
All these practices and many, many more came from the Industrial Age-working with manual workers.
The problem is, managers today are still applying the Industrial Age control model to knowledge workers. Because many in positions of authority do not see the true worth and potential of their people and do not possess a complete, accurate understanding of human nature, they manage people as they do things. This lack of understanding also prevents them from tapping into the highest motivations, talents, and genius of people. What happens when you treat people like things today? It insults and alienates them, depersonalizes work, and creates low-trust, unionized, litigious cultures. What happens when you treat your teenage children like things? It, too, insults and alienates, depersonalizes precious family relationships and creates low trust, contention and rebellion.
What happens when you manage people like things? They stop believing that leadership can become a choice. Most people think of leadership as a position and therefore don't see themselves as leaders. Making personal leadership (influence) a choice is like having the freedom to play the piano. It is a freedom that has to be earned-only then can leadership become a choice.
From Chapter 5: Express Your Voice -- Vision, Discipline, Passion and Conscience
When you study the lives of all great achievers-those who have had the greatest influence on others, those who have made significant contributions, those who have simply made things happen -- you will find a pattern. Through their persistent efforts and inner struggle, they have greatly expanded their four native human intelligences or capacities. The highest manifestations of these four intelligences (mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual) are: for the mental, vision; for the physical, discipline; for the emotional, passion; for the spiritual, conscience. These manifestations also represent our highest means of expressing our voice.
Vision is seeing with the mind's eye what is possible in people, in projects, in causes and in enterprises. Vision results when our mind joins need with possibility. As William Blake once said, "What is now proved was once only imagined." When people have no vision, when they neglect the development of the mind's capacity to create, they fall prey to the human tendency toward victimism.
Discipline is paying the price to bring that vision into reality. It's dealing with the hard, pragmatic, brutal facts of reality and doing what it takes to make things happen. Discipline arises when vision joins with commitment. The opposite of discipline and the commitment that inspires sacrifice is indulgence-sacrificing what matters most in life for the pleasure or thrill of the moment.
Passion is the fire, the desire, the strength of conviction and the drive that sustains the discipline to achieve the vision. Passion arises when human need overlaps unique human talent. When one does not have the passion that flows from finding and using one's voice to serve great purposes, the void is filled with insecurity and the empty chatter of a thousand voices that drive the social mirror. In relationship and organizational settings, passion includes compassion.
Conscience is the inward moral sense of what is right and what is wrong, the drive toward meaning and contribution. It is the guiding force to vision, discipline and passion. It stands in stark contrast to the life dominated by ego.
These four words-vision, discipline, passion and conscience-essentially embody many, many other characteristics used to describe those traits we associate with people whose influence is great, whether known to many or few.
Cheers
Prof.Lakshman
From Sri Lanka, Kolonnawa
32In this new book on 8 th habit he takes us along Finding your inner voice through Inspiring others to find their voice in 15 interesting chapters.
Here are a summary of a few vital chapters.
From Chapter 1: Why an 8th Habit?
The world has profoundly changed since 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' was published in 1989. The challenges and complexity we face in our personal lives and relationships, in our families, in our professional lives, and in our organizations are of a different order of magnitude. In fact, many mark 1989-the year we witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall-as the beginning of the Information Age, the birth of a new reality, a sea change of incredible significance-truly a new era.
Many have asked whether the 7 Habits are still relevant in today's new reality. My answer is always the same: The greater the change and more difficult the challenges, the more relevant they become. You see, the 7 Habits are about becoming highly effective. They represent a complete framework of universal, timeless principles of character and human effectiveness.
Being effective as individuals is no longer optional in today's world-it's the price of entry to the playing field. But surviving, thriving, innovating, excelling and leading in this new reality will require us to build on and reach beyond effectiveness. The call and need of a new era is for greatness. It's for fulfillment, passionate execution, and significant contribution. These are on a different plane or dimension. They are different in kind-just as significance is different in kind, not in degree, from success. Tapping into the higher reaches of human genius and motivation-what we would call voice-requires a new mind-set, a new skill-set, a new tool-set…a new habit.
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 challenges of the New Knowledge Worker Age. This 8th Habit is to Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs.
The 8th Habit represents the pathway to the enormously promising side of today's reality. It stands in stark contrast to the pain and frustration I've been describing. In fact, it is a timeless reality. It is the voice of the human spirit-full of hope and intelligence, resilient by nature, boundless in its potential to serve the common good. This voice also encompasses the soul of organizations that will survive, thrive and profoundly impact the future of the world.
Voice is unique personal significance-significance that is revealed as we face our greatest challenges and which makes us equal to them.
Voice lies at the nexus of talent (your natural gifts and strengths), passion (those things that naturally energize, excite, motivate and inspire you), need (including what the world needs enough to pay you for), and conscience (that still, small voice within that assures you of what is right and that prompts you to actually do it). When you engage in work that taps your talent and fuels your passion-that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet-therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul's code.
There is a deep, innate, almost inexpressible yearning within each one of us to find our voice in life.
From Chapter 2: The Thing Mind-Set of the Industrial Age
The main assets and primary drivers of economic prosperity in the Industrial Age were machines and capital-things. People were necessary but replaceable. You could control and churn through manual workers with little consequence-supply exceeded demand. You just got more able bodies that would comply with strict procedures. People were like things-you could be efficient with them. When all you want is a person's body and you don't really want their mind, heart, or spirit (all inhibitors to the free-flowing process of the machine age), you have reduced a person to a thing.
So many of our modern management practices come from the Industrial Age.
It gave us the belief that you have to control and manage people.
It gave us our view of accounting, which makes people an expense and machines assets. Think about it. People are put on the P-and-L statement as an expense; equipment is put on the balance sheet as an investment.
It gave us our carrot-and-stick motivational philosophy-the Great Jackass technique that motivates with a carrot in front (reward) and drives with a stick from behind (fear and punishment).
It gave us centralized budgeting-where trends are extrapolated into the future and hierarchies and bureaucracies are formed to drive "getting the numbers"-an obsolete reactive process that produces "kiss-up" cultures bent on "spending it so we won't lose it next year" and protecting the backside of your department.
All these practices and many, many more came from the Industrial Age-working with manual workers.
The problem is, managers today are still applying the Industrial Age control model to knowledge workers. Because many in positions of authority do not see the true worth and potential of their people and do not possess a complete, accurate understanding of human nature, they manage people as they do things. This lack of understanding also prevents them from tapping into the highest motivations, talents, and genius of people. What happens when you treat people like things today? It insults and alienates them, depersonalizes work, and creates low-trust, unionized, litigious cultures. What happens when you treat your teenage children like things? It, too, insults and alienates, depersonalizes precious family relationships and creates low trust, contention and rebellion.
What happens when you manage people like things? They stop believing that leadership can become a choice. Most people think of leadership as a position and therefore don't see themselves as leaders. Making personal leadership (influence) a choice is like having the freedom to play the piano. It is a freedom that has to be earned-only then can leadership become a choice.
From Chapter 5: Express Your Voice -- Vision, Discipline, Passion and Conscience
When you study the lives of all great achievers-those who have had the greatest influence on others, those who have made significant contributions, those who have simply made things happen -- you will find a pattern. Through their persistent efforts and inner struggle, they have greatly expanded their four native human intelligences or capacities. The highest manifestations of these four intelligences (mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual) are: for the mental, vision; for the physical, discipline; for the emotional, passion; for the spiritual, conscience. These manifestations also represent our highest means of expressing our voice.
Vision is seeing with the mind's eye what is possible in people, in projects, in causes and in enterprises. Vision results when our mind joins need with possibility. As William Blake once said, "What is now proved was once only imagined." When people have no vision, when they neglect the development of the mind's capacity to create, they fall prey to the human tendency toward victimism.
Discipline is paying the price to bring that vision into reality. It's dealing with the hard, pragmatic, brutal facts of reality and doing what it takes to make things happen. Discipline arises when vision joins with commitment. The opposite of discipline and the commitment that inspires sacrifice is indulgence-sacrificing what matters most in life for the pleasure or thrill of the moment.
Passion is the fire, the desire, the strength of conviction and the drive that sustains the discipline to achieve the vision. Passion arises when human need overlaps unique human talent. When one does not have the passion that flows from finding and using one's voice to serve great purposes, the void is filled with insecurity and the empty chatter of a thousand voices that drive the social mirror. In relationship and organizational settings, passion includes compassion.
Conscience is the inward moral sense of what is right and what is wrong, the drive toward meaning and contribution. It is the guiding force to vision, discipline and passion. It stands in stark contrast to the life dominated by ego.
These four words-vision, discipline, passion and conscience-essentially embody many, many other characteristics used to describe those traits we associate with people whose influence is great, whether known to many or few.
Cheers
Prof.Lakshman
From Sri Lanka, Kolonnawa
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Covey Stephen - The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People.pdf