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FranklinCovey Blog | 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People
Find Career Fulfillment in Tough Times with new iPhone App
With the national unemployment rate in double digits and talk about layoffs and the economic crisis dominating newscasts and dinner tables everywhere, it’s no secret that today’s employees and job-seekers are more stressed, discouraged, and drained than ever.
To help people find work and career fulfillment in these tough economic times, Stephen Covey, author of the best-seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Jennifer Colosimo, chief learning officer at FranklinCovey, have launched the Great Career iPhone application, which was developed in partnership by FranklinCovey and Signal Patterns based on their new book Great Work, Great Career.
Get the Great Career iPhone application at iTunes at: http://bit.ly/GreatCareer
The Great Career iPhone app can be used in conjunction with the content in Stephen Covey and Jennifer Colosimo’s book or independently. Its specific activities and functionality include:
- Know Your Strengths – Research-based assessments help users to discover personality, strengths and career interests
- Define Your Contribution – A contribution statement builder helps users specifically define how they can match their strengths, talents and passions to an opportunity that matters to an employer.
- Build Your Village – A unique network-building and -nurturing tool; enables users to take specific actions and track them to build and maintain their most important career relationships
- Find Resources – Helps users identify “hidden resources” that can assist them to overcome specific challenges, or take advantage of promising opportunities, in building their career
- Action Center – Tracks, prioritizes and accomplishes all the necessary tasks to build and maintain a great career
- Ask an Expert – Allows users to submit questions to Stephen Covey and Jennifer Colosimo as well as get answers to frequently asked career questions.
Get the Great Career iPhone application at iTunes http://bit.ly/GreatCareer
Click here to get the Great Work, Great Career book.
Great Work, Great Career Q&A – part 1
Q: We had a lot of questions on the Great Work, Great Career webcast about having a personal brand. Some asked for more information. Others wanted to know how the idea of branding yourself works in our interdependent reality and how it aligns with collaboration and teamwork.
A: A “brand” is being known for something. You might be known in your organization or to a small group in your industry, or more broadly, to the websphere. As you know from a product focus, the most important thing to strive for in a product brand is trust in the brand. I believe the same is true for personal brand. There are many reasons this concept of personal branding has grown in importance. In the knowledge age, I can’t rely on your job title to tell me what problems you can solve, you have to tell me or build a reputation (brand). In order to gain any mindshare, you must be able to succinctly represent yourself because the rate of information has accelerated. Also, while face-to-face networking will never go away, I would suggest social networking gains in importance every year and without the nonverbal cues from face-to-face, who you are needs to be very clear on the web or your network will get confused.
Of course, individual brand is an independent concept. It is what “I” am known for. And I am suggested that your brand is in NO WAY a manipulative spin on who you are. It is, instead, communicating who you are. It does no good to your career if you have deep technical skills and have led projects resulting in cost savings and increases in employee loyalty if no one knows about it. In the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Covey explains how interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. This is really important: Only by knowing myself—my talents, passions, and vision—and by taking responsibility for my choices regardless of the difficulty of the situation—only then am I capable of building win-win relationships and collaborating to resolve difficult challenges. The confidence in self, my deeply rooted worth, allows me to be open and curious on the surface of my life. I don’t have to be right all the time because my self-worth isn’t tied to being right or “winning.” I’m much more curious, knowing that I don’t know everything about anything.
If you get stuck in independence and don’t progress to interdependence, you might be effective in building a career, but you won’t be highly effective.
How do you use social networking to grow your personal brand?
What steps have you take to progress to interdependence?
We would love to hear from you.
Author: Jennifer Colosimo, Chief Learning Officer at FranklinCovey
Empathic Listening Tips
Being understood by others is the greatest need of all. – Stephen R. Covey
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey describes Empathic Listening as reflecting what a person feels and says in your own words to their satisfaction so they feel listened to and understood. Empathic Listening is not listening to advise, counsel, replay, refute, solve, fix, change, judge, agree, disagree, question, analyze, or figure out. Whether you are familiar with The 7 Habits and are looking for a refresher or new to them all together, here are a few tips to remember when using Empathic Listening.
It is best to use Empathic listening when:
- Emotion if high.
- The other person does not feel understood.
- You do not understand the other person.
- Trust is low in the relationship.
Here are a few Empathic Listening starters, these should help you get started using Empathic Listening.
- So, if I am understanding you correctly you are saying…
- What I’m hearing is…
- You seem…
- You must have felt…
- You feel…about…
What tips have you learned as you have used Empathic Listening in your life at home or at work? We would love to hear from you.
Press Release: The 7 Habits Inspire Teachers & Students Worldwide
FranklinCovey Co. (NYSE: FC) announced today that The Leader in Me, FranklinCovey’s Education process for teaching leadership at the elementary school level, is being used by more than 150 elementary schools in the U.S., Canada, Singapore, Australia, Japan, Hungary and the Philippines. The process, of which The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a foundational piece, inspires young students to develop the skills and self-confidence to lead their lives and succeed in the 21st Century. › Continue reading
Managing Fear and Insecurity
Much of our world is gripped with a sense of fear and insecurity–fear of losing jobs, homes, or our future. In such a state of insecurity and vulnerability, it is easy to see why people might resign to being in survival mode and looking out only for themselves, at home, at work or in the community. In this environment people tend to respond by being more and more independent. The mindset becomes: “I’m going to focus on ‘me and mine.’
Certainly, independence is vital; however, the problem is that we live in an interdependent reality. Our most important work, the problems we hope to solve or the opportunities we hope to realize require working and collaborating with other people in a high-trust, synergistic way-whether at home or at work. Having an interdependent mindset, skills and tools are vital, especially now as we work through challenges unlike anything most of us have ever seen in our life time.
The principles found in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are all about helping people learn how to understand and build interdependence. The more we really understand and practice the habits, the more we will build the core skills and character necessary to successfully respond to the many challenges that will inevitably come our way. As a result, we will be able to manage our fears and insecurities, and take charge of our lives-which, in turn, can reduce our fears and insecurities.
Are you focusing on practicing interdependence? What differences have you seen in your life?
Join my free social learning community at www.stephencovey.com
Author: Stephen R. Covey
Facilitator Tip: Video Set-up and Debrief
As a facilitator, you probably know that the program videos play a large role in the effectiveness of many of your FranklinCovey workshops. As part of the Client Facilitator Academy, we worked with our delivery consultants to come up with more ways to set-up and debrief of the videos used in your workshops.
Here is a sample of one from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Signature Program. Mike Bechtel, one of FranklinCovey’s senior delivery consultants, has provided some great ways to use the video Circle of Influence.
Best Practice: Set-up
Before showing this video, ask participants to take notes as they watch. They’ll learn the difference between the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence. Then, they’ll hear the story of Ben, a worker at a university who worked his way up through the ranks simply by putting his energy into the things he could influence. Ask them to list the things that were in each of Ben’s circles.
Best Practice: Debrief
Use two flip charts to gather conclusions from the group. “What was in Ben’s Circle of Concern? What was in his Circle of Influence? How did those choices impact those around him?” Ask for volunteers to share a situation that causes concern that most of the group could identify with-traffic, financial issues, relationships, etc. Then draw two circles on a flip chart, and have the group decide what things are in each circle.
Additional Thoughts
How do we use these two circles to become more proactive? Once we’ve decided what items are in each circle, we have to make two choices:
1. Put energy into the things that are in the Circle of Influence.
2. Don’t put energy into the things that are in the Circle of Concern.
The result? Whichever circle you put your energy in will grow. It’s that simple! Some people might feel that their Circle of Influence is just a tiny speck in the center of a huge Circle of Concern. But the principles still hold: no matter how small the circle is, that’s where we want to focus our energy. When we do, growth is inevitable and the Circle of Concern will shrink.
Click Here to access the 232 other video tip sheets.
Tip #5: Find Time for Yourself Each Day
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, it’s referred to as “Sharpening the Saw” (If you don’t know what that phrase means, perhaps you should attend the workshop). Essentially it means taking time to renew yourself, refill your engine, or regenerate your mind, body and spirit.
For me, this has been really hard. When I get to work I tend to be heads-down and not resurface for a long time. I would eat at my desk, or not eat at all. But what I’ve found, over time, is that the harder I work, the greater my stress becomes. It’s a vicious circle that you can’t escape.
But when I take five or ten minutes to read an interesting news story completely unrelated to work, run an errand at lunch, or call a family member or friend for a few minutes, my mind clears and I find that I have even more energy to get my projects done. Once I even went to a nearby Costco, grabbed a hot dog for lunch and walked the aisles for 20 minutes. It opened my mind and kept me fresh for the remainder of the day.
Regardless of what you do, find some time every day just for you. Whether alone or with others, find something other than work, to experience for a few moments.
Hopefully these five tips will keep your stress levels low, increase your productivity, and improve your life-no matter how crazy it becomes.
Author: Matt Murdoch, FranklinCovey
The Leader In Me – How schools can develop leaders one child at a time.
“We only get one chance to prepare our students for the future. What are we going to do with that one chance?” – Dr. Stephen R. Covey, The Leader in Me
At FranklinCovey we are passionate and serious about preparing future leaders. For the last 18 months FranklinCovey has been working on an exciting new offering for elementary schools. It is called The Leader in Me, and it is designed to prepare children to be leaders in our changing society.
The process is based upon the experience of educators and students at A.B. Combs Elementary School in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1999, this school was struggling with low academic performance and lack of engagement among faculty and parents. After searching for a solution, the administrators and teachers began learning principle-based leadership skills, including The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®, and then began teaching them to their students. In a short amount of time, end-of-grade tests improved dramatically. At the same time, the school saw significant and sustained increases in students’ self-confidence, dramatic drops in discipline problems, and impressive increases in teacher and administrator job satisfaction. › Continue reading
Five tips to reduce your stress: TIP #2
Have some of your colleagues been laid off recently? Are you being asked to pull up the slack and do more with less?
You’re not alone.
I mean, there are still other people in your organization, right?
Tip#2: Embrace Others
Odds are, when you’re working fast and furious, there is probably someone, somewhere in your organization that may have some downtime, or they’re worried about not being aligned with strategic projects. Find them. Grab them. Capitalize on their skills. And have them chip in. People are generally happier when they’re engaged and contributing. Sure, quality might slip a bit and it might take longer for you to get that project done. But there is a huge feeling of relief when you delegate a task to someone and you go back to your office and are able to tackle something else. And there is an even better feeling when they come back to you and the project is finished and better than if you did it yourself. › Continue reading
Discover Your Purpose – Building Your Mission Statement
I was introduced to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People 25 years ago as a freshman in college. The book wasn’t even written yet. I found the lecture series on tape in my campus bookstore, and bought them hoping for some solid advice as I embarked upon my college career.
I liked everything I heard, but some habits and ideas resonated with me more than others. Habit 2, Begin With the End in Mind was a habit that made theoretical sense to me, but it’s application (writing a personal mission statement) just seemed a little too ‘touchy-feely’ to me. It wasn’t that I was against the idea. I mean, ‘if you’re the kind of person that is in to that self-exploratory stuff, that’s great, but that kind of thing just isn’t my style.’ I will be honest, I kind of glossed over Habit 2.
Big mistake. › Continue reading