When we say that a person has had a great career, what do we mean? That he or she made a lot of money? Moved spectacularly up the corporate ladder? Became famous or renowned in their profession?

And what about you? Are you looking forward to a great career? Would you describe your current career as “great”?

How do you create a great career for yourself? Can you have a great career and still have a great life at the same time, keeping the things you love – family, friends, work, and play – all in balance? 

The answer is, “It depends.”  It depends on how you want to contribute and how you define balance.   

Based on content featured in the soon to be released book Great Work, Great Career, by Dr. Stephen R. Covey and Jennifer Colosimo, in this webcast Jennifer will share critical, insightful principles and practices to help you discover your great career by discovering what your contribution will be and how you will make it.

 Specifically in this free webcast you will learn:

• How to begin identify your strengths, as summed up by your talents, passion, and conscience.
• Tips on how to craft a Contribution Statement.
• How to use your resourcefulness and initiative to get the job you want and overcome obstacles to making your contribution.
• How to create a network of supporters, both co-workers and clients—who can help you achieve your career goals.

 When: Friday, November 20, 2009
Time: 1:00 p.m. ET/12:00 p.m. CT/11:00 a.m. MT/10:00 a.m. PT
Cost: Complimentary

Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/198135273

Source Code: GCCB

Please join us, we would love to have you attend.

• Secure their job.
• Advance in their career.
• Become a highly-valued and respected employee.

“The current economic downturn has affected so many people who have found themselves unemployed or nervous about keeping their job and are in need of career and professional development to find and protect their job. And, many are finding they must recreate themselves to start a new career.  But, even in this difficult time, everyone can be proactive, and I look forward to sharing my knowledge to help them secure their future.”  — Stephen R. Covey

Are you concerned about your job and your role at work? Does there seem to be a major road block on your career path? Have you lost your job and are not sure which direction to go next? Post a comment and tell us your current situation and how and why these webinars would benefit you and on Aug 3 we will choose 50 people to attend for free. So tell us your story…

Click Here for contest details.

More about the webinar series:

These webinars will give you the mindset and skill-set to not only survive these tough times, but to personally thrive in them-and help others to do the same. This is a profound learning opportunity that may just help you to make breakthrough improvements or become the person you’ve always wanted to be. Each webinar stands alone, so you can attend one, two, or all three webinars for maximized learning. Learn more.

Contest ended Aug. 25, 2009.

When Andrew Cherng, co-founder of Panda Express, read Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s, The 8^th Habit, he found something intriguing in the back of the book-a CD with video clip from A.B. Combs Elementary School in Raleigh, North Carolina. Mr. Cherng already knew, firsthand, how powerful the 7 Habits could be.  But, could children as young as kindergarten be taught the timeless principles? Andrew and Peggy Cherng decided to visit the school.

The theme at A.B. Combs is leadership. It permeates everything they do and every choice they make. They do not believe that every child will be or should be a CEO. Rather they focus on leadership principles with the 7 Habits as their foundation.

Leadership principles:

• Helping students take responsibility for their lives.
• Working with others more effectively.
• Doing the right thing even when no one is looking.

The 7 Habits:

• Habit 1: Be Proactive You’re in Charge
• Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind Have a Plan
• Habit 3: Put First Things First Work First, Then Play
• Habit 4: Think Win-Win Everyone Can Win
• Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood Listen Before You Talk
• Habit 6: Synergize Together is Better
• Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw Balance Feels Best

What would be different in your business if the children of today/your future employees came to you with these principles already firmly established?

“When we recruit leaders, we like to see people who are able to project their passion, who have self-confidence, and who have the right attitude to really face the unknowns and the uncertainties that we all face every day in our personal or career lives. I saw all those traits in the children at A.B. Combs.” – Peggy Cherng.

Andrew and Peggy Cherng decided to sponsor six schools in their community.

Since then Panda Express has committed to sponsoring three additional schools and many other businesses have seen the potential in The Leader in Me and decided to sponsor schools.

We only get one chance to prepare our students for a future that none of us can possibly predict.  What are we going to do with that one chance?

 For more information, go to www.TheLeaderInMe.org or call (800) 272-6839.

 Author: Judy Yauch, FranklinCovey Education Solutions

According to Dr. Stephen R. Covey a mission statement is like a constitution by which you make all decisions for your life. Highly effective people shape their own future instead of letting other people, their culture, or their circumstance determine it. A mission statement provides direction and clarity for your life, your family, your team and your organization.

Such clarity is critically important in today’s turbulent climate. You may work within an organization with fewer people, fewer resources, more confusion, and more noise-you may be expected to do as much or more with far fewer resources. In order to survive in such an environment, you need a compass to help stay focused and on course in order to make critical decisions and accomplish key priorities.

Benefits of a Mission Statement:

• Gives you a greater sense of meaning and purpose.
• Guides your day-to-day decisions.
• Helps you design your life, your family, your team or your organization instead of having it designed for you.
• Provides focus.
• Clarifies what is most important.

If you don’t have a mission statement or are ready to revamp, we can help you get started today. FranklinCovey’s mission statement builder provides an introspective path to creating your mission statement as you answer thought-provoking questions you will uncover your core values and highest goals.

Click here to use FranklinCovey’s Mission Statement Builder to get started today.

Once you write your mission statement come back and tell us about your experience or share your mission with us. We would love to hear from you.

 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. 

 Following the success of A.B. Combs, other schools began implementing similar programs with very similar results. English Estates, an elementary school in Florida, was named the most academically improved school in its district after only one year of implementation.  Internationally, an elementary school in Canada reports that parent satisfaction with what is being taught has leaped from 67 to 98 percent.  The success stories continue to come to us.  Schools across the United States-along with schools in Guatemala, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and Europe are beginning to excitedly report comparable outcomes.

 This process of teaching students principles was the start of The Leader in Me. Currently we are seeing schools around the globe who are interested in using The Leader in Me process to prepare the next generation for the future by emphasizing personal leadership in every student. The Leader in Me offers this solution to all schools by providing the tools and necessary support through trainings, a web community that includes lesson plans and forums, videos, student activity guides, teachers’ resource books, and much more.

 FranklinCovey is eager for this opportunity to help children around the world prepare for the future.  To learn more, visit www.theleaderinme.org. 

Author: Sarah Noble, The Leader In Me Project Leader, FranklinCovey

 Covey suggested the following to parents in the article:

•  Parents can help their children be successful by affirming their children’s worth and potential in a way that inspires them to feel it is so. Children don’t derive their sense of self from being compared with other people. True success comes from character and not just from being rich and famous.

•  A family mission statement is vital and should deal with the four parts of life – - mind, body, heart and spirit. It should also focus serving others, whether it’s working at a food bank or helping friends who come from dysfunctional families.

• Parents should not compare their children with other children. Too many parents don’t love their children unconditionally and they are focused on the success of money, recognition and achievement rather than on character and contribution.

• Good grades in school are the byproduct of living by correct principles and becoming one’s own personal leader.

• Parents should have their kids teach them what they’re learning in school. They should be excited and enthusiastic so kids start to feel, ‘Wow, my parents are really learning. I’m their teacher. I’m a good student.’ Teens tend to be resistant at first, but if parents start slowly with their favorite subject, they will become top students. But it takes time, which a lot of parents don’t give.

• Parents can help children deal with stress by saying no to things that aren’t urgent. They can listen to their children with true intimacy and let them express themselves fully, without judgment, advice or prying, which will remove a lot of stress from their lives.

Watching TV and computer use should be limited. Every child can watch TV for one hour a day, or seven hours a week but rarely on school nights. Children should use computers for their homework, but not extensively for games.

This is timely advice for parents and for anyone who wishes to make a difference in the life of a child.  To see Covey’s interview with USA Weekend, click here.

Click here to read more articles by Stephen R. Covey

 Author: Debra Lund, Public Relations Director, FranklinCovey

Hi! I’m Annie Oswald and I’m the Director of Alternate Distribution Channels at FranklinCovey Co. Alternate Distribution Channels is just a fancy name for getting FranklinCovey audio, book, and video products into the hands of people all over the world.

 Today I’m excited to announce a great new audio from FranklinCovey that we are creating. This is like an Advance Reader’s review but for audio. The audio is Dr. Stephen R. Covey and Stephen M. R. Covey Present A Conversation.

 This audio program features two generations, a unique combination of father and son bestselling authors, discussing and sharing some humorous and always profound professional and personal experiences.

I think that as a listener you will be transported. You may even  feel like a fly on the wall listening in to this personal meeting between two great business leaders, authors, speakers, and intellectual minds, I know I did. I listened as they made the case that there is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world.

From their insights I learned more about the importance of trust in creating building and maintaining effective relationships in all aspects of life: our homes, our families, each other, our companies and ourselves.

Trust is the one thing which, if removed will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love.

 On the other hand, if nurtured, trust has the potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. Yet it is the least understood, the most neglected, and most underestimated possibility of our time.

Trust impacts us 24/7, 365 days a year.

I have to admit I’m not an avid business audio listener (I shouldn’t admit that publicly-business audios are my business) but I loved this.

 Check our store in a few weeks for more details.

 Author: Annie Oswald

The headlines are a bit depressing, aren’t they?

At FranklinCovey we think the opposite.  The headlines are fascinating. 

Dr. Stephen R. Covey says, “We’ve never had such opportunity as we do today.”  In Maurna Desmond’s interview with Dr. Covey (Fortune, Dec. 19), he observes that this is the chance, the opening, the break people have been looking for.

When companies close their doors, competitors can jump in and go crazy. When you’re let go, you’re free to change everything in your life.

It’s not a time to mope but a time to get creative. “People are too much a product of their conditions, and not of their decisions,” Dr. Covey says. There are two sides to losing a job, only one of them negative.   The positive side is that you’re suddenly free to create your own future.

Just look at Steve Demeter of San Francisco, who used to work on ATMs for a big bank. When he got interested in programming applications for the iPhone, he created Trism, a game he sold on the Internet for $5 per download and made $250,000 profit in two months.

At 29, Steve is a millionaire.

Have you heard stories like this? Do you have any stories you could share with us? Maybe it’s your own story. We’d like to hear from you about people who are choosing to succeed instead of fail in an economic downturn. 

While there’s a lot of pain associated with the economic crisis, we are much more interested in the possibilities for change.  What do you think, share your comments and stories with us?

Author: Breck England

In writing this week about Barack Obama we’re not trying to capitalize on his popularity (although we love Ben and Jerry’s new ice-cream flavor “Yes PeCan”).

But the new President of the United States undeniably seems to know something about greatness.

Somehow he has earned the loyalty of a lot of people. During his campaign 10,000 young people crowded into a Washington, D.C., rally and gladly tossed $15 into a pot to sign up as volunteers. Greeters with laptops took their e-mail addresses. This scene was repeated hundreds of times across the U.S.

After the election Obama’s change.gov Web site was wildly popular, streaming video of actual transition meetings, asking visitors for their opinions, and encouraging them to sign up for service projects. Millions visited and got involved.

Clearly, something new is going on here.

It might have to do with the power of synergy.

Obama fits no mold. His background is a model of diversity—his mother was from Kansas, his father from Kenya. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. He has brothers, sisters, and cousins of many races living on all continents. Obama is the product of a remarkable cross-cultural synergy.

He is not about stale arguments, old wars, and worn-out biases. He appears to transcend all that.

Of course, time will tell. It always does.

But you can sense that we might be entering an era of the “Third Alternative,” what Dr. Stephen R. Covey has always called the greatest human achievement. The Third Alternative bypasses “my way” or “your way” in solving problems—it’s all about our way, a new way, a better way no one ever thought of before.

We suddenly face a drastically changed world with challenges no one has ever seen, so it’s going to need solutions no one has ever seen. President Obama has asked the world to send him great ideas for solving the problems we face together.

Why not take a minute and send us your great ideas—your “Third Alternatives”? Let’s all join the conversation!

In an interview I recently had with Dr. Stephen R. Covey for the FranklinCovey Client Facilitation Academy, I asked him a series of questions provided by our client facilitators that included challenges they are facing as they teach in their organizations to issues some may be struggling with when living the principles of effectiveness. In some cases, as the interviewer, I took the liberty of asking for further clarity or a “deeper dive” on topics that might be of interest. Those additional questions are italicized. Here are a few of the responses.

Q – Thomas Sibert of the Naval Support Activity asked :
“Early in the 7 Habits Signature Program, the idea of “principles” is introduced. It has worked for me to ask participants what principles of government the United States is based on. They quickly come to the Declaration of Independence and the statement “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Do you find this example consistent with your definition of a principle?”

A – Dr. Covey’s response:
“Definitely yes, but that is only the beginning because it took over 120 years for women to get the right to vote and over 80 years before we had the Emancipation Proclamation. So to enculturate and institutionalize these principles is the real challenge today.”

Please refresh us on the definition of principles vs values.

“To expand, a principle is a natural law like gravity. It’s different than a value. Values are subjective; principles are objective. Gravity… if you drop something, gravity controls. If I don’t tell you the truth, you won’t trust me-that’s a natural law. If I tell you the truth consistently and try to live it and apologize when I don’t and try to get back on track, then I’m living a natural law-repentance, making improvements, showing change.”

Q – Mark Allman with MEADWESTVACO asked:
“Of all of the items that you have worked with people on to help them in both their private and professional lives, if you could only share one thing with people, what in your opinion would impact them the most.”

A – Dr. Covey’s response:
“Educate and obey their conscience. Educate their conscience by studying the scriptures or the material that inspires them the most, until it becomes part of your conscience. Then obey it. Little by little, as you obey it, you will get more education and then you obey that. More and more light will come.
To read the interview in its entirety please clicks the link below to access the Academy archives or to learn how to become a certified FranklinCovey facilitator.
http://www.franklincovey.com/tc/facilitation

Author: Scott Miller, General Manager Global Client Facilitator Services, FranklinCovey