Covey teaches self-help through principles

David Kennedy, Contributor, Jakarta
d_kenn@yahoo.com

Dr. Stephen R. Covey, author of a series of best-selling self- help and management books including The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People does not always practice what he preaches.

Illustrating the importance of listening in being effective, the 71-year-old management training guru recently told The Jakarta Post: "You have two ears, two eyes and one mouth. You should only speak 20 percent (of the time)." This was after he had spoken in a seminar for almost five hours with only a short break for lunch.

True, there was a good reason for Dr. Covey, vice chairman of the U.S.-based global professional services firm Franklin Covey, to break his own rule.

"In a world of constant change you have to rely on principles and natural laws that don't change," he told his audience, many of whom have been trained by Dunamis Organization Services, the Franklin Covey affiliate company based in Jakarta.

He added that if individuals choose to apply ethical principles in the workplace they will gain moral authority which is far more powerful than the formal authority of hierarchy.

"You will become the leader of your boss! Those with moral authority have leadership, those with none are managers. What position did Gandhi have? None, but he led India."

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which shot him to fame in 1989, presented practical ways to improve efficiency by developing habits such as being proactive, putting first things first, thinking "win-win" and "sharpening the saw" by focusing daily on skills and goals. He is the first to admit the habits are common sense but not often common practice.

You will usually find Covey's texts on the book shelves somewhere between "management" and "self-help" though he is critical about the growing numbers of titles offering superficial solutions to problems.

"I'd say a lot of the self-help books are filled with techniques more than principles," he said.

"My books are self-help, but through principles and the power of principles not through image building and techniques."

In the Covey approach change must come from inside people and organizations and cannot be enforced. The key to positive change, he argues, lies in developing people's talents which are "hardwired" at birth but often left untapped.

Dr. Covey's seven habits develop the various aspects of human skills and intelligence -- mental, emotional, spiritual and physical -- on a daily basis. It is not an easy task and the author himself said he occasionally strays from the path but sees the principles embodied in the habits as a compass guiding the way back.

Asked how he discovered the seven habits, Dr. Covey is quick to reply that they are nothing new and that he simply put universally known principles into a practical framework.

Born in Utah, Stephen R. Covey discovered an interest in teaching when doing missionary work for the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Traveling to Ireland at the age of 20, Covey was given an assignment to train 96 parish leaders around the country, all of them much older than him.

"I had no idea that I could do something like that but the man who appointed me saw that I had the ability so he asked me to do it. I got to love it and it became my life."

He studied business at university and almost entered his family's hospitality firm but his early experience in training preachers led him to continue his studies at Brigham Young University in Utah and at Harvard where he graduated with an MBA in 1957.

In between teaching and working as a business consultant he researched the development of American success literature for his Ph.D. and was struck by the shift from the emphasis on character to preoccupations with personality and image which occurred in the early 20th century.

Being a Mormon, Dr. Covey not surprisingly cites Christ as his main role model. He also admits to admiring Abraham Lincoln and the founding father of the U.S. as well as Gandhi, whom he quotes widely in his seminars.

His vocabulary is littered with positive terms like "affirmation" and "modeling" and his parents and his mother in particular have been a powerful source of inspiration.

As a father of nine he drew on his personal experiences in developing principles for effective families. Some of his children work closely with him today writing books on the seven habits for teenagers and managing the Franklin Covey company. David Covey, his fifth child and the president of the firm, jokes that his father had nine kids so that he could test out his theories on them.

With a new book coming out in the spring which will be subtitled Finding Your Voice and Helping Others to Find Theirs, Dr. Covey has no plans to retire.

"Where do I get the energy? I get it from 'sharpening the saw' and because of my conviction about my mission to bring principle centered leadership to the world," he said, adding that he practices yoga and is influenced by the concepts of yin and yang and balance found in kung fu.

His books are translated into almost 40 languages and with sales in the tens of million of copies it would appear that he is succeeding in his mission.

However, Covey argues that much of the world still has industrial age management structures that are unsuited to the information and knowledge age.

The information age will, he said, involve an incredible release of creativity and productivity throughout the world even in societies currently hampered by corrupt, ineffective governments.

"Authoritarian control will not survive the information- knowledge age. There's too much creativity, people are too quick and resourceful," said Covey. He sees the Internet and satellite television as paving the way for greater democracy by increasing access to information and raising expectations, thereby making it harder to control people.

"It's threatening for those who think that leadership is a position rather than a choice. And the problem is that their approach isn't pragmatic so it won't work and it can't last. Pragmatism is on the side of empowerment, free markets, democracy, involvement and egalitarianism. That is where the future lies."