Tag / Stephen r covey

by Nathan Coumbe

The Transitive Property of Belief

Time for a math lesson! Bear with me—it matters.

The Transitive Property of Mathematics says this: for all real numbers x, y, and z, if x=y and y=z, then x=z also.

That makes sense, right?

Why am I telling you this? Because this same mathematical property affects all outcomes you experience in life.

Think about it: how you see an aspect of reality affects how you behave. How you behave affects the results you get. Therefore, how you see things affects the results you get. X=Y and Y=Z, so X=Z as well.

Dr. Stephen R. Covey called this the “See-Do-Get Continuum.” How we see the world affects what we do, which affects what we get in life. (You can learn all about it in his monumental work The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.)

Covey likes to say, “How we see the problem is the problem.” In this case, “seeing” could also translate into “believing.”

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re a manager and you’ve recently had a few millennials added to your team. If you believe all millennials are lazy and entitled, you’re going to treat them as such. This will so alienate them and undermine your relationship that pretty soon, they’ll start acting out.

Most likely they’ll rebel against you by doing the bare minimum, scraping by because in their minds nothing they do will be good enough to please you anyway. Why should they put out more effort than necessary?

How you saw them affected your behavior towards them, which affected how they behaved (your results). It’s the Pygmalion Effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Can you see how this continuum affects us when it come to things like race, gender, or religion? Our beliefs shape our actions; our actions shape our outcomes.

So what’s the bottom line?

If you want to change the world—or maybe just your situation in it—start first by changing your beliefs. Work first on how you see things.

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by Nathan Coumbe

It Might Not All Work Out…

We have the definition of optimism wrong.

We think optimism means believing that everything will work out for the best. Over time and on its own.

That’s not true. Plenty of awful things happen whether we’re optimistic or not.

“Well geez, Nathan! You’re obviously a pessimist with that outlook.”

No, actually, I’m quite optimistic. Because I realize that I’m the creative force in my life. I’m the driver of my own destiny.

As long as I’m alive, I have the chance to make something good happen.

Optimism isn’t simply believing that everything is going to be alright: it’s believing that whatever happens, you can make the best of it.

So if you’re reading this, you’re still breathing. And that means you can make the best out of whatever situation you’re in.

That is true optimism.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Don’t Let Them Repay You

“You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

—Ruth Smeltzer

Help someone today in whatever small or grand way you can.

Don’t do it as part of your job—do it because it (and you) are good and decent.

Give the gift of service—true service—where reciprocation is not possible.

A little old lady can never put a price on being helped across the street.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Holding Others Accountable Is an Act of Respect

I am in the second week of a leadership course created by FranklinCovey based on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.*

This week’s topic is Habit 1: Be Proactive. For those of you unfamiliar with the 7 Habits, the first habit is about personal responsibility. It posits that we are the creative force in our own lives. We can choose how we respond to stimuli in the world, and these choices drastically alter our results.

One statement this morning stood out more than others:

“Holding people to the responsible course is not demeaning; it is affirming.”

—Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

We show respect when we refuse to let others blame circumstances for their situations. Holding others responsible tells them “you are where you are because of the choices you’ve made.” 

At the same time, we are communicating another message:

“You can make choices now that can lead you to a better situation.”

Of course, our environmental factors must be taken into account. Outside, uncontrollable forces definitely influence our lives. Our upbringing, sex, gender, or socioeconomic status can make things easier or harder. But they do not determine our lives! 

Each of us has within us what Viktor Frankl calls “the last of the human freedoms.” We can choose our response to any stimulus. It may not seem like much to you, but this idea was incredibly liberating to me. 

“Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.”

Show another person respect. Let them know they have the power to choose. 

When you choose, you change things.

*If you want to level up your leadership skills, and earn an industry-recognized certification in the process, check out FranklinCovey’s LeaderU courses at leaderu.us.

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by Nathan Coumbe

How to Make Revolutionary Change in Your Personal Life and Career

Dr. Covey taught me perhaps the most important and fundamental life lesson of all. It’s the idea of paradigms and the See-Do-Get formula.

What Are Paradigms?

Paradigms are our ways of seeing the world. As Dr. Covey describes it, they are maps of the territory we are navigating. As we know, maps are a representation of the world but not the world itself. These “maps” affect every aspect of our daily lives.

See-Do-Get

Our paradigms put us into a cycle known as “See-Do-Get”. How we see something (our paradigm) affects our behavior (what we do). Our behavior affects the results we get. These results then reinforce our viewpoint. They become a never-ending cycle that can only be short-circuited by changing how we “see”. We must examine the map.

A Story to Illustrate the Point

I once knew a teacher whose students approached him about putting on a short play for the school. They saw this as a way to put the English literature they were studying into a fun and creative context. But this teacher saw his students as an uncreative bunch of hooligans with no talent. He did not believe them capable of staging anything worthwhile.

Grudgingly, he let the students “try” to put something together. Because of his mindset, he failed to encourage them, coach them, or help them in any way. His only offering was scathing criticism because he saw no possible positive outcome. The students became increasingly frustrated and unhappy with their efforts. They began to believe their teacher correct in his views and quit the project after a few weeks. Their “failure” further reinforced the teacher’s own paradigm.

I felt devastated when I found out about the situation from the students. Why did it happen that way? Because he saw them as uncreative, incapable, and without talent, he treated them as such. He failed to help or encourage his students and did nothing but criticize and condemn. This behavior led to the results he expected all along.

The Root of Any Problem

How we see a problem (or person, political party, or random happenstance) is a problem itself. It affects our behavior and the results we get, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Design thinking teaches us to reframe problems in ways that allow us to take positive action on them. Only by changing how we see something can we get to the root of the issue. If you want to make positive change in any area of your life, first examine how you see the problem.

What would have happened had this teacher been aware of the way he saw his students? What if he had taken a step back and seen them as young, curious, and full of potential? Maybe he would have treated them as budding thespians and offered encouragement. This change in behavior might have led to a fun, engaging, and successful student project. And who knows? It might have had lasting effects on all the students, even the ones who came to watch.

Instead, his negative mindset destroyed all hope of having any success at all.

I’ll leave the final word on this subject to Dr. Covey himself:

“If you want to make minor improvements, change your behavior. But if you want to make quantum improvements, change your paradigm.”

—Dr. Stephen R. Covey

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by Nathan Coumbe

A Thread to Hold

“He who every morning plans the transactions of the day and follows out that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life…. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incident, chaos will soon reign.”

—Victor Hugo

What are you doing to ensure you are getting the most important things done rather than merely the most things?

Spend 10 minutes each morning laying out a plan for the day.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Empathic Learning

The 5th habit Dr. Covey writes about in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is all about empathic listening: “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Empathic listening is putting aside our own narratives, judgements, assumptions, and listening from the other person’s point of reference. When we do this, we become students learning something new from another point of view.

For some reason this morning, I was thinking about my time in college studying my favorite subjects in history, subjects I had been studying since I was a small child. Sad to say, I remember listening to lectures and discussions with my professors from my own frame of reference: “I already learned all about that. Let me tell you what I already know about this subject to impress you.” 

I was the guy who would ask “deep, insightful questions,” when in reality, I was simply asking questions that showed my knowledge of the subject.

How vain, immature, and dumb I was! Had I only been listening––not from my own frame of reference, from the mindset of what I already knew––and instead adopted that wide-eyed curiosity of a child, I could have learned and retained so much more than I did. I would have been able to see the same ideas and subjects in a new light or with new perspectives. 

Instead, I listened to validate what I already thought I knew.

Empathic listening doesn’t just apply to difficult or emotional conversations with relationships in your life. It also must be employed in any learning environment to get as much out of it as possible.

by Nathan Coumbe

What Successful People Do Differently

You’ve probably looked at someone who was in great shape and thought to yourself, “Man, I wish I could be like him.” 

Maybe this thought crossed your mind soon after: “If I really enjoyed hours at the gym and grilled chicken and broccoli every night for dinner, I’d be fit too.”

Here’s the thing – fit people don’t necessarily enjoy spending 3-4 hours a week at the gym or eating simple, similar meals over and over again. It’s not a matter of enjoyment. 

What they do is subordinate their cravings, emotions, and desires to a higher value system they establish for themselves. 

People who are successful at anything do the same thing. Albert E. Gray said it best when he wrote:

“The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.”

–Albert E. Gray

“Whoever said this was going to be easy?”

One of the most important lessons I learned from Dr. John Berardi of Precision Nutrition is that when making change for your health and fitness goals, you are going to be tired; you are going to be hungry sometimes; you are going to be in a crabby mood and not want to do what is good for you. His response: “whoever said this was going to be easy?”

Successful people, whether they are successful in health or fitness, or successful in their families and careers, are just like you and me. They have the same cravings, the same desire to say “screw it all” or “I don’t want to do that” or “I’m scared I might fail/they might laugh at me/they might say no.” The only difference is they make the choice to act anyway. 

They are able to do this because they want something more than the resistance is telling them they want in this very moment. They begin with the end in mind and act proactively, rather than living in and for the moment, reacting to whatever whim, craving, or feeling comes their way during any given moment. 

This way of living–of choosing to do things that failures don’t want to do–can all be traced back to fundamental principles of effective living. They are embodied clearly and coherently in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Successful people subordinate their fears and momentary desires to values, principles, and a desired end-goal. They “begin with the end in mind” as Dr. Covey writes in the chapter about Habit 2. 

They don’t WANT to do it either.

A successful sales person probably doesn’t want to make another cold call and face the very real possibility of rejection. But she does it anyway because the end she has in mind might be a full sales pipeline, a good income to support her family, or the growth of her business (perhaps all three and more). She’s just as scared as anyone else; she still feels the butterflies in her stomach when she dials the number; but she chooses to act rather than react to the feelings of the moment. 

You are a successful person already because you have the ability to do this with every task, project, and goal in your life. Realize that it’s all a matter of choice based on the end-result you desire. Envision the end you want to achieve, hold it in your mind in the moment of choice, and make decisions based on which outcomes get you closer to the end you want.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Praise the good. Ignore the rest.

If you want to create lasting influence with others, or change for the better, there is really only one way to do it:

Praise the good.

“So long as a person did anything good, he would praise him and use him for the service in which he excelled, but to his other conduct he paid no attention…”

–Cassius Dio writing about Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius

When Emperor Marcus Aurelius wanted to influence other people, to reinforce the behaviors and actions he wanted to see, he would praise the person who did the good deed. This is actually quite Pavlovian in its execution.

Conditioning good behavior

Remember Pavlov from your introductory psychology class? Pavlov would ring a bell before he gave his dogs food; the food caused the dogs to salivate. Eventually the dogs associated the ringing bell with food and would salivate when the bell rang, even when Pavlov did not give them food.

Marcus essentially did the same thing with those in his service: whenever they did something of which he approved, he praised it. This constant reinforcement of the good conditioned his people to do more good work in the future. But there is a second part to Dio’s observation above…

Pay no attention to the rest

Not only did Marcus praise the good, he ignored the behavior and actions he didn’t want to continue. Why did he do this?

There is a wonderful little book who’s first chapter discusses this at length:

“Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.”

–Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

How often have you had a positive outcome after you criticized someone for doing something? I would hazard a guess at 10%.

When you criticize someone, they get angry, defensive, and emotionally illogical. He or she will justify the action rather than accept that it was wrong. It’s a natural human response. We don’t like to be wrong, and we definitely don’t like other people pointing out our poor behavior.

Therefore, the only way to get the results you want from other people is to praise them when you seeing them do the good deeds you want done. Criticizing the bad doesn’t work: it only causes resentment.

“We are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures brisling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”

–Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

(Of course, there are some behaviors that are dangerous, illegal, immoral, or that might harm others; these behaviors must be stopped immediately. Those sorts of behaviors are not the topic of discussion here.)

Be a model

How do let others know what good actions or behaviors are? You must be a model. Do the things you want others to do; be the kind of person you want others to be.

Seth Godin likes to say, “people like us do things like this.” Invite people to be “people like us,” whoever you think “people like us” should be. Then, do the things you want others to do, and when they follow, praise them for it!

Model good behavior. Praise others when they perform good work. Ignore the rest.

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