The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness Author: Visit Amazon's Stephen R. Covey Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0743287932 | Format: EPUB
The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness Description
From Publishers Weekly
The original seven habits of highly successful people are still relevant, but Covey, author of the mega-bestseller of that title, says that the new Information/Knowledge Worker Age, exemplified by the Internet, calls for an eighth habit to achieve personal and organizational excellence: "Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs." Covey sees leadership "as a choice to deal with people in a way that will communicate to them their worth and potential so clearly they will come to see it in themselves." His holistic approach starts with developing one's own voice, one's "unique personal significance." The bulk of the book details how, after finding your own voice, you can inspire others and create a workplace where people feel engaged. This includes establishing trust, searching for third alternatives (not a compromise between your way and my way, but a third, better way) and developing a shared vision. This book isn't easy going; less business jargon and more practical examples would have made this livelier and more helpful. But if organizations operated with Covey's ideas—and ideals—most people would undoubtedly find work much more satisfying. DVD not seen by
PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
It takes the likes of Covey--and a gap of 15 years in publication time--to hit directly on the issue confronting individuals and corporations today: the gap between effectiveness and greatness. Following his best-selling
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1996), the author demonstrates in words and a series of 16 brief DVD clips (included) exactly how to find your own voice and, for leaders, how to support the discovery of the organization's voice. He selects examples from past and present, from Abraham Lincoln to the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, demonstrating, first, the ways to uncover the four intelligences (mental, spiritual, physical/economic, and emotional/social) and, second, the roles necessary to lead others to discover their voices. Statistics and personal anecdotes (a conversation with Bill Marriott, for instance) underscore the importance of trust and the implementation of that trust; one study from Harris Interactive reveals that only 48 percent of respondents said their organizations lived up to organizational values. Timely commentary in a surefire next-seller.
Barbara JacobsCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
- Paperback: 432 pages
- Publisher: Free Press; Reprint edition (November 29, 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0743287932
- ISBN-13: 978-0743287937
- Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
If you haven't read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I suggest you read that one before this book.
Dr. Covey obviously pulled out all of the stops in trying to make this book as helpful as possible to his readers. The book contains summaries of the material in his other books, repeats many stories from those books, reconciles the material with most of the business book best sellers in recent years, contains a DVD full of inspiring videos, provides references to many free materials on his web site, has extensive appendices and contains many thoughtful sections on questions and answers. As a result, the book comes across like an encyclopedia of his teachings . . . rather than as the simple communication that is so delightful in his other books. I suspect that Dr. Covey changed ghostwriters for this one (at least I assume that the other books were ghostwritten because they avoid the ponderous communications style that Dr. Covey uses in person).
So what is the 8th habit? Allow me to paraphrase. It'll be quicker that way. You act with integrity as an individual and help others to do the same.
In Covey-speak, it's the overlap of personal greatness (applying the 7 habits in the forms of vision, discipline, passion and conscience), leadership greatness (applying the 4 roles of leadership (modeling the 7 habits, path finding, aligning and Empowering), and organizational greatness (turned into a vision, mission and values that bring clarity, commitment, translation, synergy, enabling and accountability). See Figure 14.3 on page 280 for the simplest expression of the 8th habit in Covey-speak.
Can you make a book out of that point? Well, if you put in lots of examples, you can . . . which Dr. Covey did.
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