Write a personal response to Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Do not review or critically analyse the book. Do provide a personal response to the book’s ideas that have interest to you and your professional experience. Express your opinion and reasoning, do not use or quote others opinions. Focus on what you agree with, what you disagree with, what you think might be valuable in your personal and professional life, what having studied the book you plan to change and why.
In each and every aspect of life, people strive to succeed and have the best for every situation. Proper planning and good conduct determines the end results for any undertaking. Being able to think critically can enable someone crack any puzzle and get to the right place and have the desired outcomes in every situation. However, working as a group is totally different from the situation whereby one is working as an individual. When moving as a group, being focused is essential. Such situations call for a proper understanding of various people within the group including their personalities. Setting your goals becomes critical as well. Nevertheless, people within a certain group have different ideas on how to approach a particular situation. Therefore, a group intending to do something needs a leader. A leader is someone who can be trusted and followed by people. Thus, that leader must possess a high degree of influence. A leader must have the ability to organize the group he/ she is leading with an aim of achieving the desired results. Hence, a leader must be very intelligent, focused and determined. A leader must understand the whole situation and be focused to achieve the best out of that situation while at the same time ensuring that each and every person within the group is satisfied and comfortable. Therefore, the main agenda of this essay is to express my opinion grounded on my personal experience on how someone can improve and become effective based on Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.
As a business management graduate, my main aim is to be an effective, transformational and a reputable business manager with transformative ideas and knowledge to lead people in a reputable organisation. Having been optimistic about my area of specialization, I seek to expand my knowledge and learn on how to be effective. Going through Stephen Covey’s book, I realize that there are several areas where I need to furnish my skills on. Based on the seven habits, I really get to evaluate myself for the purpose of being effective. To be a leader, one must be ready to learn. Based on the content of the book, there an appropriate avenue to evaluate myself, learn more and become an effective future leader. However, based on what I read and learn from the book, there are some aspects that I get to agree or disagree with based on the seven habits as discussed in the subsequent paragraphs.
The first habit that one needs in order to become effective is being proactive. Personally, I believe that being a good leader or manager is avoiding the element of being reactive to every situation you encounter in your line of duty. Being responsible for everything that happens is pretty good. In an organization I am leading, the perfect thing to do is to initiate something that is achievable and guide the people within the group to achieve the set goals. The need to be part of problem solving efforts is important. Most managers or leaders try to distance themselves from a certain situation when something go wrong. Personally, the best thing I feel is important is trying to get the solution for something that goes wrong rather than running way. A leader must be someone who strives to look for solutions otherwise the whole project might fail. As a leader, facing a certain situation should be taken seriously as it builds someone’s experience and knowledge on how to solve similar incidents in future. However, as a leader, every person within my team should be responsible as well. Employees under me should not be careless with their work and expect me to assume them. They need to responsible for what they do wrong and be ready to rectify their mistakes rather than the leader carrying their burden.
The second habit of every effective person is having in mind what will be the end result of anything my organization does. As a leader, being result oriented is important. That means that a good plan is essential for every leader. Moreover, one need to be focused on what he/she is doing and what are the expected results. For instance, I believe that no one can start a journey that has no destination. One must understand very well where he/ she is going before undertaking the journey. As a manager or leader, I need to set right what are the goals of any activity. By setting the goals, then it becomes very easy to plan efficiently on how to achieve those goals. Leadership is all about being focused and understanding what you want. By being conversant with what should be achieved, a leader can manage the process effectively while evaluating it against the set goals and objectives. Thus, all the activities to be done should revolve around your end result. That means that with the end results in mind, no one will deviate from the usual procedure or guidelines set to achieve such goals. As a future manager, I feel that being focused and having the desired end results in mind, working towards them is easy. When planning on any activity within the organization, I must have in mind what is to be achieved. By doing so, I can set an appropriate way of evaluating all employees’ activities aimed at achieving the set goals and objectives. However, a leader should not relax and assume that the people he/she is leading will work towards those goals without any guidance. The leader should play a vital role of guiding the employees throughout the whole process to ensure that the set guidelines are followed carefully.
The third habit is being able to prioritize on events and activities within the organisation. As a good manager or leader, you need to understand what needs to be done first and what needs to be done last. Being a leader needs critical thinking in order to be able to plan things efficiently. As a leader, documenting the organisational events is important. That will help in listing the events or issues in their order of urgency. A manager should understand which things are of more importance to the organization compared to others. Therefore, as an aspiring manager, the habit planning is precisely one of the important element that should be adopted and followed keenly. Failing to address the issues of emergency, then your organization is bound to fail. For instance, in an organization, a manager should realize that handling customers should come first. Customers are the only reason why an organization is in existence. Without them, then there could be no one to serve. Thus, any issues involving the customers should be handled and solved first before other things. As a manager, the need to understand the priorities of issues within the organization is a good habit that one should possess in order to be effective.
The ability and habit of being a winner is an essential element for every effective leader. The level of competition in today’s business environment calls for the leaders to always have the perception of win or win always. Without the winning habit, then it is easy to be edged out of the competitive market. That means as a leader, confidence is of great importance. Being confident will help in understanding that being the best is the vision of any leader. Being able to outshine others gives your team a reason to enjoy and celebrate being part of the organisation. Being the best means that the company is leading in terms of profit and other revenues. Personally, winning is my all-time guiding principle. Being a winner places you ahead of the rest. However, in as much as competition is essential, competing ethically is crucial to a leader. For instance, when competing in the market, a company that sells more products become the market leader. Selling more products might be as a result of lowering your prices compared to the rival company. However, as a manager, allowing the production of substandard products so that you can sell at a lower price is unacceptable. Thus, as an aspiring future manager, the habit of win or win is key when operating in a competitive business market but it should be done in ethical way. Hence, being a leader who mentality is to win is a good habit that can make you remain the best ahead of the rest. Engaging in a competition that will be profitable to you is also important. Some compete and at last they end up in loses due to unhealthy competition in business.
Being able to listen and understand is imperative for a leader who is seeking to be an effective manager. The ratio of mouth to ears is 1:2, meaning that you need to listen twice and speak only once. As an effective person leading others, the aspect of listening is key. A leader must to understand others in order to be understood. There is nothing as important as good communication and understanding. Good communication and understanding in an organization bring about teamwork and effective way of solving the organizational problems and issues. Listening to your employees in an organization is an important way of solving organizational problems. As a manager or leader, listening carefully will help in understanding the issues to be handled and be able to provide an appropriate solution. However, listening can be helpful and sometimes fail to be helpful. For instance, there are people who are good at words rather than action. Therefore, the time should be spent on any dialogue that is productive for an organization.
People you find yourself leading in an organization are totally different from you. It means that their thinking might be totally different form yours. The cultural backgrounds of people especially their beliefs make them think totally different from each other. Thus, as a leader, taking into consideration that and respecting diversity in thinking becomes important. As a leader, having the ability to accommodate two different people is important. People have various ideologies that must be accommodated and respected in order to let them feel comfortable working and delivering their best for the organization. Thus, as a manager or leader, I need to allow people to express themselves freely despite their differences. However, some differences end up bringing conflict and breaking the teamwork. A manager should only encourage differences that are beneficial to the organization and not those differences that can break the organization.
Lastly a leader or any person striving to be effective must be able to sharpen himself/herself in terms of body, mind, heart and soul. Being a person who can learn easily is important. As a leader, being quick to learn can help in sharpening the skills required to lead a group in achieving the set goals and objectives. The world of management is not static and no one is perfect. Everybody has his/her weaknesses and strengths. Thus, as a leader, I believe that is important to learn and sharpen my skills as it is the only way to grow and develop my skills. Through learning, I can turn my weaknesses into strengths. However, someone must be choosy on what to learn because some now things might turn into an antisocial being and also mess up with your leadership skills. Hence, as an aspiring future leader, my ability to acquire new techniques in the field of management will help me to become a better and effective manager.
In conclusion, a leader must possess or learn some habit in order to become effective and efficient in the managerial roles bestowed upon him/her. Nobody is born a genius. Learning helps in acquiring new knowledge and become effective. In the Stephen Covey’s book, an aspiring manager or leader can learn all the habits that he/she can have in order to lead a successful team. The success of any leader is anchored on his/her capability to possess all the habits discussed in the essay and apply them appropriately in order to succeed in the field of leadership and management.
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