Author Stephen Covey is regarded as the Self Help Guru and rightly so as his teachings are timeless. The 7 Habits have been widely regarded as the foundation for personal effectiveness and a must read for everybody regardless of their age. Being effective is till today an underrated skill that everyone must develop. To be effective author suggests the following 7 habits

1. Be Proactive
2. Begin with End in Mind
3. Put First Things First
4. Think Win / Win
5. Seek First To Understand, Than To Be Understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the Saw

Key Takeaways!

• The book has been divided into two parts. First part is Personal Victory (first 3 habits) while the second part is Public Victory (last 4 habits).
• We are born proactive – as a child we learn walking proactively. Although overtime we become reactive due to social conditioning and stop taking the first step for anything.
• A proactive person always keeps an end in his mind when he starts a project. He knows the outcome beforehand and works hard on achieving it.
• Personal victory comes before Public victory.
• To attain Public victory, it’s important to Think Win / Win in situations when dealing with others. There is no point in having a situation that is Win / Lose, Lose / Win or Lose / Lose.
• To create a Win / Win situation, a person should learn to empathize with others. Understand others first before putting a point across.
• Pubic victory is a matter of a lot of outcomes coming together. A leader always looks to synergize with those outcomes. Such outcomes are a matter of a lot of people coming together for a common cause.
• Synergy is present when everyone in the team strives to achieve the desired vision and mission of the company.
• Practice! Practice! Practice!
• These 6 habits must be practiced repeatedly to a point where they are ingrained into the nature of the person.

Steve Jobs is one of the greatest leaders our generation has witnessed. He was proactive who never settled down with success of his products. That’s why we saw fantastic iPhones, iMac, iPods and iPads releasing every year. In his biography, the author speaks about how he was sure of iPod changing the world and needed to be as small as possible. Every employee of Apple works for the common vision statement and creates a product that everyone loves. Needless to say, Steve understood what the world wanted even before the world knew it could even exist.

– Jinay Savla