85/11 Air Wing Book Review Rank/Name: ME4(T) Tommy Leow Vocation: AFE Flight: 2 Book Title: The

7 Habits of Highly Effective People Author: Stephen R. Covey Covey's international bestseller was focused on giving power lessons in personal changes. He summarized his teachings and thoughts into a book that explains why the habits are important, how they function and gave numerous examples in his life or realistic scenarios to illustrate and reemphasize his points. Besides the 7 habits that he recommends, he also established two principles to follow and help as tools to understand his lessons in the book. The two principles are P/PC and the Emotional Bank Account. P stands for Production and PC stands for Production Capability. Production can be the end product that comes from the maker which is represented by PC. To illustrate this point, egg are labelled as production while the the chicken that laid the egg is the Production Capability. Handling P/PC is highly important and over emphasis on the P shall lead to the deterioration of the PC and in the long run, the P shall diminish or even be eradicated. The Emotional Bank Account is set up in the people that we deal with. Similar to that of a bank account, one can make deposits and withdrawals. The common idea of having more deposits that withdrawals is always a good thing stands. Instead of cash, one shall deposit emotional credits into the people they deal with. This credits can simply be showing care and concern, providing a listening ear, giving unconditioned favors. Emotional bank account setting is an important tool such that we can gain trust from people and build relationship on different levels. There are relationship for business, friends and family. For example when one is there for a friend who is down, one is making a deposit and when one cancels on a friend on the last minute notice, a withdrawal is made. The richer the bank account is, the more in control one is over the other person. With the P/PC and emotional bank account established, the author then starts to introduce his 7 habits. The 7 habits are separated into two tiers. Tier one is geared towards a private victory and the other tier is geared towards a public victory. Private victory is about winning our own personal issues and overcoming overseas while public victory is about winning over and exert a good influence on the people around us. Without a private victory, public victory cannot be achieved. There are 3 habits for a private victory: Be Proactive, Begin With The End In Mind, Put First Things First. In achieving a private victory, the author introduces a concept of working within our own circle of influence. This circle of influence is a subset of the circle of concern which governs all the issues that we have a concern for. Working within the circle of influence is to be working on the things that one's effort can contribute to an effect on the issue. There is no point in worrying and trying to work on things that are beyond one's control. Over time, with continued effort, the circle of influence will grow and might even be bigger than the circle of concern. This concept is closely related to the first habit, Be Proactive. By being proactive, one will take initiative and be responsible to make things happen. An amendment to the use of language can contribute to one's progress in being proactive. Instead of saying theres nothing I can do, one should say, lets take a look at our alternatives.. One shall also take control of the situation whenever possible and exert our own influence rather than be acted upon by others. Practicing the above shall help in enlarging the circle of influence over time. The second habit of Begin With the End In Mind is related to developing personal leadership. This

habit encourages one to have a mission statement and being aware of our own values and principles. One can be work centered, money centered, pleasure centered etc. This habit helps us to identify the principles that we are centered on. The use of imagination can help in this habit. World class athletes usually run through the whole sequence and scenarios in their mind before the actual match and it helps them be better prepared and break the inertial at the starting phases. To practice this habit, one also need to know about the roles and goals in one's life. It aids in leading one to the objectives and to keep one on track to their goals. Third habit is Put First Things First. Obviously this is about personal management and especially on time management. It included a matrix to help identify and prioritize the activities and work in one's life. The two main classifications are urgent/not urgent and important/not important. As recommended by the author, one should be focusing more on thing that are important but not urgent (quadrant 2) as things in this quadrant are the heart of effective personal management system. Urgent and important tasks shall also be reduced in the long run. Since it is not possible to ignore the urgent and important matters, one has to learn to say no to tasks or other ineffective activities that are usually not important nor urgent. The book leads one to be a quadrant 2 self manager by helping to identify one's role, selection of goals, scheduling, daily adapting with a organizer. The author highlights that the key to effective management is delegation of tasks through a stewardship style that allows room for the people assigned with the task to choose their methods and self management. It shows that one have trust in their subordinate and its the highest form of human motivation. The combination of the above habits lead to private victory. Public Victory is achieved firstly with the fourth habit, Think Win/Win. In a win/win situation both parties including the individual is better off after the deal is made. It should be a fundamental mindset for negotiations and activities. With this mindset, it makes realization of this scenario much easier. Seek First to Understand... Then Be Understood is the fifth habit. This is an education in communication. It is highlighted that one should pay attention to the needs and concerns of the other party before one proposes his own solutions or views. It is important that the other party feels that their viewpoints can be shared by the listener. It is a way to gain the trust of the speaker if one understands the speaker completely. Upon understanding, it is important to be understood. That means, our communication must be clear enough for the the other party to comprehend and avoid any misunderstandings. Effective communication is the root of this habit and shall be the pre requisite for effective leadership. Synergize is the sixth habit and it serves to highlight the importance of the combination of various differences to achieve an even higher level of effectiveness. Simply, it is team excellence. It recognizes the importance of combination of effort and that differences can serve to complement each other to achieve completion and perhaps even perfection. The last habit is called Sharpen The Saw. It simply emphasize on the mastering of the habits and create an upwards spiral to success. It is based on Learn, Commit, and Do which basically can be summarized as believing in the habits and practice it so that it can be of a second nature to oneself. Personally, I feel that this book has taught me valuable lessons and widen my understanding of self management and leading up to effective leadership. Usually, there are many things on my mind and this book has emphasize the importance of working and focusin only on the things that are within my control. This allows me to cut down on the tasks as hand temporarily. It keeps me more focused and able to manage the situation in a more effective manner. It is not easy to be working in quadrant

2 as recommended by the author but it is time that i try his proven approach. It is satisfying to know that some of the habits are already a habit of mine. Though the habits might be common, the way the author illustrates their power allows me to believe in these habits and use to to build and improve on myself. At least I now know that a critically acclaimed author and his teachings are synonymous with my own thoughts. I believe most in the part of seeking first to understand then be understood which is based on the principle of emphatic listening. It is important to establish ourselves as a emphatic listener and this can be a major deposit in the emotional bank account. There are instances whereby this style of listening has helped secured successful win/win negotions or eve to convince people to get things done in our way. I have also changed my style of delegation to the recommended stewardship style. As my term as the CWC, I have tried the stewardship style and the dictator style. I find that the stewardship style reduces the stress on the leader and at the same time, achieved a better result. A bonus is the trust that I set up with my CFCs and CSC. This style of delegation shall be the fundamental of my mission to be an efficient and effective leader. In the proactive habit, I have discovered that the proactive mindset leads one to become more positive and more matured. Instead of creating dead ends, this habit opens up more routes for me to take and often i find that this habit helps me to keep on course to achieve the goals that were seemingly far fetched. Positivity triumphs negativity and any aspects and I feel that a leader should always have a positive mindset. If we cannot first convince ourselves, we will never be able to inspire confidence in the subordinates that we have to lead. A positive note about this book is that readers do not have to read this book from the start again in order to review themselves again. This book has been designed to have chapters that are mostly independent. Thus if one shall need to be reminded about the part on Seek First To Understand.. Then Be Understood, one can zoom straight to that chapter to begin reading again. This ensures that readers have the notes they need to practice the habits all in the book. I am fully in support of the author's view that we first have to achieve private victories before we can have public victories. We have first to overcome and redefine ourselves in a positive way before we can go on to lead others and inspire them to greater things. This private victory is much easier to achieve than the self actualization in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In my own life, I believe i have secured a small private victory and i am still en route to achieving the public victory. This is because I still need to work a lot on understanding the person I am talking with and be able to feel and share the viewpoints completely. However, I believe that I have made improvements through self reminder and picking up lessons on the topic of body language. Body language helps me to understand the mind of the people I am interacting with or even simply observing. I will definitely recommend this book to anyone that is keen to improve on themselves and change their mindset to align themselves with the mindset that this book imparts. Everyone can draw different lessons from this book and whats the most important thing is that we keep the valuable lessons learnt and hopefully impart what we have learnt to the people we lead so as to armed them with the tools of an effective leader. I believe that everyone has no problem on being led to a certain extent. However, not everyone is can be a leader. There are born leaders in this world but they are only the fortunate few. As for the rest of the population, being a leader can be a choice and it starts with getting out of our own comfort zone and starting to make personal changes to achieve our own private victory. As our journey goes on, public victory shall come to those who wants it bad enough to go to that extra mile to accomplish tasks and achieve their goals and objectives that they had set for themselves when they are trying to achieve private victory.