HRM

The Eighth Habit by Stephen Covey

Assignment: Book Review and Summary
Kartik Vijay
IM 20 Sec B
Roll no 82
[ T Y P E T H E C O M P A N Y A D D R E S S ]

Main idea:
The core message of this book is to find our voice and inspire others to find theirs.
For individuals and organizations, effectiveness is seen as a requirement for success.
This sense of effectiveness is contributed by Stephen R. Coveys The 7 Habits of
Highly Effective People. Since world has being changed from the Industrial Age to the
Knowledge Worker Age, we must move beyond effectiveness to greatness. However, to
access and involve in this new world with the higher level of human genius and
motivation, new habit is required. It is called the 8th habit. It represents another
dimension of effectiveness which will enhance the performance of each of the other.
This book is about change the way you think about yourself, your purpose in life, your
organization and other people.
This book is divided into two parts: find your voice and inspire others to find their
voices. Find your voice is to recognize and develop your true nature, to better
understand yourself, and express your voice through vision, discipline, passion and
conscience. Once youve found your own voice, the way you can continue to increase
your feelings of achievement is to inspire others to find their voices. This is the
leadership challenge in an organisation, it not only manage things, but also lead
people, because it requires leader recognise, respect and create meaningful
opportunities for others to express their voices. This book introduced several ways to
help leaders to better understand their people and inspire others to find their voice as
below:
Focus:
1. Expand your influence 2. Be trustworthy
3. Build trust 4. Blend others voices
5. Create a common vision
Execution:
1. Align goals and systems; 2. Empower others
Recommendation
There are several the significance and contribution from this book significant for 21st
century professionals, leaders, societies and the world. The power of voice, the sense
of find our voice and inspire others to find theirs, will contribute leader to be
greatness by realize your full potential and achieve lasting fulfilment. The 8th Habit
will provide leader has their own power to constantly find the potential in people. This
kind of leadership communicates to people their own worth so clearly that they come
to see it in themselves. In addition, the understanding of the balanced scorecard
provided leaders to not only concern about profits, but also contribute good
relationships with all stakeholders. Moreover, the ways to increase leaders influence
can be a significant contribution for leaders. The win-win thinking is also will help
leaders to understand the importance of listening. Finally, the link between leadership
and success also attracts leaders to understand.

Three interesting ideas
The Pain, the Problem and the Solution
The story of Muhammad Yunus we really touch me. Started with brought bamboo, an
idea with small loans is to help them to improve their lives, finally he opened Grameen
bank. He found this voice is to become entrepreneur is to help their home and
neighbourhoods to become rich and successful. Think about these great people, all
find and use their voice, and keep it, and then inspire other to find theirs. It is not hard
to find your voice, but to use it and inspire others even facing a trouble or disease.
This is reason why some people became greatness and some people just success.

Find your voice
When I first was these three words, I simply thought this means just listen to your
heart and follow it. But when I go through it, the meaning of find your voice is not only
to listen and follow. Sometimes we complaint, we feel disappointed the current life was
not your want but we continue accept. Maybe it is the time to find what is your really
want. But finally we are wrong. We should listen to my heart, to better understand what
we are. But we also need to develop our nature, to be better than before.


The Freedom of Choose
This is a gift were born with. We have a right to choose what we want. We cannot
change or determine in things happened to us. But we can choose our response.
Everyone has experienced some bad things, we cannot change, but we can choose our
response, is to be happy or continue being suffered. When I was young, I dont like
face a failure. I was fully being suffered and cannot recover after a setback. However, I
was growing up day by day, I being to learn how to forgive and forget. To be happy or
sad is a choice of our response. I really like the sentenceIn our choices lie growth and
our happiness. Growing up, we will understand and recognise what is our really
happiness. So never complaint life, every good or bad thing will give you a experience
and chance to you recognize what is your nature and your happiness.


Chapter wise description and summary.
Chapter 1 The Pain
The titular pain here is the fact that many people feel constrained by their
surroundings in various ways and it hurts. They cant break free to express the ideas
and talents inside of them instead, they feel as though theyre stuck like a cog in a
machine, a machine that moves in directions completely beyond their control, often in
ways that bury their talents even further. This ends up being a cycle of pain the
person hurts because they arent free to step forward and the organization hurts
because it relies on hurt people.
Chapter 2 The Problem
The problem, as Covey sees it, is that most of the workers feeling pain are Knowledge
Age workers trapped in an Industrial Age management structure. An Industrial Age
management structure treats workers like cogs, mere pieces to keep the overall
machine working. In the Knowledge Age, this paradigm doesnt work the real power
is the individual, not the larger machine. To maximize that power requires a rethinking
of how people work together to achieve a greater product.
Chapter 3 The Solution
The solution to this problem is the titular 8th Habit: find your voice and inspire
others to find theirs. What does that mean? Basically, it means that an individual
should transform the way they interact with their environment, discovering and
maximizing the natural talents that they have, and also to work with others so that
they can find and express their talents as well. How is this done? Thats what the rest
of the book is about.
Chapter 4 Discover Your Voice Unexpected Birth Gifts
Each individual has the power to discover their voice, the word Covey uses to describe
the innate talents of people and the effects of these talents on others. This power is
the result of three things: the ability to choose, the ability to discern between right and
wrong, and the unique physical, mental, social, and spiritual attributes that we all
possess. Using these in concert over and over again is where an individuals true voice
can be found consistently choosing to push our attributes to the limit and thus find
our strengths.
Chapter 5 Express Your Voice Vision, Discipline, Passion, and Conscience
Once you start to hone in on those talents and strengths through good choices, youll
find that the sweet spot for using ones gifts comes at a confluence of four areas:
passion, talent, need, and conscience. Passion happens when you do something that
you personally find deeply fulfilling and throw yourself into what are you passionate
about? Talent refers to the things you do well what things do you do that evoke a
positive response from others? Need points to those moments when you can actually
solve a problem with your presence. Conscience means that your heart is telling you
that its the right thing to do. When they all meet is when you can truly express your
voice, or, as Covey calls it, your unique personal significance.
Chapter 6 Inspring Others To Find Their Voice The Leadership Challenge
Leadership, in a nutshell, is communicating to people their worth and potential so
clearly that the come to see it in themselves. Thus, the most powerful thing you can do
to be a leader and help someone else find their voice is to point out to them, as clearly
as possible, when you observe one of their talents or passions or know of a need they
can specifically fulfill. Point out to them exactly what the talent or passion is, or if you
have a need thats right for them, explain exactly why theyre perfect for the role. Any
time you can put someone in a position where any of the four parts of expressing
ones voice come into play (passion, talent, need, and conscience) or even better,
multiple ones put them in place and tell them why youre doing it.
Chapter 7 The Voice of Influence Be A Trim-Tab
This chapter, and a few after it, focus on discussing possible voices that a person
might have; in this case, the book looks in detail at a person who is strong at
spreading influence. A trim-tab is the small rudder that turns the big rudder that turns
the entire boat. In other words, if you focus on little things especially putting people
in places where they can express their voice then quite often you can turn a big ship
around. Whats the best way of doing this? Above all else, accomplish things and let
those accomplishments do the talking. The more you accomplish, the greater your
influence and thus the greater your voice.
Chapter 8 The Voice of Trustworthiness Modeling Character and Competence
Most leadership failures are character failures, usually stemming from a lack of trust
between the manager and the managed. If you speak with a voice of trustworthiness,
though, you avoid this lack of trust. How? Covey more or less flat-out says that its
done by living The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People; he even outlines them again in
this chapter.
Chapter 9 The Voice and Speed of Trust
This book continues the idea of trustworthiness as a voice by pointing out that the
greater the trust between two people, the faster the communication. If you deeply trust
someone, the communication can be instantaneous, as in Dont worry about it, I
understand or No need to say a word. If theres some level of trust, the needed
communication comes very quickly. If theres not much trust, the message will come
slowly if it ever comes at all. The best way to build trust? Communicate often and
with complete truth.
Chapter 10 Blending Voices Searching For The Third Alternative
Conflict plays a major role in interactions between humans. So often, we feel the need
to have a winner and a loser in any conflict, but quite often the best solution is a
blending of the voices, much like Gandhis concept of a third way. To seek out that
third way, step back, look at the true talents of all of the people involved, and
brainstorm a solution that lets all people involved use their voices. The key, though, is
not to force it let people propose different ideas, bounce them off of each other, and
see what develops.
Chapter 11 One Voice Pathfinding Shared Vision, Values, and Strategy
This is a brief chapter about how to develop an actual mission statement for a large
group of people from different backgrounds. The only time Ive ever felt a mission
statement was effective was when we spent a day and a half developing a mission
statement. In the morning, we met in groups of six; in the afternoon, we met in an
entirely new group of six. In each group, we were challenged to develop a mission
statement for the whole group. The next day, we met in yet another entirely different
group of six and were given lists of all of the mission statements and were told to
eliminate ones we had a conflict with. What happened? One quickly emerged as the
best it really nailed what we were all about. It happened because so many people
were sharing visions and ideas together in a fluid environment. A mission
statement can be useful and powerful if you come at it with the intent for it actually to
mean something.
Chapter 12 The Voice and Discipline of Execution Aligning Goals and Systems for
Results
How do you encourage people to execute? The best way is by encouraging them to
compete against themselves set individual goals for each person and encourage them
to reach those individual goals, whether through compensation or other means. They
shouldnt compete against others in the organization that encourages animosity.
Instead, realizing that theyre all just competing against themselves (and the real
competition) builds teamwork. As long as these goals provide a challenge to the
worker and are clearly linked to the goals of the overall business, you will find success.
Chapter 13 The Empowering Voice Releasing Passion and Talent
What do you do if nothing else works and a person or a group simply doesnt live up to
their potential? Try breaking things down a bit into things that they know they can do
and encourage them to do those little pieces. Once the pieces start falling into place,
everything else follows. At some point, the person youre helping will click theyll
realize that yes, they can do it and theyll reveal their true passions and talents to
everyone. If you see the talent there but it isnt quite coming together, spend some
time nurturing it and reminding them of all the little pieces they do well soon, theyll
start putting those pieces together.
Chapter 14 The 8th Habit and the Sweet Spot
The sweet spot is that point where everything comes together and you get to really use
your voice to its full extent. How can you get there consistently? The biggest way is to
focus on long-term goals above all else and then focus on the things that serve
accomplishing this goal. Set a long-term goal, particularly one with milestones, and
focus on the things that are vital in achieving that goal. As long as the goal involves
your passions and your talents, your voice will ring out.
Chapter 15 Using Our Voices Wisely To Serve Others
The final chapter attempts to address, in a philosophical way, the purpose of all of this.
In general, the reason that people attempt to find their voice and encourage others to
find theirs is to serve some sort of human need. The more directly you can connect
with the need that you serve, the louder your voice will ring.