Sharpen the saw is the seventh and last habit that Covey defined in his original book. Habit 7 is a special habit, as this one is a perpetual habit, no matter how far you have advanced through the other 6 habits. Habits 1 to 3 form the Private Victory, and habits 4 to 6 form the Public Victory. Habit 7 tells us to “be fit for purpose”.The title of the habit is derived from wise craftsmen. You have to take care of your tools! If you’re cutting down trees and your saw is dull, it will take an agonizing long time. And since it took so long, you’re behind schedule, so you have to rush to the next tree.

But if you take the time to sharpen your saw, taking down the tree will be less strenuous and will deliver results faster. You will make up for “lost” time! Investing time to prepare your tools, pays itself back (and is in itself a quadrant II activity).

You are your tool in life!
Think about it! The single most important asset you possess…is YOU! Habit 7 demands that you take care of it. If you neglect this part, you can forget about the rest.

There are many ways to take care of yourself. Covey defines four areas:

• Physical
  Taking care of your body, staying healthy, focused on vitality
• Spiritual
  This is at the core, your life’s direction, your inner journey
• Mental
  Taking care of your brain and your acuity
• Social / emotional
  Investing in relationships and interdependence

I’m not going to tell you what Covey says about these dimensions in his book. The first part of what he describes is interesting, but then all of a sudden it shifts into another gear. The book is pretty timeless, but the chapter of habit 7 changes to a more time-constraint and personal interpretation in my opinion. I think people are wise enough to understand the message, and then venture into this world and give it a form and shape that suits their needs.

So take up the glove, and sharpen your saw! It’s an investment with double digit returns or even exponential returns if you combine it with the other 6 habits.

You can find the other six habits in previous posts:
Habit 1 Be proactive
Habit 2 Begin with the end in mind
Habit 3 First things first
Habit 4 Think Win Win
Habit 5 Seek first to understand then to be understood
Habit 6 Synergize

You can buy Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People at Amazon, or as an audiobook here. There’s also an audiobook on this habit alone.

This habit is about creation and creativity. Synergy as defined by the dictionary is:

syn·er·gy

1. The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
2. Cooperative interaction among groups, especially among the acquired subsidiaries or merged parts of a corporation, that creates an enhanced combined effect.

Synergy is the ability to create more together with others than we can by ourselves. But if you paid attention, we already achieved that with Habit 4: Think Win-Win. True, but habit 6 takes it a little (or a league) further.

Synergize, a mindset of unlimited potential
In earlier habits we already talked about abundance and the power of visualizing. Synergize is the mindset to get there. We have to acknowledge the concept that the sum is more than its parts. And if applied correctly there’s a major multiplier. Synergy takes the win-win cliché of 1 + 1 = 3 a level further 1 + 1 = 20 or 100 or 1,000 or … And if 1 + 1 gets you that far, realize what synergy would do if you add more to that.

There are numerous examples of this phenomenon, Covey describes a couple of them. About two politicians being able to get a million voters each, but 2.5 million together. Or about two people both too short to pick apples from a tree, but as a team with one on the shoulders of the other can pick a lot of apples. The first example looks like a variant of the classic 1 + 1 = 2.5 equation. But the second one is an example between a couple of apples each or no apples at all, and that’s quite a synergetic effect.

Celebrate the differences
If there’s something you have to do to get the most out of this habit, it’s acknowledging that there are differences between people, and that these differences are there to celebrate! The paradigm shift in this habit focuses around differences, they’re not annoying, they’re very precious. The moment you realize this is wonderful, and you recognize the hidden value in it. It makes you wonder why you burnt all that energy on fighting differences, when there’s so much to gain from acknowledging them.

I learned this while we where renovating our current house. It happened when I had worked all day to paint most walls and the ceiling from our living room. I was nearly done, and satified with all the work I had done, and the improvement it turned out to be. My wife came in and started by pointing out all the spots I had missed!! Now I’m the type of person that likes to hear acknowledgment for a job well done, and I get this…it makes my blood boil. I took a deep breath…

But in that moment I suddenly recognized a NLP concept I had just read about. It’s about Matchers and Mismatchers. Matchers focus on what’s there, they seek parallels. Mismatchers on the other hand focus on what’s not there, they seek differences. Then and there it struck me that I was a Matcher, and that my wife was a Mismatcher. She just acted upon what she saw instantly, and the beauty of it, that was exactly the part I had trouble seeing. Synergy was about to happen, be it with a trivial thing as painting a wall.

Synergy was only there because of mindset, at that moment even a change in mindset for me. In retrospect it was habits working at high speed, creating a pause to choose a response, taking the end (a great looking living room) in mind, thinking win-win (both the great result and no fight ) and I wanted to understand why my wife was saying this. Having read about the concept just a couple of days ago helped too of course…

When to use this habit
Unlike the other habits I find it difficult to actively practice this habit. It’s more a mindset that proves its value in certain situations, it’s not that I walk around in a synergetic mood day in day out. That would be annoying right?

“Oh I spot a difference here, let’s investigate how we can multiply our individual value to create a joint value far greater than we can achieve!”.

This mindset is very useful when you feel you’re about to get into a conflict situation. I have some experience with it now, and it really works! But like I said, I’m not high vibing on synergy all day long, but that could also be an immaturity in implementing the habit

Next week the last habit: Sharpen the saw

Previous posts in this series:

Habit 1 Be proactive
Habit 2 Begin with the end in mind
Habit 3 First things first
Habit 4 Think Win Win
Habit 5 Seek first to understand then to be understood

Can’t wait? You can buy Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People at Amazon, or as an audiobook here. There’s also an audiobook on this habit alone.

If you liked this article, please bookmark it in del.icio.us or stumble it. Thanks!

People understand me so poorly that they even don’t understand my complaint about them not understanding me.
- Soren Kierkegaard

People want to be understood. You want to be understood, don’t you? You know how frustrating it can be when people don’t understand you, no matter how hard you try, over and over again.

Habit 5 is about this phenomenon: Seek first to understand and then to be understood. And as with all of the habits, this one not about learning a new trick or a set of techniques. The habits are about changing paradigms, about changing the beliefs you have about the topics of the habits. This habit is about communication, effective interaction between people.

What’s your intention?

Why do you listen to people? If you’re like most people in most conversations, you primarily listen to give a response! And while your listening, you’re preparing for a response already. Now how can you listen effectively, when you’re thinking how to formulate the sentence that’s about to leave you lips? Covey sums up four typical
listening responses:

• Ignoring
  not listening at all
• Pretending
  not listening at all, but with mindless responses (”Uh-hum”, “Yeah, that’s really interesting”)
• Selective listening
  not listening to everything, but hearing what you want to hear
• Attentive listening
  really listening to the words

Effective listening is about really wanting to listen, wanting to understand the other. To achieve this you have to go beyond the words.

Full scale listening

To really understand people you have to use empathic listening. It’s not just hearing what they’re saying. Empathic listening is a full body activity. In communication the words are only a small part of the total communication. It’s what we refer to as verbal communication. But there’s also a non-verbal part to communicating. It’s even an essential
part for effective communication.

In real life people do this by expressing emotion by gestures, frowns, smiles etc. On the internet this wasn’t possible, so emoticons were created to substitute for the lack of non-verbal language. In real life we also use the tone of our voice, the loudness of it, the pitch etc. This is already harder on the internet, but a lot of people seem to know HOW TO SCREAM, don’t they? Add some colors, and you get the picture of the mood they’re in.

Empathic listening is about all these aspects of communication at the same time. Does the body language show the same thing as the words that are being spoken, do they express the same feeling? If not, what does that mean, how can you respond?

Logic versus emotion

In conversation not all parts are filled with emotions. There are two parts of a conversation, the logical part and the emotional part. Some parts of a conversation are simply logical, and you can respond to that part by asking questions and giving advice and so on. However, when the responses become emotional, empathic listening is the better option.

The empathic listening responses are:

• mimic content
  just repeat what was just said
• rephrase content
  repeat, but in your own words
• reflect feeling
  express what you think the other feels
• rephrase content and reflect feeling
  combine the latter two

Empathic listening is effective when you have the best interest of the other in mind, if you genuinely seek the welfare of the other.

Now to be understood

That was a rather long part about how to understand the other. How about being understood? That’s important as well of course. However, it’s the understanding part where most people have to train their skills. That’s why that part of this chapter is so elaborate. In this article, I’m not going into being understood anymore, I’ll save that one for another post.

Previous posts in this series:
Habit 1 Be proactive
Habit 2 Begin with the end in mind
Habit 3 First things first
Habit 4 Think Win Win

Next week habit 6: Synergize

Can’t wait? You can buy Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People at Amazon, or as an audiobook here. There’s also an audiobook on this habit alone.

If you liked this article, please bookmark it in del.icio.us or stumble it. Thanks!

The first three habits are part of what Covey calls the Private Victory. They are about you, about reaching a state of independence. The next three habits are part of the Public Victory, which brings your from independence to interdependence. The Private Victory alone brings forth individual producers, the Public Victory creates leaders and teamplayers.Habit 4 is called Think Win-Win. If you work in large companies you probably heard that expression a lot of times already, maybe even so often that it landed on your bullshit bingo cards.Win-win is misused very often and comes down to a win-lose proposition in a pretty package. Think Win-Win is about adopting a new paradigm, the paradigm of creation instead of the paradigm of competition.

Covey sums up seven different paradigms of interpersonal interaction:

• Win / Win
  I win and you win. This is looking for an
  alternative solution that creates value for all parties involved. This is based on the premises of abundance.
• Win / Lose
  I win, you lose. This is a highly competitive mindset, based on the premises of limited rewards.
• Lose / Win
  I lose, you win. This is where someone accepts a loss, just to make the other feel good. Sounds strange? Ever caved in to an apparantly pointless argument, saying “Allright, if it’s that important to you, we’ll do it your way”. That’s a typical Lose /
  Win situation.
• Lose / Lose
  This happens when people are too competitive and need to win at all cost. This ultimately ends up in a lose / lose situation.
• Win
  This is a mindset that’s only focused on winning, regardless of what it brings to others. The others are not in the equation here. This in effect is the mindset of someone who hasn’t gotten out of the private victory yet.
• Win / Win or no agreement
  This is a mindset where people want to agree to a win / win solution, and if not possible, decide to do no business at all. “Let’s agree to disagree agreeably.”
• Compromise
  This is not in the original list of Covey, yet he mentions it in the text as a viable option, albeit undesirable at most times. A compromise is where both win and both lose a little.

Abundance or limited rewards?
The paradigm of abundance is critical as a basis for the habit Think Win Win. If rewards are limited, win/win is hard, if not impossible. If you believe in abundance however, than there’s enough for everybody to go around. Or as Covey puts it, it’s not about getting a bigger piece of the pie, it’s about making the pie bigger!

The mindset of abundance is also a central theme in the movie The Secret. However they don’t make it very clear that this is not about the resources. Resources are limited in a lot of ways. The mindset of abundance is about the rewards! The rewards are abundant, the resources are only a means to an end. If the resources you have in mind are not available, what other ways are there to get to the rewards. That’s the central theme of the mindset of abundance.

Look for the third alternative

Imagine two people interacting and both have a solution that the other does not regard as a win. Anything other than a win/win attitude would defend their solution, as this brings them the biggest win. A lot of energy will be wasted in a competitive process of negotiating
and arguing, and at best will result in a Compromise (limited rewards are divided among them). Or as a cliché: 1 + 1 = 1.5

Now the win/win attitude says to believe in abundant rewards, so if the original solutions don’t provide enough rewards for either, the energy will go into a creative process where the focus is to look for a third alternative, where the total reward is bigger. As a cliché again: 1 + 1 > 2

I’m thinking win/win, but HE/SHE IS NOT!

Sounds nice and all this win/win attitude, but I’m the only one doing the win/win part. If only the other one… That’s the trick isn’t it? How can you successfully use win/win, when the other isn’t?

Well first of all, this isn’t a trick. Win/win is a paradigm, a mindset. You have to genuinely want to achieve a win/win solution, not aim for win/win but settle for win/lose if it proves too difficult.Covey calls this the character dimension. Character is built on integrity, maturity and the mentality of abundance. Maturity (as defined by Hrand Saxenian) is the ability to express one’s own feelings and convictions balanced with consideration for the thoughts and feelings of others.

To do this in a relationship, you have to show respect for the other. When it comes down to achieving your goals through this relationship, the win/win mindset calls for seeing it from the others side, trying to understand what the other is wanting to achieve, for the sake of finding a way to get both wants fulfilled. And in the end, if you want win/win to succeed, you have to make agreements that support it, reward systems that reward it, and processes that support it. However in this article I’m not going to elaborate on these
aspects.

A short recap

Habit 4 Think Win Win is the first of three, that form the Public Victory. It brings you from independence to interdependence. The Public Victory needs the basis of the Private Victory, that consists of the first three habits. The posts about these habits can be found here:

Habit 1 Be proactive
Habit 2 Begin with the end in mind
Habit 3 First things first

Next week I’ll cover habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood

Can’t wait? You can buy Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People at Amazon, or as an audiobook here. There’s also an audiobook on this habit alone.

If you liked this article, please stumble it on StumbleUpon. Thanks!

Habit 1 said that you are in charge, with habit 2 is the first creation (in the mind). Habit 3 is the second creation, in reality. Habit 3 is where you do stuff. Habit 3 to me is the Getting Things Done habit.Put First Things First sounds very logical, yet we mess this one up a lot of times. First Things are not the things that need to be done first, but the things that have to come first. YOU decide what the first things are! In habit 2 you have made a lot of these decisions. The things that make you happy, the things that give you true
fulfillment, those are the First Things.

Covey makes a strong case to plan blocks of time for these First Things in your calender, and stick to them. The rest can be used as filler as there’s so much more that comes your way than only your First Things. Getting Things Done is all about dealing with all the stuff that’s coming at you. Both Stephen Covey and David Allen provide me a piece of the puzzle here. The GTD system would benefit from the time leadership matrix that Covey describes in his book.

The time-leadership matrix
The Eisenhower matrix (Eisenhower is the real inventor) combines importance and urgency into a matrix to make up 4 quadrants:

Q1: the stress quadrant

• This is the important and urgent quadrant.
• This is where you find the the crises, projects close to their deadlines, urgent problems and so on.
• The strategy: Do Now!
• It needs to be done, and it needs to be done fast!

Q2: the value quadrant

• This is important, but not urgent.
• This is where you find education, working on your vision, investing in people and so on.
• The strategy: Schedule time.
• It needs to be done, plan time to do it before it gets urgent.

Q3: the deception quadrant

• It is urgent, but not important.
• This is where you find most interruptions, some meetings, other peoples chores.
• The strategy: Delegate.
• It needs to be done fast, but are you the one that needs to do it?

Q4: the regret quadrant

• It neither important nor urgent
• This is where you find pass-times, some phone calls (you know them), the “too much” activities (too much television, too much internet).
• The strategy: Eliminate
• And why were you doing this again?

Most people are Q1 and Q3 dominant. The urgency gives them a rush, it feels that you’re important, you deal with the urgent stuff. The challenge is to get Q2 as big as possible. The more you invest in Q2, the smaller the need for urgency (Q1 en Q3).

This is a very powerful concept, and I use it in combination with GTD. For all my projects and actions, I think about the relationship between the projects and next actions and the quadrants. If it turns out to be Q3, I define new actions to prevent this stuff from landing on my desk the next time.

Recap of the private victory
The first 3 habits are what Covey calls the “Private Victory”. These three habits will bring you to independence. In short the three habits are:

• You have to do it
• Imagine what you want
• Do it!

The private victory is not an easy victory. Look around you and you’ll recognize one of these three habits in the people that surround you. Surf around on the web and there are a lot of blogs, sites and communities dealing with one or more of these habits.

Next week habit 4: Think Win-Win

Previous articles in this series:
Covey’s Habits 1: Be Proactive
Covey’s Habits 2: Begin with the end in mind

Can’t wait? You can buy Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People at Amazon, or as an audiobook here. There’s also an audiobook on this habit alone, or a complete book (the audiobook and the book are NOT the same in this case).

If you liked this article, please bookmark it in del.icio.us or stumble it. Thanks!