The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – For the IT Leader
Do you want to be more effective as a parent, spouse, friend, member of the community, and IT leader? A great place to start is by reading Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and putting those habits into practice in your life.
Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective people is one of the most time-honored classics of personal and professional development. With over 25 million copies sold in 40 different languages around the world, it is a staple of personal and professional growth. The 7 Habits provide an “operating system for life” that, if followed, will help you become more effective in all facets of your life.
Following the 7 Habits will help you become a much more effective Technology Leader. Each one of the habits applies to you in a specific way that can help you become a better leader of your IT team. Even more importantly, the 7 Habits can help you interact more effectively with leadership peers within your organization.
Covey refers to Habits 1-3 as the habits of “Private Victory”; meaning they are habits that help you develop personally, become independent and gain mastery over yourself. Habits 4-6 are the habits of “Public Victory”, meaning they are habits that help you become more effective in working with others and become interdependent. Habit 7 is the practice of continually monitoring and improving yourself.
Applying the 7 Habits to how you approach working with your IT team and your fellow organizational leaders will make you much more effective as an IT leader. The “Private Victory” habits tie very closely to how you create, develop, and manage your IT strategy and day to day operations. The “Public Victory” habits help you to look outside of the IT department and work more effectively with the entire organization and your leadership team peers to help them accomplish their goals.
Ok, so let’s take a deeper dive into the 7 Habits and see how they can help you continue to improve as an IT Leader. Below is a brief summary of each of the Habits and how they specifically apply to IT Leaders.
Habit 1-Be Proactive
- Habit 1 in a nutshell: This habit is all about realizing that we have responsibility for our own lives. We play a huge part in creating our own reality. Our current reality is not a product of our genetics, or how our parents raised us, or how our boss is treating us today; it is a product of the choices we make and the actions we take on a day to day, moment to moment basis. A key part in claiming responsibility for our lives is being proactive instead of reactive. We have to take initiative to be effective. Covey uses an analogy that will resonate with us as technologists: “You are the programmer.”
- What it means to IT Leaders: Cybersecurity comes to mind here. Do not sit back and react when a threat hits. Make sure you have a proactive cybersecurity plan in place that minimizes threats, mitigates damage, and quickly reacts when a threat is detected. Get out in front of your users and educate them on what they can do to minimize threats and protect data. You may be aware of “holes” in your plan, be proactive and fill those gaps to secure your infrastructure and data.
Habit 2-Begin w/ the End in Mind
- Habit 2 in a nutshell: Covey opens this chapter of his book with a jarring visualization; asking you to imagine your own funeral. Who is there, did you accomplish what you wanted to, did you focus on the proper priorities in your life? This habit is all about setting your goals to make sure that the detail of your life and your daily activities lead you towards accomplishing the things that are truly important to you. We have to take time to determine what is most important to us to give ourselves focus and priority. To continue with the programmer analogy Covey makes in Habit 1: “You are the programmer”. Habit 2 says: “Now write the program.”
- What it means to IT Leaders: Your IT Plan and Strategy. What is most important to your organization and does your IT plan and project list match and support it? Make sure at the beginning of each calendar or fiscal year you are working with your IT and Leadership teams to develop your strategy for the year; what are your goals, what projects need to be completed, what training needs to be provided to your staff? Once this plan has been created, let it be your guiding light and disciplined plan of what is most important for you to lead to accomplishment.
Habit 3-Put First Things First
- Habit 3 in a nutshell: Where Habit 2 is about determining what is most important; Habit 3 is about making sure you focus on the important things every day. We have to know the difference between what is urgent and what is important. We have to manage our time and ourselves so we do not get caught up in urgency and firefighting all day; but instead can spend our time and energy focusing on the important things, the things that will help us achieve our highest goals. We react to urgent issues, but we are proactive with important ones. And as Habit 1 teaches us; we have to be proactive and therefore we have to keep our focus on our important goals. To continue with the programmer analogy; Habit 3 tells us to “Execute the program.”
- What it means to IT Leaders: A great analogy made by Newt Gingrich applies here; are you hunting antelope or are you hunting mice? The antelope represent your important goals and projects that bring the most value to “feed” your organization, the mice represent the daily urgent tasks that keep us busy but do not bring enough value to sustain. Focus too much on hunting mice and you will starve. So what does all this mean to us as IT leaders? Make sure you are disciplined to keep focus on your key projects and priorities (your Begin with the End in Mind priorities). Do not allow yourself to get pulled into menial day to day firefighting. You are a lion; hunt antelope, not mice.
Habit 4-Think Win/Win
- Habit 4 in a nutshell: Habit 4 teaches us to seek mutual benefit in all of our interactions. We should approach our interactions with others in a cooperative, not competitive, manner. It takes courage to think Win/Win; we inherently tend to think selfishly and try to work situations to our favor. But the only true way to succeed in life is to be cooperative with others and value their wins as much as your own. Remember, making a great pass for an assist is just as important as making the shot.
- What it means to IT Leaders: Partner w/ your fellow leaders to accomplish great things. Patrick Lencioni talks about the concept of the “first team” in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. As IT Leaders we need to realize our first team is the Leadership or management team we are members of. The goals of our fellow leaders in the organization are our goals as well. Are you helping your fellow leaders achieve their goals or standing in their way with prohibitive IT policies and budget protecting?
Habit 5-See First to Understand Then to Be Understood
- Habit 5 in a nutshell: Habit 5 is all about effective communication and listening. In order to be influential, you need to listen, empathize, and seek to understand what is important to your wife, child, friend, or co-worker. Listening is crucial, and not just with the intent to reply or get your point across at the first second possible, but to understand and empathize. A key concept Covey introduces in Habit 5 is that “satisfied needs do not motivate.” People are only motivated by unsatisfied needs and the need to be heard and understood is an unsatisfied need we all experience. So by taking the time to listen, to understand what is being told to us, we build trust, stronger relationships, and make deposits into what Covey calls the Emotional Bank Account.
- What it means to IT Leaders: Talk with your fellow leaders first, understand what is important in the business. Don’t mange or create IT plan in a vacuum. Network! Touch base with your fellow executive or management team peers. What are their goals for the year? How do they need technology to help them be successful? And when you meet with them, listen and empathize with what they are telling you. Do not try to talk over them trying to get your points across. Listen, it will build trust and stronger relationships.
Habit 6-Synergize
- Habit 6 in a nutshell: This Habit is the manifestation of all the previous Habits. In simplest terms, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. What does this mean for our own effectiveness? It means that if we strive for Win/Win relationships and seek first to understand that we will develop synergistic relationships where greater things can be accomplished together than we can accomplish individually. In a synergistic relationship, one plus one equals three or more. More is accomplished together than independently.
- What it means to IT Leaders: The Whole is greater than the sum of its parts, within your IT team and within your Leadership team. Make sure you are continuously seeking Win/Win encounters and listening with the intent to understand. Manage your IT team to their strengths, not their weaknesses.
Habit 7-Sharpen the Saw
- Habit 7 in a nutshell: Habit 7 is all about maintaining and improving the most valuable asset you have–yourself. You must make time to invest in yourself for growth and renewal. We must be proactive and commit ourselves to make efforts to improve our physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional well-being.
- What it means to IT Leaders: Keep your skills up to date. Commit yourself to a daily plan where you allow yourself time to stay on top of the latest technological advances to keep your skills “sharp.” You are in an excellent field that allows you the opportunity for constant learning as technology changes and advances. Make time to stay on top of the trends so you can deliver the best technology solutions to your organization. Commit yourself to taking time to becoming a better overall leader. Network, attend technology events and read. A great place to start? Read Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
So there you have it. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People briefly explained and some examples given of how you can apply them to make you a more effective IT leader. If you have already read this excellent book, pick it up and review it again. If you have not read it, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. Read it and put the 7 Habits into place in your daily life. I promise it will have a positive impact on your life and make you a more effective spouse, parent, friend, co-worker; and IT Leader.
