Tag Archives: Books

The fears that keep us working harder than we need to

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,
I’m away this week, writing this blog posting ahead of time and scheduling it for publication on the day after the Easter Monday Bank Holiday.  As I write I am savouring the prospect of a short trip to Istanbul, with my mother, brother and family.  I have long since identified Istanbul as a place I’d love to visit.  I am also looking forward to a week in which my main focus is not work but play – a combination of spending time with loved ones and exploration.
In the run-up to my departure, I have been inviting discussions with my colleagues in the awareness that the heart of my work centres on helping leaders to do what they do with ease as well as with good results.  Often, my work is about helping clients to identify the next stage of their career and to move easily towards it.  For some, this movement towards is imbued with ease.  For many it is not.  So, my question to my colleagues is this:  what is it that keeps us working harder than we need to in order to achieve results?  I’m not talking about the kind of hard work we put in because we are engaged and inspired – what some call “discretionary effort”.  I’m talking about times when we struggle to achieve the outcomes we long for.  I’m talking about times when we work long hours but with little to show for it in terms of our desired outcomes or the way we feel.  I’m talking about the dialogue that goes round and round in circles and still, fails to lead us to the outcome we most need.  The list could go on…
Today, as I write, I am struck by a couple of resources highlighted to me by colleagues.  The first is a blog posting about a man called Simon Sinek whose name is new to me.  This led me in turn to a talk by Simon on www.TED.com – not just any talk but, at the time of writing, TED’s 7th most watched video ever.  In this talk, Simon outlines the simple difference between those leaders and organisations which manage to engage and inspire and those that, no matter how fantastic their product, fail to gain a foothold in the marketplace.  This is what Goleman and colleagues describe as the visionary leadership style in their book, The New Leaders.  This is what inspires the discretionary effort from staff.  This is what engages – excites, even – a tribe of loyal customers.
My question, though, was about the opposite side of the coin.  What is it that keeps us working too hard – struggling – to achieve results?  I was delighted to be pointed to this posting, entitled The Fears Leaders Never Speak Of (And How AQAL, Zen, And The Chinese New Year Can Help).  In this posting, author Ginny Whitelaw points us to the fears that sit beneath our efforts – fears that are often unrecognised and in this way given the power to drive our behaviour.  She also gives an intriguing recipe for responding to our fears which has the potential to empower us in the most counter-intuitive way.
But hey, I’m on holiday right now.  If you want to know more, you’ll have to read the bog postings and watch the TED talk.
Mmmm… 

The art of asking

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,
In recent weeks, I confess I have engaged in a classic response to challenging times – going shopping.  It all started with a tea pot in Oxfam in Blackheath.  I loved it so much that, having bought it, I started to look for other items to match.  I uncovered the name of the pattern, discovered places to buy this pattern (long since discontinued) and have quickly built up a collection.  I have even, finally, succumbed to having cupboards and shelves built in my dining room.  This has given storage space for my new collection, it has been designed to display some of my new items, and it has also given storage for just some of the books around the house because, yes, I am also a bibliophile par excellence.  I can rationalise that I have been meaning for a while to replace some of my tired old china and this has been the opportunity to do it.  At the same time, I notice that this period of intense activity has followed the death of my uncle, distracting me from some of the feelings of grief and loss that came with it.
This collecting frenzy has also had an interesting side-effect, because in order to build my collection, I have had to ask for help.  It started when I posted some photos of my tea pot on Facebook and asked if anyone was clearing out their collection.  A number of friends responded with sources of information about this pattern (Denby arabesque) and pointed me to places that sell it.  For the first time, I ‘discovered’ eBay.  I bought a bowl, for collection only, from someone who lives near my younger brother, leading me to ask him if he’d be willing to collect it.  And then another from someone who lives near my older brother so that, once more, I found myself making a request.  I bought a large collection some miles away and asked a friend with a car (who keeps a car in London?  My friend Alan) if he would be willing to drive me.  The list goes on.
The tenderness of asking for help
Making requests of my friends and family – and so many requests of so many friends and family – has reminded me of the tenderness and sense of vulnerability that comes with asking for help.  Yes, I’m talking about me.  But I’m also talking more generally.  I would even go so far as to say that we live in a culture which frowns on the honest request.
In case you doubt this assertion, here are just a few examples of the ways in which we have learnt to bypass making requests – which I share alongside the invitation to notice how many you use yourself or notice in others:
  • One way that springs to mind is to make a “requorder” (“Take this to the post room, will you?”  “Get this done by five o’clock, won’t you?”).  This is an order or instruction embedded within a request.  Beloved of parents, managers and other figures of authority, the desired response is implied in a way which makes it just a bit more difficult to say no than an open honest request;
  • Another way is to hold in mind an expectation that is never openly shared (“Any normal manager would have noticed how upset John was feeling”  “Who on earth would turn up to such an important meeting without preparing?”  “Do you think anyone has told her that trying to go through a 60-slide deck in half an hour was bound to bore the pants off everybody?”);
  • Giving feedback is also often a way of making a hidden request (“This document is in a terrible state.  I found at least six mistakes on every page – it’s just not up to scratch!”);
  • And of course, there’s always the option of giving an order (“You need to complete this document by 5 o’clock at the latest!”  “Make sure everyone has the minutes at least two days in advance”).

As ways of getting things done, these tactics vary in their ability to achieve a desired outcome.  One of the least successful is to complain around the water-cooler (or at home to our husband or wife):  talking about what someone should have done or should do in future rarely leads to a change of behaviour on the part of the person concerned.  More successful is the option of giving an order – at least in the short term.  Over time, though, the use of a coercive style of leadership can have a corrosive impact on how people feel at work.  (If you haven’t already read it, read Daniel Goleman’s article Leadership That Gets Results for an introduction to research in this area.)

Having said this, one thing that all these approaches delivers is this:  it protects us from all the feelings we have when faced with the possibility of a “no”, and one laden with judgement at that.  For many, our feelings of tenderness and vulnerability when making requests reflect all sorts of experiences from our earliest years.
The art of asking
This blog posting takes its heading from a talk on TED.com by singer Amanda Palmer.  If you recognise the challenge of making requests or find yourself wondering if some of the strangest behaviours of those you lead come from avoiding making requests, then you may enjoy hearing what she has to say.  For my part, these are a few things that work for me when I’m making requests:
  • Recognise my emotions around making a request:  There are times when the thought of making a request brings up some emotion for me.  An example of this is the anger I feel when faced with a car, loud music and a number of teenagers in the car park opposite my house at bed-time.  I always start by noticing my emotion and noticing what the emotion is;
  • Get clear about what I really want:  With the young people in the car park, for example, I may recognise how early I need to get up the next morning and how much I’m longing for sleep.  I want to be confident that when I go to bed in a few minutes time I’ll be able to sleep without a background noise of voices and loud music.  This is a way of giving myself empathy and tends to soothe the emotion.  It’s also important to help me make a request that really does meet my needs;
  • Think about different ways of getting what I really want:  As long as the only way for me to get to sleep is to get those youngsters out of the car park, it’s difficult for me to make a request rather than a demand:  I know people sense the energy of a demand behind the words of a request.  Thinking about a variety of ways forward makes it easier for me to make a request.  Before I make a request, I take time to think about different options;
  • Get curious about what others may have on their minds:  The kids in the car park have a reason for being there.  Taking time to imagine what those reasons may be helps me to connect with others as and when I do decide to make a request.  And because I still remember my mother telling me “I want, doesn’t get”, it helps to remind myself that actually, we all like to contribute to the well-being of others;
  • Get clear about what I want to request:  Sometimes, the request I end up making is not the one I first thought of.  I’ve learnt, for example, to ask the youngsters in the car park how long they’re planning to be there and to explain why that’s important to me.  They might feel unhappy to be asked to leave right now, but it’s hard to find a reason not to share their intentions.  In the workplace, I may want someone to do something for me but first, I want to know if there’s anything standing in the way.  Often my first request is a request for information about the other person (“Is this something you’d be willing to do?” “How does this idea land with you?”);
  • Make the request when I can easily accept a yes or a no:  Especially when my start-point has been one of emotion, I take time to reach a point when I can hear a yes or a no with equal ease before I make the request.  Only at this point do I open the door and walk across the (real or metaphorical) car-park;
  • Make a simple action-request:  I may say hello and check in.  Quite quickly though, I cut to the chase.  I make my request and explain why it’s important to me.  I make sure my request is specific – describing the action I want someone to take.  Then I wait for – and welcome – the answer.

I recognise that there may be unanswered questions for you.  (“What about when you do need the report done by 5pm?”  “What about the staff member who always says no and needs to say yes?”).  Please ask me those questions in the comment box below and I promise to write a response.  For now, though I wonder – how do you manage the art of asking?

When it’s good to take your work home

Developing as a leader,
Want your family to function effectively?

Once again, the Harvard Business Review’s Morning Advantage has come up trumps, highlighting a blog posting which highlights a growing trend in taking successful approaches from the workplace and applying them at home.  HBR’s Dana Rousmaniere writes:

Take Your Work Solutions Home
Fed up with the chaos that was dominating their household, the Starr family of Hidden Springs, Idaho, decided to start running their family like a business. They turned to a program called agile development, a system of group dynamics where workers are organized into small teams, and hold daily progress sessions and weekly reviews. According to The Wall Street Journal’s Saturday Essay Family Inc, it’s a growing trend among a new generation of parents who are taking workplace solutions — like accountability checklists, branding sessions, mission statements, core values statements, and conflict resolution techniques — home to their families.

Some of the take-home advice? 1.) The most effective teams (and families) aren’t dominated by a single top-down leader; all members must contribute. 2.) Employees (and children) are more self-motivated when they can set weekly goals, plan their own time, and evaluate their own work. 3.) You need to build flexibility into a business, or a family. You can’t anticipate every problem, so you need systems that allow you to adapt to change quickly. Accountability, one of the central tenets of agile development, is also key, making “information radiators” — large, public boards where people mark their progress — essential. 

The article is adapted from a book,  The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More, by Bruce Feiler.  Due out next week, it looks like a great read.

Even if you don’t have children at home with all their attendant challenges, Feiler’s blog posting makes for interesting reading.  To what extent, for example, are you familiar with ‘agile’ practices and the benefits that they bring in the workplace?  Equally, Feiler’s posting highlights an interesting trend away from top-down leadership towards greater involvement of people throughout the organisational hierarchy.  I have mentioned before the work of Alfie Kohn and Daniel Pink – or at least, the way they have summarised research which suggests that the use of extrinsic punishment and rewards to motivate staff has the opposite of its desired effect.  Feiler’s article provides practical alternatives and describes how these worked in one family in practice.

I’d be interested to learn how you respond to Feiler’s article and, if you go on to read it, to his book.  What do you take from his article that you can apply in your work or family life?

Covey’s third habit: put first things first

About Dorothy, Developing as a leader, ,
I am sitting at my desk today, reflecting on the death of my Uncle Tom following his funeral on Tuesday.  I am still finding it hard to believe that he is no longer with us.
Tom died within hours of our performance of Mozart’s Requiem and since that time we have been rehearsing Brahm’s German Requiem.  Of course, the words of a requiem are evocative.  Especially, I keep hearing denn ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach.  In my copy of the Brahms, the words of the final movement are translated as Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth.  Sayeth the spirit, that they rest from their labors, and that their works follow after them.  This phrase – that their works follow after them – touches me deeply.  Tom’s works do indeed follow after him.  The eulogy was a celebration of some of those works and of the man who was so fondly remembered.  They are reflected in the memories which each of us treasures.  They are reflected in the love of so many people towards him.  You could even say that my cousins, themselves much loved and treasured, are amongst Tom’s “works”.
In the midst of everything that accompanies a death, I have also had a small voice reminding me to return to a series of postings I began some months ago, following the death of Stephen Covey in July 2012.  It is time to write about Covey’s third habit, as described in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – put first things first.  In this chapter, Covey describes how highly effective people manage their time.
Covey’s thoughts in this area are beloved of trainers and of other development professionals as well as of readers of his book.  One of his offerings is a two-by-two grid in which to plot the actions on our ‘to do’ lists according to their level of importance (high or low) and urgency ( high or low).  The point is, if we are constantly spending time on things that are urgent but not important, we are unlikely to be highly effective.  Most favoured by Covey is Quadrant II, that is – those activities that are important but not urgent.
But how do we determine what is important?  Covey invites us to look at the various roles in our lives – parent, spouse, leader etc. – and to identify weekly goals against each role.  We can use these goals to schedule activities for the week ahead, taking time each day to adapt our schedule in the light of new developments.  He also includes the idea of “sharpening the saw” about which we shall hear more when we come to Habit Seven.
Now, I must confess that there has been a gap in time between reading Covey’s chapter on putting first things first and writing this posting and this leaves me with something intriguing.  For what I took most to heart when I read this chapter – and now cannot find as I skim through it again – is the idea that effective time management is about knowing what we want in the broadest sense, and taking steps to move towards it.  Coaches sometimes invite people to imagine themselves sitting on a bench in their old age (hence the photo, above) looking back on their lives and to ask themselves – what would they most like to look back on?  This can be a powerful means of connecting with those things that are most important to us.  Many a senior executive has found himself taken aback by the realisation that he (or she) is spending more time on work than on tending precious relationships. 
Covey’s tools and techniques are not, he says, about time management – though he also refers to his approach as the fourth generation of time management.  They are, he says about self management.  Hanging out in Quadrant II requires us to understand what is most important to us and to manage our schedule in line with what is most important to us.  At the end of a life, our commitment to live a life in line with our values is reflected in the myriad memories of those we leave behind, as well as in the feelings they evoke.
To my Uncle Tom I say a loving thank you for these memories.

Friday morning meaning-making

Developing as a leader,

In the aftermath of World War II, Viktor E. Frankl, psychologist, wrote of his experiences in the concentration camps.  His little book was published in Austria under the title Ein Psycholog Erlebt Das Konzentrationslager (“A psychologist experiences the concentration camp”) and subsequently, in English as Man’s Search for Meaning.  If you haven’t read it yet, you’re not too late.  It’s still readily available.

I was reminded of it recently when my friend Kenny Tranquille sent me a link to a six-minute clip of Dan Ariely, author of The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home.  In the clip, entitled The Meaning of Labor, Ariely describes the disappointment of a young man who has worked for three weeks to prepare documentation for a merger, only to be told, simply, that the merger is off.

Ariely goes on to describe an intriguing experiment which explores people’s motivation and productivity at work.  As Ariely himself highlights, the tasks allocated are not deeply imbued with meaning – the subjects are using Lego to build small figures.  Even so, small changes in the conditions of the experiment which reduce meaning for participants, have a big impact on both motivation and behaviour.

Ariely points to two conclusions.  Firstly, he says, we need to think about how to create more meaning at work.  Like Frankl, Ariely recognises that people are naturally inclined to make meaning.  Secondly, he suggests we need to take care not to choke this tendency by our activities as leaders.  He finishes his brief talk with some suggestions for the manager of his young friend.

It’s an intriguing clip – no doubt an invitation to buy his book.  Just six minutes long, it’s worth watching and reflecting on before getting down to the business of the day.  Perhaps a question to reflect on after watching is this:  to what extent, as a line manager, are you invested in helping your staff to find meaning in their work?

Armistice day for the family

Emotional Intelligence, ,


“Comrade, I did not want to kill you.
If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too.
But you were only an idea to me before,
an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response.
It was that abstraction I stabbed.
But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me.
I thought of your hand grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle;
now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship.
Forgive me comrade.
We always see it too late.
Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us,
that your mothers are just as anxious as ours,
and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony
– forgive me comrade;  how could you be my enemy?”

Erich Maria Remarque
All Quiet on the Western Front

On Sunday, I took a moment to reflect on Armistice Day, drawing on the above extract from Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front.  Today, I am taking a few moments to translate the passage above for the family:

“Beloved, I did not want to snap at you.
If you did the same again, I would not snap at you, if you too would hold back.
But you had become an idea to me before,
an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth an appropriate response.
I snapped at that abstraction.
But now again – maybe even for the first time – I see you;
I see that you are human, like me.
I thought of your shortcomings and felt the pain they stimulated in me;
now I see your face, your place in our family and my own.
Forgive me.
I always see it too late.
Why did they never tell me that you are human just as I am,
that you, too, feel the pain of misunderstandings,
and that we both fear the loss of identity and needs unmet as we negotiate family life
– forgive me beloved; how could you be my enemy?”

It’s official: compassion by leaders increases productivity

Developing as a leader, ,

In case you haven’t already signed up to Harvard Business Review’s Morning Advantage, here’s another sign they have come up trumps again – a link to an article on the role played by compassion by leaders in boosting productivity and business results.  Morning Advantage puts it this way:

What separates great companies from the rest of herd is the compassion of its leaders, according to one new study detailed by Knowledge@Australian School of Business.  Many of us will readily agree that the best managers tend to be great motivators and promoters of success. But compassion may have a bigger impact than we think. In the 77 organizations studied, researchers saw a direct relationship between compassion and productivity — and profits. 

But being compassionate doesn’t mean avoiding difficult situations. As leadership expert Geoff Aigner found in his own research, the biggest road block managers must overcome is their reluctance to engage in tough conversations for fear of being unkind. This is a common mistake, confusing compassion with kindness, says Aigner. Leaders who truly care about the development and growth of their employees are able to push through the awkwardness, and tell it straight. 

I was surprised by the definitions of compassion offered by two thought leaders in the area and still, it does not surprise me that research supports the idea that compassion boosts productivity.  As a student of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent (or Compassionate) Communication my own experience is that compassion is an essential ingredient in forging strong relationships and provides a basis for some of the essentials of leadership, including effective coaching and the kind of ‘tough’ conversations to which Morning Adantage refers.  For this reason, I regularly reference Rosenberg’s teachings here on my blog.

But back to the article I mentioned above, do read it – whether you have doubts about such a claim or want to learn more.

There is one claim made in the article which challenges my thinking – it certainly merits further investigation.  The writer says:

A surprising outcome of Boedker’s research is the finding that, out of four levels of leadership from the executive level through middle management to frontline managers, it’s the lowest level of leaders that drives a company’s profitability. Perhaps, Boedker surmises, this is because frontline managers are more customer-facing than others and therefore have a lot more impact.

I wonder, what’s the truth of this assertion…

Covey’s second habit: start with the end in mind

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , ,
Photo by Bill
From http://signsoflife.goose24.org/?sign=124

When I learned last month of the death of Stephen Covey, author of the seminal book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I committed to re-read his book and to write a posting about each of his seven habits.  Returning to his book I am reminded of chocolate mousse – it’s so rich you don’t want to eat too much at a time.  So, a month after I wrote about his first habit, I am taking a few moments to write about his second.

Covey’s first habit, “be proactive”, is about taking responsibility for our own lives.  His second habit, “start with the end in mind” is about writing the script we want to follow.  As Covey puts it in this chapter:

“Begin with the end in mind” is based on the principle that all things are created twice.  There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things”

and later:

And if I do this, day after day my behaviour will change.  Instead of living out of scripts given to me by my own parents or by society or by genetics or my environment, I will be living out of the script I have written from my own self-selected value system.

Writing as a coach, it’s easy to say that much of Covey’s material in this chapter has been written about elsewhere.  NLP offers a model for outcome-oriented rather than problem-oriented thinking, for example.  The film and book The Secret have been immensely popular amongst seekers of wisdom and new insights.  Laura Whitworth and colleagues in their splendid introduction to coaching, Coactive Coaching, offer exercises which are the embodiment of Covey’s second habit and which have become familiar to coaches and their clients around the world.  Indeed, Covey himself readily acknowledges his own sources throughout the book.  To recognise the fact that ideas in this chapter can also be found elsewhere takes nothing away from Covey, who has organised core ideas in a way which illuminates them.

He begins by inviting readers to write the eulogy they would like to have read at their funeral – this really is beginning with the end in mind.  When we engage deeply with this exercise, it provides a powerful context for our decisions and our actions.  This is not just about manifesting the physical possessions we desire:  it’s about understanding the overall context of our lives and the role individual desires have in this context.  It seems unlikely, for example, that a new Mercedes will feature in our self-written eulogy.  The love of friends and family, the contribution we made through our work – these are amongst the things that we may look back on.

Covey also invites people to create a personal mission statement, a statement of our vision and values and how we intend to enact these in practice in the different roles we hold in our life.  He contrasts a life lived in line with this level of personal clarity with one which is guided by centres outside ourselves – the young person for whom friendship is so important that s/he will do nothing that might offend, the executive whose commitment to work is such that s/he constantly prioritises work over family, even the person whose focus is on some kind of enemy.  As I write, I do so with compassion, recognising how much the shift from such external centres to operating from a set of clearly defined personal values is a journey in itself.  (I shared my values on this blog in 2009, and though I revisit them periodically, they have not changed much in the interim).

Given Covey’s recognition that “all things are created twice”, it’s not surprising that he dedicates space in this chapter to visualisation and to affirmations as the means by which we can increase the quality of our first creation.  He also recognises the importance, in the context of both family and organisations, of participation in creating a mission, vision and values which have the full commitment of everyone involved in delivering them.

Covey’s ideas in this chapter are highly practical – writing your own eulogy, writing a personal statement of mission, vision and values, involving members of your family or organisation in writing a shared mission statement.  I could say more about each exercise in turn but this seems to be gilding the lily:  for now I invite you, simply, to try at least one of these exercises and to let me know – how did you get on?  

For your holiday reading: The Hare With Amber Eyes

About Dorothy

It’s two years since my dear friend, Len Williamson, recommended a book I had not yet heard of – Edmund de Waal’s The Hare With Amber Eyes.  Of course, having been recommended to read it, I started to notice the window displays of this book, the winner of the 2012 Costa Biography Award.

My first response was to dip into the book and, discovering the book’s focus on a set of Japanese netsuke (tiny carved figures that would sit easily in the palm of your hand), I think immediately of my brother Alan, whose years of working with a Japanese company have made him a willing student of Japanese culture and language.  So, 18 months or more before reading it myself, I gave it to Alan as a gift.  More recently, I bought my own copy and started to read it, discovering far more than I had imagined in this biography of de Waal’s family, mediated via the journey of the netsuke through generations of the Ephrussi family.

Early in the book I am transported into familiar territory – it was Charles Ephrussi who first assembled the collection of netsuke in Paris in the second half of the 19th century.  Charles lived amongst artists and writers with whom I am familiar via my own studies so that I am transported back to the literature I loved so much in my late teens and early twenties.  I am intrigued to learn that Charles was one of two men who were the model for the book’s subject, Charles Swann.  There is something about this period of the netsuke’s lives that brings to life in a very vivid way the era in which Proust was writing, anchoring his work amongst the work of other writers and artists.

When the netsuke move to Vienna – as a wedding gift to Charles’s cousin Viktor and his wife – I am similarly transported into the territory of my studies, gaining new insights into the work of Robert Musil, Arthur Schnitzler and other contemporary writers.  De Waal writes of the opulent lives of his forbears in ways which remind me of his own life as one of the world’s leading ceramic artists – there is something about his use of language which renders it almost physical, as if one were feeling his words in one’s hands.  As well as writing an intimate portrait and memoire of his family, De Waal captures the sweep of history as it unfolds.

And it does unfold, into the territory of twentieth century anti-Semitism and warfare.  I did not expect to make this journey, though it makes perfect sense when I do – how could it be otherwise for de Waal’s Jewish ancestors?  Charles’ cousin Viktor invests heavily in the war effort in World War I, only to have his life and fortunes over-turned in the horrifying events of World War II.  Suddenly I am in a reading territory which has become familiar to me (through such books as Katrin Himmler’s The Himmler Brothers and Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men) only this time, I am seeing it through the eyes of those who were the target of Nazi violence and anti-Semitism.

There are moments throughout the book when de Waal’s reflections of his own experience of researching his family history remind me of the great therapist and author, Irvin Yalom, who has the same ability to be present both to the subject of his writing and to his own response to those things – people, events etc. – he writes about.  It is these moments that help me to connect with de Waal and to connect the history I have so often read about elsewhere with real people whose lives have been so materially altered by historic events.

If you want some thriller to keep you company on the beach this book is definitely not for you.  For me it was a rare and unforgettable read.    

Stephen Covey – the death of a leadership master

Developing as a leader, ,

News has been reaching me from various sources of the death of Stephen Covey on Monday, aged 79.  He died as a result of complications following a bicycle accident in April and with his family around him.  As much as I feel sad about those complications  I can’t help thinking that Covey’s was a good way to go.  If you’re still cycling-fit as you approach 80 and have the love of your family, well, it’s not a bad life – or death.

Covey is most famous for his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  First published in 1989, Covey’s book has provided guidance for conscious living which has had its application in the workplace and at home.  USA Today, in a blog posting about Covey, highlighted something I didn’t know – or had forgotten – about the origins of Covey’s work:

Covey said he developed the 7 Habits after studying hundreds of books and essays on success written since 1776. He noticed that the literature of the 20th century was dominated by gimmicks or “social Band-Aids” to improve the personality.


In contrast, the literature of the first 150 years — in the writings of Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin, for example — was based on character and principles such as integrity, courage and patience.

Covey said of his Seven Habits:

“(Live by) your own set of principles, your sense of vision of what your life is about. Maybe in a few months or year and a half, two years, you’ll be in an altogether different world.”


I make a note to revisit this book which has had so much influence across the world – selling over 20 million copies in 38 languages since it was first published.  (As I write I am setting myself the challenge of writing a blog posting on each of the seven habits in the course of the next three weeks).  For now, though, I just want to take a moment to honour the man.  As much as I feel for his family at the time of his death, my own heart is filled with gratitude for the gifts he shared with the world during his life.