[Music] [Music] [Music] hello and welcome to this special audio program of the eighth habit from effectiveness to greatness written and voiced by dr stephen r covey i'm boyd craig director of stephen r covey publishing and it is my pleasure to introduce dr covey in this new audio program in the seven habits of highly effective people dr covey showed us how to become effective here in the eighth habit his long-awaited audiobook he opens up an entirely new dimension of human potential and shows us that we as individuals and organizations have within us the capacity to achieve greatness being effective as individuals and organizations is no longer merely an option survival in today's world requires it but in order to thrive innovate excel and lead in what stephen calls the new knowledge worker age we must build on and move beyond effectiveness the call of this new era in human history is for greatness it is for fulfillment passionate execution and significant contribution accessing the higher levels of human genius and motivation in today's new reality requires a sea change in thinking a new mindset a new skill set a new tool set in short a whole new habit now here dr the eighth habit from effectiveness to greatness why an eighth habit the world has profoundly changed since the seven habits of highly effective people was published in 1989 the challenges and complexity we face in our personal lives and relationships in our families in our professional lives and in our organizations are of a different order of magnitude in fact many mark 1989 the year we witnessed the fall of the berlin wall as the beginning of the information age the birth of a new reality a sea change of incredible significance truly a new era many have asked whether the seven habits are still relevant in the day's new reality my answer is always the same the greater the change in the more difficult the challenges the more relevant they become you see the seven habits are about becoming highly effective they represent a complete framework of universal timeless principles of character and human effectiveness in short principles never change they are universal they apply everywhere they are timeless and they are essentially self-evident such as you can never sustain trust without trustworthiness that is a self-evident principle but being effective as individuals and organizations is no longer optional in today's highly competitive world it is simply the price of entry to the playing field but surviving thriving innovating excelling and leading in this new reality will require us to build on and reach beyond effectiveness the call and need of a new era is for greatness it's for fulfillment passionate execution and significant contribution these are on a different plane or dimension they are different in kind just as significance is different in kind not in degree from success tapping into the higher reaches of human genius and motivation what we could call voice requires a new mindset a new skill set a new tool set a new habit the eighth habit then is not about adding one more habit to the seven one that somehow got forgotten it's about seeing and harnessing the power of a third dimension to the seven habits that meets the central challenge of the new knowledge worker age this eighth habit is find your voice and inspire others to find theirs the eighth habit represents the pathway to the enormously promising side of today's reality it stands in stark contrast to the pain and frustration of the voices i've been describing in fact it is a timeless reality it is the voice of the human spirit full of hope and intelligence resilient by nature boundless in its potential to serve the common good this voice also encompasses the soul of organizations that will survive and thrive and profoundly impact the future of the world in your mind's eye try to envision to imagine four overlapping circles the nexus or the intersection area representing voice one's unique personal significance these are the four circles that overlap talent what you're good at passion what you love doing conscience what you feel is right what you should be doing and need need is the area where there is pain where there is hurt where there is a place to add value in all parts of society talent passion conscience and need overlapping the intersection area is voice one's unique personal significance voice is exactly that unique personal significance significance that is revealed as we face our greatest challenges and which makes us equal to them as i mentioned voice lies at the nexus of talent your natural gifts and strengths passion those things that naturally energize excite motivate and inspire you need including what the world needs enough to pay you for that can drive your economic engine and conscience that still small voice within that assures you of what is right and what prompts you to actually do it when you engage in work that taps your talents and fuels your passion that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet therein lies your voice your calling your soul's code there is a deep innate almost inexpressible yearning within each one of us to find our own voice in life the exponential revolutionary explosion of the internet is one of the most powerful modern manifestations of this truth the internet is perhaps the perfect symbol of the new world of the information knowledge worker economy and of the dramatic changes that have occurred in their 1999 book clue train manifesto authors lock levine searles and weinberger put it this way quote all of us are finding our voices again learning how to talk to one another inside outside there's a conversation going on today that hasn't happened at all five years ago and hasn't been very much in evidence since the industrial revolution began now spanning the planet via the internet and world wide web this conversation is so vast so multifaceted that trying to figure out what it's about is futile it's about a billion years of pinned up hopes and fears and dreams coated in serpentine double helixes the collective flashback deja vu of our strange perplexing species something ancient elemental sacred something very very funny that's broken loose in the pipes and wires of the 21st century there are millions and millions of threads in this conversation but at the beginning and end of each one is a human being this fervent desire for the web be speaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual a longing indicates something is missing in our lives what is missing is the sound of the human voice the spiritual lure of the web is the promise of the return of voice close quote rather than further describe voice let me illustrate it through the true story of one man when i met muhammad yunus founder of the grameen bank a unique organization established for the sole purpose of extending micro credit to the poorest of the poor i asked him when and how he had gained his vision he said he didn't have any vision to begin with at all he simply saw someone in need and tried to fill it and the vision evolved muhammad yunus's vision of a poverty free world was set in motion with a little simple event on the streets of bangladesh while interviewing him for my syndicated column on leadership he shared his story with me listen to his words it all started twenty five years ago i was teaching economics at a university in bangladesh the country was in the middle of a famine i felt terrible here i was teaching the elegant theories of economics in the classroom with all the enthusiasm of a brand new phd from the united states but i would walk out of the classroom and see skeletons all around me people waiting to die i felt that whatever i had learned whatever i was teaching was all make believe stories with no meaning for people's lives so i started trying to find out how people lived in the village next door to the university campus i wanted to find out whether there was anything i could do as a human being to delay or to stop the death even for one single person i abandoned the bird's eye view that let you see everything from above from the sky i assumed a worm's eye view trying to find whatever comes right in front of you smell it touch it see if you can do something about it one particular incident took me in a new direction i met a woman who was making bamboo stools after a long discussion i found out that she made only two u.s pennies each day i couldn't believe anybody could work so hard and make such beautiful bamboo stools yet make such a tiny amount of profit she explained to me that because she didn't have the money to buy the bamboo to make the stools she had to borrow from the trader and the trader imposed the condition that she had to sell the product to him alone at a price that he decided and that explains the two pennies she was virtually in bonded labor to this person and how much did the bamboo cost she said oh about 20 cents for a very good one 25 cents i thought people suffer for 20 cents and there is nothing anyone can do about it i debated whether i should give her 20 cents but then i came up with another idea let me make a list of people who needed that kind of money i took a student of mine and we went around the village for several days and came up with a list of 42 such people when i added up the total amount they needed i got the biggest shock of my life it added up to 27 i felt ashamed of myself for being part of a society which could not provide even 27 dollars to 42 hard-working skilled human beings to escape that shame i took the money out of my pocket and gave it to my student and said you take this money and give it to those 42 people that we met and tell them this is alone but they can pay me back whenever they are able to in the meantime they can sell their products wherever they can get a good price after receiving the money they were very excited and seeing that excitement made me think what do i do now i thought of the branch bank which was located on the campus of the university and i went to the manager and suggested that he lend money to the poor people that i had met in the village he fell from the sky he said you are crazy it's impossible how could we lend money to poor people they are not credit worthy i pleaded with him and said at least give it a try find out it's only a small amount of money he said no our rules don't permit it they cannot offer collateral and such a tiny amount is not worth lending he suggested that i see the high officials in the banking hierarchy in bangladesh i took his advice and i went to the people who matter in the banking section everyone told me the same thing finally after several days of running around i offered myself as a guarantor all guaranteed alone all sign whatever they want me to sign and they can give me the money and i'll give it to the people that i want to so that was the beginning they warned me repeatedly that the poor people who receive the money will never pay it back i said i'll take a chance and the surprising thing was they repaid me every penny i got very excited and came to the manager and said look they pay back there's no problem but he said oh no they're just fooling you soon they will take more money and never pay you back so i gave them more money and they paid me back i told this to the manager again but he said well maybe you can do it in one village but if you do it in two villages it won't work and i hurriedly did it in two villages and it worked so it became a kind of struggle between me and the bank manager and his colleagues in the highest positions they kept saying that a larger number five villages probably will show it so i did it in five villages and it only showed that everybody paid back still they didn't give up they said 10 villages 50 villages 100 villages and so it became a kind of contest between them and me i came up with results that they could not deny because it was their money that i was giving but they would not accept it because they are trained to believe that poor people are not reliable luckily i was not trained that way so i could believe whatever i was seeing as it revealed itself but the bankers minds their eyes were blinded by the knowledge they had finally i had the thought why am i trying to convince them i am totally convinced that poor people can take money and pay it back why don't we set up a separate bank that excited me and i wrote down the proposal and went to the government to get the permission to set up a bank it took me two years to convince the government on october 2nd 1983 we became a bank a formal independent bank and what excitement for all of us now that we had our own bank and we could expand as we wished and expand we did each year they lend about half a billion dollars they lend even to beggars to help them come out of begging and start selling grameen bank now works in more than 46 000 villages in bangladesh through 1267 branches with over twelve thousand staff members they have lent more than four and a half billion in loans of twelve to fifteen dollars averaging under two hundred dollars a housing loan is 300 these are small numbers to those of us in business but think in terms of the individual impact to lend 500 million annually required 3.7 million people 96 of whom are women to make a decision that they could and would take steps to change their lives and the lives of their families 3.7 million people had to decide that they were capable of creating change 3.7 million people survived the sleepless night to show up trembling but committed at the grameen office the next morning at the heart of this empowerment lies individual women who chose individually and in synergistic norm producing groups to become self-reliant independent entrepreneurs producing goods out of their own homes or neighborhoods or backyards to become economically viable and successful they found their voice the overlapping of passion talent to meet need as driven by conscience as i have studied and interviewed some of the world's great leaders i noticed that their sense of vision and voice has usually evolved slowly i am sure there are exceptions some may have a vision of what is possible suddenly burst upon their consciousness but generally speaking i find that vision comes as people sense human need and respond to their conscience in trying to meet that need and when they meet that need they see another and meet that and on and on little by little they begin to generalize a sense of need and start thinking of ways to institutionalize their efforts so that they can be sustained this taps deeply into their talents and into their passion muhammad yunus is an example of a man who did exactly that sensed human need and responded to conscience by applying his talent and passion to meet that need first personally then in building trust and searching for creative solutions to problems and finally by institutionalizing the capacity to fill the needs of society through an organization he found his voice in inspiring others to find theirs again he found his voice in inspiring others to find theirs the micro credit sometimes called microfinancing movement is now spreading across the entire world mother teresa once said few of us can do great things but all of us can do small things with great love we are witnesses to one of the most significant shifts in human history peter drucker one of the greatest management thinkers of our time puts it this way in a few hundred years when the history of our time is written from a long-term perspective it is likely that the most important event those historians will see is not technology not the internet not e-commerce it is an unprecedented change in the human condition for the first time literally substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices for the first time they will have to manage themselves and society is totally unprepared for it close quote to understand the core problem and the profound implications of drucker's prophetic statement we must look first at the context of history namely the five ages of civilization's voice first the hunter and gatherer age second the agricultural age third the industrial age fourth the information knowledge worker age and finally an emerging age of wisdom imagine for a moment that you take a step back in time and are a hunter and a gatherer of food each day you go out with a bow and arrow or stones and sticks to gather food for your family that's all you've ever known seen and done to survive now imagine someone comes up to you and tries to persuade you to become what he calls a farmer what do you think your response would be you see him go out and scratch the earth and throw little seeds into the ground and you see nothing you see him watering the soil and removing weeds and you still see nothing but eventually you see a great harvest you notice his yield as a farmer is 50 times greater than yours as a hunter and gatherer and you're considered one of the best what would you do you would likely say to yourself even if i wanted to i couldn't do that i don't have the skills i don't have the tools you just wouldn't know how to work that way but the farmer is so productive that you see him making enough money to send his kids to school and give them great opportunities and you are barely surviving little by little you're drawn to go through the intense learning process of becoming a farmer you raise your children and grandchildren as farmers that's exactly what happened in our early history there was a downsizing of hunters and gatherers of over 90 percent they lost their jobs by choice several generations pass and along comes the industrial age people build factories and learn specialization delegation and scalability and replicability they learn how to take raw materials through an assembly line with very high levels of efficiency the productivity of the industrial age goes up 50 times over the family farm now if you were a farmer producing 50 times more than hunters and gatherers and all of a sudden you see an industrial factory rise up and start out producing the family farm by 50 times what would you say you might be jealous even threatened but what would you need to be a player in the industrial age you would need a completely new skill set and tool set more importantly you'd need a new mindset a new way of thinking the fact is that the factory of the industrial age produced fifty times more than the family farm and over time ninety percent of the farmers were downsized those who survived in farming took the industrial age concept and created the industrialized farm so today only three percent of the people in the united states are farmers who produce most of the food for the entire country and much of the world do you believe that the information knowledge worker age we're moving into will not produce the industrial age 50 times think about it i believe it will we're just barely beginning to see it it will out produce it fifty times not twice not three or ten times but fifty or more nathan mirvold former chief technology officer at microsoft put it this way the top software developers are more productive than average software developers not by a factor of ten times or a hundred times or even a thousand times but by ten thousand times close quote quality knowledge work is so valuable that unleashing its potential offers organizations an extraordinary opportunity for value creation if that is true just think of the value of unleashing the potential of your children knowledge work leverages all of the other investments that an organization or a family has already made in fact knowledge workers are the link to all of the organization's other investments they provide focus creativity and leverage in utilizing those investments to better achieve the organization's objectives the same exact thinking would apply to a family or for a not-for-profit organization or to a school or a hospital or whatever do you believe the knowledge worker age will eventually bring about a downsizing of up to 90 percent of the industrial age workforce i believe it current outsourcing and unemployment trends are just the tip of the iceberg in fact these trends have become a very hot political issue but the reality is that much of our losses in industrial age jobs have less to do with government policy and free trade agreements than they do with the dramatic shift in our economy to a knowledge worker age do you think it will be threatening to today's workforce to learn the new mindset the new skill set and the new tool set of this new age imagine what it will take imagine what it will take for you and for me what will it take for us to become a player in this new era imagine what it will require of your organization peter drucker compares the industrial manual worker age with today's knowledge worker age this way quote the most important and indeed the truly unique contribution of management in the 20th century was the 50-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing the most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker the most viable assets of a 20th century company were its production equipment the most viable asset of a 21st century institution whether business or non-business will be its knowledge workers and their productivity the great historian arnold toynbee said that you could pretty well summarize the history of society and the institutions in it in four words nothing fails like success in other words when you have a challenge and the response is equal to the challenge that's called success but once you have a new challenge the old one successful response no longer works that's why it's called a failure nothing fails like success we live in a knowledge worker age but operate our organizations in a controlling industrial age model that absolutely suppresses the release of human potential voice is essentially irrelevant this is an astounding finding the mindset of the industrial age that still dominates today's workplace will simply not work in the knowledge worker age and the new economy and the fact is that people have taken the same controlling mindset home so often it dominates the way we communicate and deal with our spouses and the way we try to manage motivate and discipline our children henry david thoreau once wrote there are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root this book is dedicated to striking at the root of the significant problems we face we started with the pain then we explored the underlying problem one that has personal roots and that involves a deeply embedded paradigm and set of traditions in the workplace now let's set the context for the solution and give an overview of how it will be unfolded in the remainder of the book i've worked with organizations around the world for over 40 years and have been a student of the findings of the great minds who have studied organizations most of the great cultural shifts ones that have built great organizations that sustain long-term growth prosperity and contribution to the world started with the choice of one person sometimes that one person was the formal leader the ceo or president very often it started with someone else a professional a line manager someone's assistant regardless of their position these people first changed themselves from the inside out their character competence initiative and positive energy in short their moral authority inspired and lifted others they possessed an anchored sense of identity they discovered their strengths and talents their voice and used them to meet needs and produce results people noticed they were given more responsibility they magnified the new responsibility and again produced results more and more people sat up and noticed top people wanted to learn of their ideas how they accomplished so much little by little the culture was drawn to their vision and to them people like this just don't get sucked into or pulled down for long by all the negative demoralizing insulting forces in the organization interestingly their organizations are no better than most organizations in fact to some degree all organizations are a mess these people just realize that they just can't wait for their boss or for the organization to change they become an island of excellence in a sea of mediocrity and it's contagious where does a person get such internal strength to swim against the current and to withstand negative cultural provocations to subordinate selfish interests and develop and sustain such vision and determination they learn of their true nature and gifts they use them to develop a vision of great things they want to accomplish with wisdom they take initiative and cultivate great understanding of the needs and opportunities around them they meet those needs that match their unique talents that tap their highest motivations and that make a difference in short they find and use their voice they create their voice they serve and inspire others they apply principles that govern growth and prosperity in human beings and in organizations principles that draw the highest and best from a whole person body mind heart and spirit equally significant they also choose to influence and inspire others to find their voice through these principles as well this two-part solution find your voice and inspire others to find theirs is a road map for individuals at any level of an organization to maximize their fulfillment and influence to become an irreplaceable contributor and to inspire their team and the broader organization to do the same natural authority is the dominion of natural laws you can't ignore natural laws and you have no choice but to operate by them all actions have consequences like it or not when we pick up one end of the stick we pick up the other if you jump off a 10-story building you can't change your mind at the fifth story gravity controls that is the stamp of nature nature has also stamped people with the freedom and power to choose and therefore they have natural authority or dominion over all of the rest of creation endangered species survive only by our consent they don't have freedom and power to choose they lack self-awareness they can't reinvent themselves they're totally subject to humans who because they are self-aware alone have the freedom and power to choose this is natural authority what is moral authority it is the principled use of our freedom and power to choose in other words if we follow principles in our relationships with each other we tap into the permission of nature natural laws like gravity and principles like respect honesty kindness integrity service fairness control the consequences of our choices just as you get bad air and bad water when you consistently violate the environment so also is trust which is the glue of relationships destroyed when you're consistently unkind and dishonest to people by the principled humble use of freedom and power the humble person obtains moral authority with people cultures organizations and entire societies now let's look at values values are social norms they're personal emotional subjective and arguable all of us have values even criminals have values the question we must ask ourselves is this are our values based upon principles in the last analysis principles are natural laws they're impersonal factual objective and self-evident consequences are governed by principles and behavior is governed by values therefore value principles people who are starstruck that is they're obsessed with celebrities are an example of those whose values may not be anchored in principles popularity shapes their moral center they don't know who they are and don't know which way true north is they have no moral compass they don't know what principles to follow because their lives are based on social values they are torn between social awareness and self-awareness on the one hand and natural laws and principles on the other in an airplane that is called vertigo where you lose all sense of reference to the ground we call those principles and you become completely lost many people walk through life with vertigo or moral mushiness we all see people like this you see them in your life and in the popular culture they've never paid the price of getting deeply centered or of anchoring their values to changeless principles the key task then is to determine where true north is and then to align everything toward that otherwise you'll live with the inevitable negative consequences that follow again they are inevitable because even though values control behavior principles control the consequences of behavior moral authority requires the sacrifice of short-term selfish interests and the exercise of courage in subordinating social values to principles and our conscience is the repository of those principles any individual who has had a profound influence on others on institutions or on society any parents whose influence has been intergenerational anyone who has really made a difference for good or ill possessed three common attributes vision discipline and passion i suggest that these three attributes have ruled the world from its beginning they represent leadership that works consider just a few notable leaders from modern history george washington had a vision of building a new nation united and free from foreign interference he disciplined himself to learn how to recruit supply and keep people from deserting the revolutionary army angered by discrimination against colonial military officers british land policies and restriction on u.s expansion washington was passionate about the cause of liberty florence nightingale the founder of modern nursing worked her entire adult life to improve the quality of nursing in military hospitals her vision and passion overcame her personal reticence mohandas kate gandhi was instrumental in establishing india as an independent state though he never held an elected or appointed office he held no formal position from which to lead people gandhi's moral authority created such strong social and cultural norms that it ultimately shaped political will he governed his life by an awareness of a universal conscience that resided within the people the international community and the british themselves margaret thatcher was the first female leader of a great industrial nation she served three terms as prime minister of great britain the longest continuous premiership in the 20th century her critics are not few but she was passionate about urging people to assume the discipline of personal responsibility and to build self-reliance and she was passionate about bolstering free enterprise in her country during her tenure in british politics she helped lift britain out of economic recession nelson mandela former president of south africa spent almost 27 years in prison for fighting against the apartheid regime mandela was impelled by his imagination rather than his memory he could envision a world far beyond the confines of his experience and memory which included imprisonment injustice tribal warfare and disunity deep within his soul resonated a belief in the worth of every south african citizen mother teresa dedicated herself wholeheartedly freely and unconditionally to the service of the poor she bequeathed her highly disciplined upholding of the vows of poverty purity and obedience upon her organization which has both grown and strengthened ever since her passing her famous success formula reads like this the fruit of silence is prayer the fruit of prayer is faith the fruit of faith is love the fruit of love is service the fruit of service is peace now you remember that i mentioned that anyone who has really made a difference for good or ill in the world possessed three common attributes vision discipline and passion now consider another leader who possessed all three but produce shockingly different results adolf hitler passionately communicated his vision of a thousand-year reign of the third reich and of a superior aryan race he built one of the most disciplined military industrial machines the world has ever seen and he evidenced brilliant emotional intelligence in his impassioned oratory inspiring in the masses almost fanatical dedication and fear which he channeled into hate and destruction there is however a huge difference between leadership that works and leadership that endures every one of the aforementioned leaders laid a foundation and provided a contribution that endured except for one adolf hitler who once said once i am really in power my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the jews when conscience governs vision discipline and passion leadership endures and changes the world for good in other words moral authority makes formal authority work and endure when conscience does not govern vision discipline and passion leadership does not endure nor do the institutions created by that leadership endure in other words formal authority without moral authority ultimately fails when we say that when conscience governs vision discipline and passion leadership endures and changes the world for good for good means that it lifts and also that it lasts hitler had vision discipline and passion but was driven by ego lack of conscience was his downfall gandhi's vision discipline and passion were driven by conscience and he became a servant to the cause and to the people again he only had moral authority no formal authority and he was the father and founder of the second largest country in the world and the largest democracy when vision discipline and passion are governed by formal authority void of conscience or moral authority it also changes the world but not for good rather for evil instead of lifting it destroys rather than lasting it is eventually extinguished now let's look at conscience which is the most significant of these great four capacities these virtues george washington once said labor to keep alive that little spark of celestial fire conscience much has been said from the outset of this book about the singular importance of conscience there is a mass of evidence that shows that conscience this moral sense this inner light is a universal phenomenon the spiritual or moral nature of people is also independent of religion or of any particular religious approach culture geography nationality or race yet all of the enduring major religious traditions of the world are unified when it comes to certain basic underlying principles or values emmanuel kant said i am constantly amazed by two things the starry heavens above and the moral law within conscience is the moral law within it is the overlapping of moral law and behavior many believe as do i that it is the voice of god to his children others may not share this belief but recognize that there is an innate sense of fairness and justice an innate sense of right and wrong of what is kind and what is unkind of what contributes and what detracts of what beautifies and what destroys of what is true and what is false admittedly culture translates this basic moral sense into different kinds of practices and words but this translation does not negate the underlying sense of right and wrong as i work in nations of different religions and different cultures i have seen this universal conscience revealed time and again there really is a common sense of values a sense of fairness honesty respect and contribution that transcends culture something that is timeless which transcends the ages and is also self-evident again it is as self-evident as the fact that trust requires trustworthiness albert schweitzer said in everyone's life at some time our inner fire goes out it is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being we should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit close quote when i was a young man i had an experience with the leader that profoundly shaped the rest of my life i had decided to take a break in my education to give some extended volunteer service the invitation came to go to england just four and one half months after my arrival the president of the organization came to me and said i have a new assignment for you i want you to travel around the country and train local leaders i was shocked who was i to train leaders two and three times my age sensing my doubt he simply looked me in the eye and said i have great confidence in you you can do this i will give you materials to help you prepare to teach these leaders and to facilitate their sharing best practices with one another his confidence his ability to see more in me than i saw in myself his willingness to entrust me with responsibility that would stretch me to my potential literally unlock something within me i accepted the assignment and gave my best it tapped me physically mentally emotionally spiritually i grew i saw others grow i saw patterns and basic leadership principles by the time i returned home after two years i had begun to detect the work i wanted to devote my life to unleashing human potential i found my voice and it was my leader that inspired me to find it i realized in time that i wasn't the only one he treated this way his affirmation of others his ability to unite us in vision toward our work that inspired and motivated us his pattern of providing us with enabling resources and empowering us as true leaders with accountability and stewardship became the norm in our entire organization we began to lead and serve others in the same way and the results were remarkable i've realized since then that the principles that guided his leadership are common to great leadership in any organization regardless of the level or formal position of the person my teaching consulting and leadership experience in business university volunteer and church organizations and especially in my own family have taught me that leadership influence is governed by principles when you live by them your influence and moral authority increase and you are often given even greater formal authority the biblical parables of the pounds and of the talents illustrate that the more you use and magnify the gifts or talents you have been given the more gifts and talents you are given but if they are ignored or buried and remain undeveloped and unused the very talents or gifts that you have been given will be lost and often given to another so you end up not only losing talents but also losing influence and opportunities there is great power in the idea of taking responsibility and just doing it making it happen this highest level of initiative reminds me of a true story called a message to garcia written by albert hubbard here is a brief summary when the war broke out between spain and the united states at the turn of the century the american president needed to get a message to a cuban revolutionary named garcia he was hiding somewhere on the island of cuba out of reach of mail or telegraph nobody knew how to reach him but an officer suggested that if anyone could do it it would be an officer by the name of rowan when president mckinley gave the letter to rowan in washington dc the officer didn't ask where is he at how do i get there what do you want me to do when i'm there how will i get back he just took the message and figured out how to get to garcia he took a train to new york a ship to jamaica broke the spanish blockade to get to cuba in a sailboat then wild carriage rides marching and riding through the cuban jungle nine days of traveling later rowan got the message to garcia at nine in the morning that same afternoon at five he started his return journey to the united states giving further insight author albert hubbard wrote my heart goes out to the man who does his work when his boss is away as well as when he is at home the man who when given a letter to garcia quietly takes the missive without asking any idiotic questions and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer or of doing odd else but deliberate civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals anything such a man asks will be granted his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go he is wanted in every city town and village in every office shop store and factory the world cries out for such he is needed and needed badly the man who can carry a message to garcia you can see that no matter what issue problem or concern you have you can empower yourself by taking initiative in some way be sensitive be wise be careful regarding time but do something about the situation avoid complaining criticizing or being negative be especially wary of absolving yourself from responsibility and simply blaming them for failures we live in a culture of blame a full seventy percent of ex-cu respondents see that people in their organization tend to blame others when things go wrong so taking responsibility will mean swimming against the cultural current taking initiative requires vision some standard to be met or some improvement to be achieved it requires discipline in the doing it requires getting your heart and your passion into it and doing it in a conscience-directed or principled way toward a worthy end tom peters describes the trim tab attitude in spirit this way winners no kidding adore crummy jobs why because those jobs allow lots and lots of space nobody cares nobody is watching you're on your own you are king you can get your hands dirty make mistakes take risks perform miracles the most common lament of the unempowered is that they don't have the space to do anything cool to which i unfailingly reply rubbish bottom line relish the little assignment or chore that no one else wants seek it out it's a license for self-empowerment whether it's the redesign of a form or planning a weekend client retreat you can turn it into something grand and glorious and wow close quote once i served as the administrative assistant to the president of the university in many ways he was dictatorial controlling always assumed he knew what was best and would make all the important decisions on the other hand he was a visionary a brilliant talented person but he treated everyone like a gopher go for this go for that as if they didn't have a mind these highly educated motivated men and women gradually became disenchanted and then disempowered they would stand around the executive corridor complaining about the president i can't believe what he did you you know let me tell you the latest oh you think that's bad you ought to see what he did when he came into our department really i'd never heard that yeah i've been in a job where i've been so constricted and straightjacketed by all these foolish rules this bureaucracy is bogging me down you know they'd spend hours massaging each other's hearts with such comments then there was ben he simply took another approach he went straight to the third level of empowerment and initiative even though he too was treated like a gopher he decided to start at the make a recommendation level he decided to be the best gopher around this earned him credibility ethos he would then anticipate the president's needs and the reasons behind the gopher requests ethos he would say inside himself now let's see why does the president want this information i'll bet he's preparing for a board meeting and he wants me to gather data on how many university campus securities around the country carry sidearms because he's getting criticized about our approach i think i'll help him prepare for that board meeting ben came to a preliminary meeting presented his gopher data then went the second mile in analysis and recommendations the president turned to me speechless then he turned back to ben and said i want you to come to the board meeting and make the recommendation your analysis is brilliant you anticipated exactly what the need is everyone else on the staff had bought into the silent conspiracy of wait until told but not been he exercised the initiative by empathizing with the president by determining what it was he really wanted and needed ben started out with a relatively low position but pretty soon he was regularly making presentations to the board logos his motto was compliment don't criticize your boss compliment p-l-e compliment your boss i worked in that role for four years by the end of the fourth year ben was the second most influential person on the campus even though he hadn't risen through the academic ranks the president would not make any significant moves without ben's blessing when ben retired there was a special recognition award put in his name why because he modeled trustworthiness loyalty to the university and the willingness to do whatever it took and the exercise of initiative and self-empowerment i think ben understood the futility of wishing for something to be different can you see in this story how leadership can become a choice can you see how you too can become the leader of your boss as ben did so when we say that leadership is a choice it basically means you can choose the level of initiative you want to exercise in response to this question what is the best i can do under the circumstances you will always need to make judgment calls regarding these seven levels of initiative it takes judgment and wisdom to know what level of initiative to exercise what you should do how you should do it when you should do it and perhaps most importantly why you should do it this will take all four intelligences the why question usually taps into spiritual intelligence because it gets at your value system the source of motivation the what to do question usually taps into your intellectual intelligence as you think analytically strategically and conceptually the when to do it and how to do it questions usually tap into your emotional intelligence as you read the environment sense the cultural and political operating norms and discern your own strengths and weaknesses the doing intelligence will also come into play as you carry out your intentions and tactically implement the how when you wisely use initiative through all seven levels of initiative you'll find that your circle of influence will get larger and larger until it encompasses your entire job interestingly and this almost always happens as your circle of influence enlarges so too does your circle of concern a trim tab leader is constant like a lighthouse not a weather vein a constant dependable source of light not someone who twists and turns with every social wind as you take this inside out initiative seizing approach people in formal positions will have increasing confidence in your character and competence trust will increase it is almost inevitable that they will want to build higher and higher levels of initiative and empowerment into your job you will find yourself becoming the leader of your boss and your boss will naturally become part of a complementary team as servant leader this book is primarily attempted to teach one basic paradigm that people are whole people body mind heart and spirit as a person engages in the sequential eighth habit process of finding or creating one's own voice making the choice to expand his or her influence by inspiring others to find their voice he or she increases his or her freedom and power of choice to solve his or her greatest challenges and to serve human needs he or she learns how leadership can eventually become a choice not a position so that leadership the enabling art is widely distributed throughout organizations and society and therefore while we manage or control things we lead or empower people regarding the people paradigm we have learned that every human being is precious in his or her own right endowed with enormous almost infinite potential and capacity we've learned that the pathway to enlarging that capacity is magnifying our present gifts and talents then almost like a flower blooming in the spring additional gifts and talents are given or opened up to us and our hard-wired capacities in all four areas are unleashed to lead a balanced integrated powerful life the opposite is also the case because if we neglect our gifts and talents they like the unused muscle will atrophy and waste away we've also learned that the culture we live and work in has software'd us for mediocrity or in other words to fall far short of our potential anything less than a whole person is a thing and things have to be controlled or managed this command and control industrial age software has driven the workplace to believe that the greatest source of wealth lies in capital and equipment not in people we've also learned that we have the hardwired power to rewrite that software and that this power inspires us to lead to empower people who have the power of choice and to manage things which do not the developmental process paradigm answers the how and when questions and teaches us to consider ourselves first by subordinating what we want now for what we want later that's the essence of true happiness subordinating what we want now for what we want later this process is increasingly exciting because it is increasingly powerful in expanding our choices and our capacities if we follow principles symbolized by a compass that always points north we gradually develop moral authority people trust us and if we truly respect them and see their worth and potential and involve them we can come to share a common vision if through our moral authority that is primary greatness we can earn formal authority or position that is secondary greatness we can together institutionalize these principles so that body and spirit are being constantly nourished leading to unbelievable kinds of freedom and power to expand and deepen our service in short the kind of leadership that inspires followership comes only when we put service above self organizations both private and public learn that they are only sustainable when they serve human needs again service above self this is the true dna of success it's not about what's in it for me but about what can i contribute it's like the anonymous verse i sought my god and my god i could not find i sought my soul and my soul eluded me i sought my brother to serve him in his need and i found all three my god my soul and thee now let me just add a few final words to you as a reader i affirm both your worth and your potential my sincere hope is that the principles in this book have been communicated clearly enough so that you not only have come to see your worth and potential in yourself but that you will also find your voice and live a life of greatness by inspiring many of the people and organizations and communities to find their voice even if you live in horrible circumstances it is in those very circumstances that you will find your call to choose your own response it is then that life calls out to us to serve those around us whose needs we become aware of it is in so doing that we find our true voice in life [Music] [Music] we hope you have enjoyed listening to this special audio program of the eighth habit from effectiveness to greatness and have gained new insights that will serve you and your organization for more information on this program and other programs by dr stephen arkavi please visit us online at the 8th habit.com or stephenr covey.com or call us at 1-888-866 [Music] or 1-801-817-1776 [Music] we look forward to hearing from you [Music]