The 8th Habit - Summary

Leaders Book Summaries

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About the Book’s Author

Stephen R. Covey is the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

About Leaders Book Summaries

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Table of Contents

Nutshell Summary

Full Summary

Chapter 1: The Pain

Chapter 2: The Problem

Chapter 3: The Solution

PART 1: FIND YOUR VOICE

Chapter 4: Discover Your Voice—Unopened Birth-Gifts

Chapter 5: Express Your Voice—Vision, Discipline, Passion and Conscience

PART 2: INSPIRE OTHERS TO FIND THEIR VOICE

Chapter 6: Inspiring Others to Find Their Voice—The Leadership Challenge

FOCUS—MODELING AND PATHFINDING

Chapter 7: The Voice of Influence—Be a Trim-Tab

Chapter 8: The Voice of Trustworthiness—Modeling Character and Competence

Chapter 9: The Voice and Speed of Trust

Chapter 10: Blending Voices—Searching for the Third Alternative

Chapter 11: One Voice—Pathfinding Shared Vision, Values and Strategy

EXECUTION—ALIGNING AND EMPOWERING

Chapter 12: The Voice and Discipline of Execution—Aligning Goals and Systems for Results

Chapter 13: The Empowering Voice—Releasing Passion and Talent

THE AGE OF WISDOM

Chapter 14: The 8th Habit and the Sweet Spot

Chapter 15: Using Our Voices Wisely to Serve Others

Nutshell Summary- To go to the full summary click here.

1. The Pain

Being effective as individuals and organizations is no longer optional in today’s world. The purpose of this book is to give you a road map that will lead you to true fulfillment, relevance, significance and contribution in today’s new landscape. In short, it will lead you to find your voice.

2. The Problem

Many of our modern management practices come from the belief that you have to control and manage people. When all you want is a person’s body and you don’t really want their mind, heart or spirit, you have reduced a person to a thing.

3. The Solution

Where does a person get the internal strength to swim against the current? 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 tap their higher motivations. In short, they find and use their voice.

4. Discover Your Voice—Unopened Birth-Gifts

The power to discover our voice lies in the potential that was bequeathed us at birth. We were given magnificent talents, capacities, privileges, intelligences, and opportunities at birth so the potential within an individual is tremendous, even infinite.

5. Express Your Voice—Vision, Discipline, Passion and Conscience

When you study the lives of all great achievers, you will find a pattern. They have greatly expanded their four native human capacities: for the mental, vision; for the physical, discipline; for the emotional, passion; for the spiritual, conscience. These are our highest means of expressing our voice.

6. Inspiring Others to Find Their Voice

Simply put, leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. The highest challenge is to enable each person to inwardly sense his or her innate worth and potential for greatness and to contribute his or her unique talents and passion—in other words, voice—to accomplish the organization’s highest priorities in a principle-centered way.

7. The Voice of Influence—Be a Trim-Tab

A trim-tab on a boat or plane is the small rudder that turns the big rudder that turns the entire ship. I believe there are numerous potential trim-tabbers in every organization whether business, government, schools, or families who can lead and spread their influence no matter what position they hold. They can move themselves and their team or department in such a way that it positively affects the entire organization.

8. The Voice of Trustworthiness—Character and Competence

Ninety percent of all leadership failures are character failures. Just as trust is the key to all relationships, it is also the glue of organizations. I have also learned that trust is the fruit of the trustworthiness of both people and organizations. Just as trust comes from trustworthiness, trustworthiness comes from character and competence. Personal character has three facets: integrity, maturity and Abundance Mentality.

9. The Voice and Speed of Trust

What is communication like when there is high trust? It’s easy, it’s effortless, and it’s instantaneous. What happens when there’s high trust and you make mistakes? They hardly matter. People know you. “Don’t worry about it, I understand.” “Forget it.” Enduring trust in a relationship cannot be faked, and is rarely produced by a dramatic, one-time effort.

10. Blending Voices—Searching for the Third Alternative

I am convinced that one of the most difficult and challenging problems of life, whether at home, at work, or elsewhere, is how you deal with conflict, or how you deal with human differences. What if you had the character and the SKILL to resolve differences better?

11. One Voice—Pathfinding Shared Vision, Values and Strategy

Influence begins with modeling trustworthiness so that people will have confidence in you. Your most important modeling will be to show others how a person who has found his or her voice acts inside the other three primary roles of a leader which are pathfinding, aligning and empowering.

12. The Voice of Execution—Aligning Goals and Systems for Results

How do we execute both values and strategy consistently without relying on the formal leader’s continuing presence to keep everyone going in the right direction? The answer is alignment which is designing and executing systems and structures that reinforce the core values and priorities of the organization.

13. The Empowering Voice—Releasing Passion and Talent

Modeling principle-centered, trustworthy behavior inspires trust. Pathfinding creates order. Aligning nourishes both vision. Empowerment is the fruit of the other three. In other words, empowering enthrones self-control, self-management and self-organizing.

14. The 8th Habit and the Sweet Spot

The 8th Habit: Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs is an idea whose time has come. It embodies an understanding of the whole person. Modeling and pathfinding can be summarized in the word focus. Aligning and empowering can be summarized in the word execution.

15. Using Our Voices Wisely to Serve Others

This book has primarily attempted to teach one basic paradigm: that people are whole people with a body, a mind, a heart and a spirit. As a person engages in the sequential 8th Habit process of finding one’s own voice, and inspiring others to find their voice, she increases her freedom and power of choice to solve her greatest challenges and serve human needs.

Full Summary

Chapter 1: The Pain

The world has profoundly changed since The 7 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.

Many have asked whether the 7 Habits are still relevant in today’s new reality. My answer is always the same. The greater the change and more difficult the challenges, the more relevant they become. You see, the 7 Habits are about becoming highly effective. They represent a complete framework of universal, timeless principles of character and human effectiveness.

Being effective as individuals and organizations is no longer optional in today’s world; it’s the price of entry to the playing field. 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 of degree from success. Tapping into the higher reaches of human genius and motivation requires a new mind-set, a new skill-set, a new tool-set and a new habit.

The 8th Habit is not about adding one more habit to the 7, one that somehow got forgotten. It’s about seeing and harnessing the power of a third dimension to the 7 Habits that meets the central challenge of the new Knowledge Worker Age. This 8th Habit is Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs.

There is a deep, innate, almost inexpressible yearning within each one of us to find our voice in life. The purpose of this book is to give you a road map that will lead you to true fulfillment, relevance, significance and contribution in today’s new landscape not only in your work and organization, but also in your whole life. In short, it will lead you to find your voice.

Chapter 2: The Problem

We are witnesses to one of the most significant shifts in human history. Look at the five ages of civilization’s voice. First, the Hunter and Gatherer Age in which you went out with a bow and arrow or stones and sticks to gather food for your family. Second, the Agricultural Age in which your yield as a “farmer” was fifty times greater than yours as a hunter and gather. Third, the Industrial age where you built factories and learned specialization, delegation, and scalability and your productivity went up fifty times over the family farm. Fourth, it’s beginning to look as if the Information/Knowledge Age worker will out produce the Industrial Age worker by fifty times.

Presently 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. The main assets and primary drivers of economic prosperity in the Industrial Age were machines and capital. People were necessary but replaceable. You could control and churn through manual works with little consequence because supply exceeded demand. You just got more able bodies that would comply with strict procedures. People were like things as you could be efficient with them. When all you want is a person’s body and you don’t really want their mind, heart or spirit (all inhibitors to the free-flowing processes of the machine age), you have reduced a person to a thing.

So many of our modern management practices come from the Industrial Age and involve working with manual workers. This age gave us the belief that you have to control and manage people. It also gave us our view of accounting, which makes people an expense and machine assets. Think about it. People are put on the P&L statement as an expense; equipment is put on the balance sheet as an investment.

It gave us our carrot-and-stick motivational philosophy. This is the Great Jackass technique that motivates with a carrot in front (reward) and drives us with a stick from behind (fear and punishment).

It gave us centralized budgeting where trends are extrapolated into the future and hierarchies and bureaucracies are formed to drive “getting the numbers.” This is an obsolete reactive process that produces “kiss-up” cultures bent on “spending it so we won’t lose it next year” and protecting the backside of your department.

Chapter 3: The Solution

I’ve worked with organizations around the world for over forty years. Most of the great cultural shifts 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 such as the CEO or president. Very often it started with someone else like a professional, a line manager, or someone’s assistant. Regardless of their position, these people first changed themselves from the inside out. Their character, competence, initiative and positive energy inspired and lifted others. They possessed an anchored sense of identity, discovered their strengths and talents, and used them to meet needs and produce results. People noticed. They were given more responsibility. Top people wanted to learn about their ideas and how they accomplished so much. The culture was drawn to their vision and to them.

Where does a person get such internal strength to swim against the current, to withstand negative cultural provocations, subordinate selfish interests and develop and maintain 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, and then tap their higher motivations to make a difference. In short, they find and use their voice.

Deep within each of us there is an inner longing to live a life of greatness and contribution, to really make a difference. We may doubt ourselves and our ability to do so, but I want you to know of my deep conviction that you can live such a life. You have the potential within you. We all do. It is the birthright of the human family. Everyone chooses one of two roads in life. One is the broad, well-traveled road to mediocrity; the other is the road to greatness and meaning. The range of possibilities that exists within each of these destinations is as wide as the diversity of gifts and personalities in the human family. But the contrast between the two destinations is as the night is to the day.

PART 1: FIND YOUR VOICE

Chapter 4: Discover Your Voice—Unopened Birth-Gifts

The power to discover our voice lies in the potential that was bequeathed us at birth. Latent and undeveloped, the seeds of greatness were planted. We were given magnificent “birth gifts” which include talents, capacities, privileges, intelligences, and opportunities that would remain largely unopened except through our own decision and effort. With these gifts, the potential within an individual is tremendous, even infinite. We really have no idea what a person is capable of. The more we use and magnify our present talents, the more talents we are given and the greater our capacity becomes.

Let’s examine our three most important gifts. First is our freedom and power to choose. Next to life itself, the power to choose is your greatest gift. This power and freedom stand in stark contrast to the mind-set of victimism and the culture of blame so prevalent in society today. Fundamentally, we are a product of choice, not nature (genes) or nurture (upbringing, environment). Certainly genes and culture often influence very powerfully, but they do not determine. The essence of being human is being able to direct your own life. Your power to choose the direction of your life allows you to reinvent yourself, to change your future, and to powerfully influence the rest of creation. It is the one gift that enables all the gifts to be used; it is the one gift that enables us to elevate our life to higher and higher levels. We are self-determining through our choices.

Second are natural laws or principles which are universal and never change. Like the law of gravity, they operate constantly.

Third includes our four intelligences/capacities. Our Mental Intelligence (IQ) is our ability to analyze, reason, think abstractly, use language, visualize and comprehend. Physical Intelligence (PQ) of the body runs our respiratory, circulatory, nervous and other vital systems. Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is one’s self-knowledge, self-awareness, social sensitivity, empathy and ability to communicate successfully with others. Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) represents our drive for meaning and connection with the infinite.

These four dimensions of life obviously overlap, so you really can’t work exclusively on any one without touching directly or indirectly on the others. Developing and using these intelligences will instill within you quiet confidence, internal strength and security, the ability to simultaneously be courageous and considerate, and personal moral authority. In many ways, your efforts to develop these intelligences will profoundly impact your ability to influence others and inspire them to find their voice.

Chapter 5: Express Your Voice—Vision, Discipline, Passion and Conscience

When you study the lives of all great achievers, those who have had the greatest influence on others, those who have made significant contributions, and those who have simply made things happen, you will find a pattern. Through their persistent efforts and inner struggles, they have greatly expanded their four native human intelligences or capacities. The highest manifestations of those four intelligences are: for the mental, vision; for the physical, discipline; for the emotional, passion; for the spiritual, conscience. These manifestations also represent our highest means of expressing our voice.

Vision is seeing with the mind’s eye what is possible in people, in projects, in causes and in enterprises. Vision results when our mind joins need with possibility. When people have no vision, when they neglect the development of the mind’s capacity to create, they fall prey to the human tendency toward victimism.

Discipline is paying the price to bring that vision into reality. It’s dealing with the hard, pragmatic, brutal facts of reality and doing what it takes to make things happen. Discipline arises when vision joins with commitment. The opposite of discipline and the commitment that inspires sacrifice is indulgence which is sacrificing what matters most in life for the pleasure or thrill of the moment.

Passion is the fire, the desire, the strength of conviction and the drive that sustains the discipline to achieve the vision. Passion arises when human need overlaps unique human talent. When one does not have the passion that flows from finding and using one’s voice to serve greater purposes, the void is filled with insecurity and the empty chatter of a thousand voices that drive the social mirror. Passion includes compassion.

Conscience is the inward moral sense of what is right and what is wrong, the drive toward meaning and contribution. It is the guiding force to vision, discipline and passion. It stands in stark contrast to the life dominated by ego. When conscience governs vision, discipline and passion, leadership endures and changes the world for good. In other words, moral authority makes formal authority work. Formal authority without moral authority fails.

I promise if you will apply these four capacities to any role in your life, you can find your voice in that role. Ask yourself these four questions: What need (vision) do I sense? Do I possess a true talent (discipline) that can meet the need? Does this opportunity tap into my passion? Does my conscience inspire me to take action and become involved?

PART 2: INSPIRE OTHERS TO FIND THEIR VOICE

Chapter 6: Inspiring Others to Find Their Voice—The Leadership Challenge

Simply put, leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. Think about this definition. Isn’t this the essence of the kind of leadership that influences and truly endures? To communicate the worth and potential of others so clearly, so powerfully and so consistently that they really come to see it in themselves is to set in motion the process of seeing, doing and becoming.

At the most elemental level, an organization is nothing more or less than a relationship with a purpose (its voice). That purpose is aimed at meeting the needs of one or more persons or stakeholders. The simplest organization would be two people who share a purpose, such as in a simple business partnership or a marriage. Almost all people belong to an organization of one kind or another.

Most of the world’s work is done in and through organizations. The highest challenge inside organizations, including families, is to set them up and run them in a way that enables each person to inwardly sense his or her innate worth and potential for greatness and to contribute his or her unique talents and passion—in other words, voice—to accomplish the organization’s purpose and highest priorities in a principle-centered way. We could call this the Leadership Challenge.

The decision to inspire others to find their voice takes you right into the thick of the four chronic organizational problems that result from today’s Industrial Age control model. Every one of us who has found his or her voice possesses the power to rewrite the bad “boss, rules, efficiency, control” software in their organization. This process involves four roles that become the antidote to the four chronic organizational problems: modeling trustworthiness, pathfinding to build a common vision, aligning goals and structures, and empowering individuals. I call these four roles the 4 Roles of Leadership. They are the positive manifestations of body, heart, mind and spirit in an organization, whereas the four chronic problems are the negative manifestations of neglecting them.

FOCUS—MODELING AND PATHFINDING

Chapter 7: The Voice of Influence—Be a Trim-Tab

Modeling is the spirit and the center of any leadership effort. It begins with Finding Your Voice followed by developing the four intelligences and expressing your voice in vision, discipline, passion and conscience. Modeling these characteristics of personal leadership alters and changes the other three roles at their very core.

Modeling is primarily done during the other three roles. It is also done before, which brings a sense of confidence and trust in the leader. But it is only when people actually experience for themselves how a conscience-driven person models path finding, aligning and empowering that leadership actually takes place. People then come to know for themselves how respected, appreciated and valued they are. This is because their opinions are sought. Their input is respected. Their unique experience is valued. They are genuinely involved in the path-finding process. They are participants.

I understand that the amazing paradigm shifter Buckminster Fuller chose to put this epitaph on his tombstone: “Just a Trim-Tab.” A trim-tab on a boat or plane is the small rudder that turns the big rudder that turns the entire ship. I believe there are numerous potential trim-tabbers in every organization whether business, government, schools, families, nonprofit or community organizations, who can lead and spread their influence no matter what position they hold. They can move themselves and their team or department in such a way that it positively affects the entire organization. The trim-tab exercises initiative within his or her own Circle of Influence, however small it may be.

Taking initiative is a form of self-empowerment. No formal leader has empowered you. The organizational structure hasn’t empowered you. You empower yourself based on the issue or the problem or the challenge at hand. You exercise the appropriate level of initiative or self-empowerment. Choosing our level of initiative widens our definition of “voice,” so that we can find our voice in any set of circumstances. The key question is always, what is the best thing I can do under these circumstances?

Chapter 8: The Voice of Trustworthiness—Modeling Character and Competence

Ninety percent of all leadership failures are character failures. Just as trust is the key to all relationships, it is the glue of organizations. It is the cement that holds the bricks together. I have also learned that trust is the fruit of the trustworthiness of both people and organizations. Trust comes from three sources: the personal, the institutional, and one person consciously choosing to give it to another. It’s an act that leads me to feel your belief that I can add value. You give me trust and I return it.

Trust is a verb AND a noun. When it’s both a verb and a noun, it’s something shared and reciprocated between people. That is the essence of how a person becomes the leader of their boss. They merit trust by giving it. Trust the verb comes from the potential trustworthiness of the one receiving the trust and the clear trustworthiness of the one giving the trust.

Wherever you find lasting trust, you will find trustworthiness. It is always so. It is a principle. Just as trust comes from trustworthiness, trustworthiness comes from character and competence. Personal character has three facets: integrity, maturity and Abundance Mentality.

Integrity means you are integrated around principles and natural laws that ultimately govern the consequences of our behavior. Honesty is the principle of telling the truth. Integrity is keeping promises made to self and/or others.

Maturity develops when a person pays the price of integrity and winning the private victory over self, allowing him or her to be simultaneously courageous and kind. In other words, such a person can deal with tough issues compassionately. The combination of courage and kindness is both the source and the product of integrity.

Abundance Mentality means that rather than seeing life as competition with only one winner, you see it as a cornucopia of ever enlarging opportunity, resources and wealth. You don’t compare yourself to others and are genuinely happy for their successes. Scarcity-minded people come out of a comparison-based identity and are threatened by the successes of others. Those with the Abundance Mentality see their competitors as some of their most valued and important teachers.

Chapter 9: The Voice and Speed of Trust

What is communication like when there is high trust? It’s easy, it’s effortless, and it’s instantaneous. What happens when there’s high trust and you make mistakes? They hardly matter. People know you. “Don’t worry about it, I understand.” “Forget it. I know what you mean. I know you.” No technology ever devised can do that.

Enduring trust in a relationship cannot be faked, and is rarely produced by a dramatic, one-time effort. It is the fruit of regular actions inspired by the conscience and heart. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I introduced a metaphor for trust called the Emotional Bank Account. It is like a financial bank account into which you make emotional deposits and take out withdrawals, except in this case, you make emotional deposits and withdrawals in your relationships that either build or destroy them. Like any metaphor, if you push it far enough, it has its limitations. But generally it is a powerful and simple way of communicating the quality of a relationship.

Trust is not only the fruit of trustworthiness; it is also the root of motivation. It is the highest form of motivation. Love also becomes a verb. It is something you do; you love or serve others; you trust others; you see their worth and potential and provide opportunity and nourishment and encouragement. If they do not live true to this trust, it will deteriorate and they will not be inspired to see their own worth and potential. They won’t have the ability to communicate to others their worth and potential. To them, trust will not be a verb. In fact, it will be very hard for an untrustworthy person to trust anybody or believe in anybody in a sustainable way.

Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world. If you want to study love, study those who sacrifice for others, even for people who offend or do not love in return. Proactive people subordinate feelings to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured.

Remember the power you hold to give your trust to others. You may open yourself to the risk of being disappointed, and you will need to be wise in the exercise of this power. But when you do, you give a priceless gift and opportunity to others. The greatest risk of all is the risk of risk-less living.

Chapter 10: Blending Voices—Searching for the Third Alternative

I am convinced that one of the most difficult and challenging problems of life, whether at home, at work, or elsewhere, is how you deal with conflict and how you deal with human differences. What if you had the character and the SKILL to resolve differences that are better than those anyone has proposed? The capacity and ability to produce such synergistic solutions, such creative cooperation, is built upon the foundation of moral authority at the personal level and trust in relationships.

The Third Alternative isn’t my way, and it isn’t your way. Rather, it’s our way. It’s not a compromise halfway between your way and my way; it’s better than a compromise. A third alternative is what the Buddhists call the middle way which is a higher middle position that is better than either of the other two ways, like the tip of a triangle.

The Third Alternative is a better alternative than any that have been proposed. It is a product of sheer creative effort. It emerges from the overlapping vulnerabilities of two or more people which stems from their openness, their willingness to really listen, and their desire to search. You simply don’t know where it’s going to end up. All you know is that it’s going to end up better than where it is now. The content may change, the spirit may change, the motive may change, even two or three of these may change but always at least one.

There are basically two steps in searching for a Third Alternative. In fact, the very searching process through these two steps feeds back and helps create trust (moral authority) that encourages the search. It’s important to note that these two steps are not always sequential.

“Would you be willing to search for a solution that is better than what either one of us have proposed?”

“Would you agree to a simple ground rule: no one can make his or her point until they have restated the other person’s point to his or her satisfaction?”

Sometimes you find yourself going back and forth between these two steps. Every situation is different, and every relationship unique. Bottom line, it requires good judgment, awareness, self-control and presence to initiate these two steps.

Chapter 11: One Voice—Pathfinding Shared Vision, Values and Strategy

Influence begins with modeling trustworthiness so that people will have confidence in you. But as you know, they need more than your trustworthiness. People need a model to see how they can work and lead in a way different from what they are used to, different from the culture of the organization, and different from the controlling, transactional traditions of the Industrial Age. Your most important modeling will be to show others how a person who has found his or her voice acts inside the other three primary roles of a leader which include path finding, aligning and empowering.

Whereas modeling inspires trust, path finding creates order without demanding it. As soon as the people involved agree upon what matters most organizationally, they share the criteria that will drive all decisions that follow. This clarifying communication gives focus. It creates order. It creates stability, and it also enables agility.

Vision on a personal scale translates into path finding in an organizational setting. Whereas individually you identify what you see to be significant, now your challenge and role is to create a shared view of what is important, of what matters most.

People frequently use the analogy of being on the same page or song sheet to describe achieving shared vision and values. It’s an excellent analogy because it suggests there is agreement about what matters most in the organization’s vision, values and strategic value proposition, and when played or sung together, the music is in harmony.

In an organization, however, the mission statement and strategic plan are one thing, but the process of getting everyone on that same song sheet is another thing of equal importance. It is a major undertaking. The leadership work of modeling is truly manifest in the path finding role. Otherwise, people don’t get on the same song sheet, they don’t emotionally align on the strategic issues, and downstream everything goes awry. If the competition is also in disarray, you might survive. But if they synergistically unite within themselves, you’re history.

EXECUTION—ALIGNING AND EMPOWERING

Chapter 12: The Voice and Discipline of Execution—Aligning Goals and Systems for Results

Modeling principle-centered living and leadership creates and inspires trust. Pathfinding creates shared vision and order without demanding them. But now the critical question becomes, how do we execute both values and strategy consistently without relying on the formal leader’s continuing presence to keep everyone going in the right direction? The answer is alignment. This means designing and executing systems and structures that reinforce the core values and highest strategic priorities of the organization (selected in the pathfinding process).

Consider the current structures, systems and processes in your organization. Do they enable people to execute top priorities, or do they create roadblocks for doing so? Are they consistent with the organization’s espoused values? It is the responsibility of leadership to remove obstacles, not create them. Yet the process of alignment requires a deep and humble examination of self and many “sacred cow” organizational systems and structure.

Aligning work is never finished. It requires constant effort and adjustment simply because you’re dealing with so many changing realities. Systems, structures and processes must remain flexible so that they can adjust to those changing realities. Yet they must also be based upon unchanging principles. With this combination of flexible changelessness you create an organization that is both stable and agile.

Aligned organizations and institutions that are truly principle-centered have institutionalized moral authority. Institutionalized moral authority is the institutional capacity to consistently produce quality, trusting relationships with various stakeholders, and continued focus upon efficiency, speed, flexibility and market friendliness. Certain individuals may blow it from time to time, but the institution handles them appropriately and moves on.

Three of the leadership roles and their tools deal with one basic question: what matters most? The third role, aligning, deals with the question: Are we on target? Are we on track regarding what matters most? The key to the principle of alignment is to always begin with the results. What kind of results are you getting in the marketplace? Are your shareholders happy with the return on their investment? What about your employees? Are they happy with the return on their mental, physical, spiritual and emotional investment? What about suppliers? What about the community?

The important thing is to come up with what we’ll call a Scoreboard, a compelling scoreboard. The people who are involved, who will be evaluated, need to participate in establishing a compelling performance scoreboard that reflects the criteria built into the mission. It should incorporate the values and strategy of an organization so that they can continuously stay aligned with the process and be both responsible and accountable. Everyone should be involved in developing the Scoreboard, and then be accountable to it.

Chapter 13: The Empowering Voice—Releasing Passion and Talent

Modeling principle-centered trustworthy behavior inspires trust without “talking it.” Pathfinding creates order without demanding it. Aligning nourishes both vision and empowerment without proclaiming them. Empowerment is the fruit of the other three. In other words, empowering enthrones self-control, self-management and self-organizing.

Passion is the fire, enthusiasm and courage that an individual feels when she is doing something she loves while accomplishing worthy ends, something that satisfies her deepest needs. Remember, the roots of the word enthusiasm mean “God in you.” Empowerment is exactly the same thing, only it’s in the organizational context of employees doing work they love, and doing it in such a way that meets their deepest needs and the essential needs of the organization. Their voices blend.

Just think about your own personal life. What kind of a job do you like? What kind of supervision? What taps into your deepest passion? What if you had a job that tapped into your passion and a job in which your leaders became your servants, where they existed to personally or systematically help you do your job? What if structures and systems were supportive, helpful, and were geared toward enabling, identifying and releasing your potential? What if you were continually recognized and rewarded, and most importantly, felt the intrinsic satisfaction of contributing significantly to a cause you felt worthy of such heartfelt commitment?

When we discussed the trim-tabbing leader, who was full of vision, discipline, passion and conscience, we were talking about self-empowerment. Now, in the larger context, we’re looking at how to create an official, institutionalized, formalized philosophy of empowerment. Ideally you would like to have both personal and organizational empowerment so that a person doesn’t have to swim upstream against disempowering organizational forces.

THE AGE OF WISDOM

Chapter 14: The 8th Habit and the Sweet Spot

The 8th Habit, Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs, is an idea whose time has come. The reason why the 8th Habit is such an idea is that it embodies an understanding of the whole person. Understanding that gives its possessors the key to crack open the limitless potential of the knowledge working economy.

The 8th Habit gives you a mind-set and a skill-set to constantly look for the potential in people. It’s the kind of leadership that communicates to people their worth and potential so clearly they come to see it in themselves. To do this, we must listen to people. We must involve and continually affirm them by our words and through all 4 Roles of Leadership.

Here is a succinct way to remember what each role does. Notice how each role directly or indirectly affirms people’s worth as whole people and empowers the unleashing of their potential.

First, modeling inspires trust. When people live by the principles embodied in the 8th habit, trust, the glue of life, flourishes; trust comes only through trustworthiness. Modeling produces personal moral authority.

Second, pathfinding creates order as people identify and are involved in the strategic decisions, particularly on values and high-priority goals, they emotionally connect. Pathfinding produces visionary moral authority.

Third, aligning structures, systems and processes is a form of nourishing the body politic and the spirit of trust, vision and empowerment. Aligning produces institutionalized moral authority.

Fourth, empowering is the fruit of modeling, pathfinding and aligning. It unleashes human potential without external motivation. Empowering produces cultural moral authority.

I suggest that all that we have covered can be essentially summarized in two words: Focus and Execution. Focus deals with what matters most, and execution deals with making it happen. Modeling and pathfinding can be summarized in one word: focus. Aligning and empowering can be summarized in one word: execution.

Focus and execution are inseparably connected. To know and not to do is really not to know. Until you have people on the same page, they will not execute consistently. Execution is the great unaddressed issue in most organizations today.

Chapter 15: Using Our Voices Wisely to Serve Others

The inner drive to 1) Find Your Own Voice, and 2) Inspire Others to Find Theirs is fueled by one great overarching purpose: serving human needs. It is also the best means of achieving both. Without reaching out and meeting human needs, we really don’t expand and develop our freedom to choose as we otherwise could. We grow more personally when we are giving ourselves to others. Our relationships improve and deepen when together we attempt to serve our family, another family, an organization, a community, or some other human need. Organizations are established to serve human needs.

This book has primarily attempted to teach one basic paradigm: that people are whole people with a body, a mind, a heart and a spirit. As a person engages in the sequential 8th Habit process of finding one’s own voice, making the choice to expand her influence by inspiring others to find their voice, she increases her freedom and power of choice to solve her greatest challenges and serve human needs. She also learns how leadership can eventually become a choice, not a position. Leadership, the enabling art, should be widely distributed throughout organizations and society. If it is, while we manage or control things, we lead (empower) people.

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 meaning again, service above self. This is the true DNA of success. It is not about “What’s in it for me,” but about, “What can I contribute?”

To you as the reader, I affirm your worth and potential. Even if you live in horrible circumstances, it is in those 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.

Table of Contents

Nutshell Summary

Full Summary

Chapter 1: The Pain

Chapter 2: The Problem

Chapter 3: The Solution

PART 1: FIND YOUR VOICE

Chapter 4: Discover Your Voice—Unopened Birth-Gifts

Chapter 5: Express Your Voice—Vision, Discipline, Passion and Conscience

PART 2: INSPIRE OTHERS TO FIND THEIR VOICE

Chapter 6: Inspiring Others to Find Their Voice—The Leadership Challenge

FOCUS—MODELING AND PATHFINDING

Chapter 7: The Voice of Influence—Be a Trim-Tab

Chapter 8: The Voice of Trustworthiness—Modeling Character and Competence

Chapter 9: The Voice and Speed of Trust

Chapter 10: Blending Voices—Searching for the Third Alternative

Chapter 11: One Voice—Pathfinding Shared Vision, Values and Strategy

EXECUTION—ALIGNING AND EMPOWERING

Chapter 12: The Voice and Discipline of Execution—Aligning Goals and Systems for Results

Chapter 13: The Empowering Voice—Releasing Passion and Talent

THE AGE OF WISDOM

Chapter 14: The 8th Habit and the Sweet Spot

Chapter 15: Using Our Voices Wisely to Serve Others