“Most of us don’t listen with the intent to understand.  We listen with the intent to reply,” Stephen Covey tells us.

There is a better way. 

What if we intentionally, deliberately set ourselves aside, including our personal opinions, and approach every conversation with the idea that we have something to learn.  

“It takes effort and energy to pay attention.  But it’s worth it,” Celeste Headlee tells us in her TED … continue reading

Yesterday we explored the idea when attempting to persuade another human being, we are wise to begin with connection and relationship rather than the logic of what we believe.  

The same rule applies when we are presenting to a group, Stephen Covey tells us in The 8th Habit.

We begin with ethos, our personal credibility, essentially the trust we inspire, the belief people have in our integrity and … continue reading

“I’ve got nothing to lose,” said the attendee at one of Stephen Covey‘s workshops. 

The stakes were high.  

“All of my eggs were in this one basket.  All of them,” the man shares in Stephen’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  He was trying to close a big commercial real estate deal in Chicago and all the signals indicated he was going to lose.  

“So I … continue reading

Stephen Covey‘s concept of empathic listening involves many of the topics we’ve explored the past several weeks.

We began with Brene Brown’s insight that empathy is different from sympathy, in the 8th Habit, Stephen observes sympathy is often a form of judgment.  People feed on sympathy.  It makes them dependent.

Empathy, in contrast, involves both parties looking at the problem, issue, or feeling.  We are on the same … continue reading

“If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” writes Stephen Covey in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Seek first to understand is a gift we can give those we care about. Next to physical survival, Stephen observes, the greatest need of a … continue reading

As servant leaders, what is the relationship between taking action and building trust?

This week we are looking at key learnings from Robert Greenleaf‘s seminal work on leadership The Servant as Leader.  Yesterday we looked at the primacy of initiative: everything begins with the initiative of the individual.  Leadership is about going out ahead and showing the way. He or she says, “I will go, follow me!” when … continue reading

Attention Management is the first module in the Stagen Leadership Academy’s brilliant, impactful year-long Integral Leadership Program (ILP)

By being more proactive about managing our attention, the idea is to find two or more hours a week which can then be reinvested in learning the program demands.

Of all the attention management tools, Rand Stagen tells ILPers, the single most impactful is the “Weekly Focusing Process” where he encourages us … continue reading

What game are we playing? 

Are we going through the motions or are we on the path to mastery? Philosopher Brian Johnson asks.

Are we committed to actualizing our potential or pin-balling around based on random inputs?

At the heart of Brian’s philosophy is the idea of creating masterpiece days.  

Brian suggests we begin by focusing on the parts of our day where we have maximum control, what he calls the … continue reading

We want people to trust us. Stephen Covey tells us trustworthiness is a factor of character and competence. There is a sure-fire way to increase our competence.

It’s called Committed Action.

Committed action is a framework I learned about while taking the Stagen Integral Leadership Program, a fantastic year-long leadership development program I can’t recommend highly enough.

It starts with awareness. Being a better leader starts here. We become more effective and build our … continue reading

One of the central ideas of Stephen M. L. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust is that to build trust, we must be persons of high character.

But Covey tells us: that’s not enough.

Character is about being virtuous.  It’s about cultivating a moral code which we use to make decisions and live life.  In Ryan Holliday’s excellent book Stillness is the Way, he writes the Stoics believed that … continue reading