Quotes from Stephen R. Covey

You have to build the skills of empathic listening on a base of character that inspires openness and trust. And you have to build the Emotional Bank Accounts that create a commerce between hearts.

The leader learns to learn from the challenges, failures, and problems of life to improve life.

You might work on your attitude—you could think more positively. You still wouldn't get to the right place, but perhaps you wouldn't care. Your attitude would be so positive, you'd be happy wherever you were.

It also requires independent will, the power to do something when you don't want to do it, to be a function of your values rather than a function of the impulse or desire of any given moment.

Breaking deeply imbedded habitual tendencies such as procrastination, impatience, criticalness, or selfishness that violate basic principles of human effectiveness involves more than a little willpower and a few minor changes in our lives. "Lift off" takes a tremendous effort, but once we break out of the gravity pull, our freedom takes on a whole new dimension.

I am not suggesting that elements of the Personality Ethic—personality growth, communication skill training, and education in the field of influence strategies and positive thinking—are not beneficial, in fact sometimes essential for success. I believe they are. But these are secondary, not primary traits.

learned to focus on truly important things, not just urgent things.

El poder de comprometernos con nosotros mismos y de mantener esos compromisos es la esencia del desarrollo de los hábitos básicos de la efectividad

The more we are able to draw upon our right brain capacity, the more fully we will be able to visualize, to synthesize, to transcend time and present circumstances, to project a holistic picture of what we want to do and to be in life.

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us. OBJECTIVE INTROSPECTION Until we see ourselves from the outside objectively, we will automatically project our motives onto other people.

if you organize your family life to spend even ten or fifteen minutes a morning reading something that connects you with these timeless principles, it's almost guaranteed that you will make better choices during the day—in the family, on the job, in every dimension of life.

As we exercise self- awareness and examine our paradigms we discover that they are deeply ingrained. Change is not easy.

Management is a bottom line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things? Leadership deals with the top line: What are the things I want to accomplish? In the words of both Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

We have such a tendency to rush in, to fix things up with good advice. But we often fail to take the time to diagnose, to really, deeply understand the problem first.

In stark contrast, almost all the literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the Character Ethic as the foundation of success—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is representative of that literature. It is, basically, the story of one man's effort to integrate certain principles and habits deep within his nature.

we must constantly re-educate and reinvent ourselves.

Most people see effectiveness from the golden egg paradigm: the more you produce, the more you do, the more effective you are.

Each of us has many, many maps in our head, which can be divided into two main categories: maps of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values.

Think about a person who typically sees things differently than you do. Consider ways in which those differences might be used as stepping-stones to third alternative solutions. Perhaps you could seek out his or her views on a current project or problem, valuing the different views you are likely to hear.

Their guidance is a function of the demands of the work. Their wisdom and power come in the limited areas of their work, rendering them ineffective in other areas of life.

No management success can compensate for failure in leadership.

I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a transformer in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.

It's the nature of reactive people to absolve themselves of responsibility. It's so much safer to say, I am not responsible. If I say I am responsible, I might have to say, I am irresponsible. It would be very hard for me to say that I have the power to choose my response and that the response I have chosen has resulted in my involvement in a negative, collusive environment, especially if for years I have absolved myself of responsibility for results in the name of someone else's weaknesses.

Al morir un amigo común, un hombre le preguntó a otro: «¿Cuánto dejó?». La respuesta fue: «¡Lo dejó todo!».