Stephen Covey

Stephen Covey
Stephen Richards Coveywas an American educator, author, businessman, and keynote speaker. His most popular book was The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. His other books include First Things First, Principle-Centered Leadership, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, The 8th Habit, and The Leader In Me — How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time. He was a professor at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University at the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSelf-Help Author
Date of Birth24 October 1932
CitySalt Lake City, UT
CountryUnited States of America
For me, the essence of the great American Dream is spiritual. I believe that our Constitution is inspired and that it is based on principles that are timeless and universal. This is the reason why 95% of all written constitutions throughout the world are modeled after our Constitution.
Over time, I have come to this simple definition of leadership: Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust.
Human beings are not things needing to be motivated and controlled; they are four dimensional - body, mind, heart, and spirit.
The 8th Habit, then, 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. The 8th Habit is to Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs.
Once you've found your own voice, the choice to expand your influence, to increase your contribution, is the choice to inspire others to find their voice.
Inspire (from the Latin inspirare) means to breathe life into another.
We see the world, not as it is, but as we are──or, as we are conditioned to see it.
Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.
Leadership is a choice, not a position
What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.
A little over 5% of the world's population produces almost 29% of the world's goods and services.
When the external factors over which one has no control in a way start to become negative, it starts to affect our creative juices.
Some habits of ineffectiveness are rooted in our social conditioning toward quick-fix, short-term thinking.
The solutions to our problems are and always will be based upon universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society throughout history.