Financial Times

Tips on being fulfilled, excited in your job
“People are not overhead costs - they are assets.”
“Bosses should treat employees as volunteers.”
These were some the thought-provoking sentiments of Dr. Stephen R. Covey, the founder and chairman of the Covey Leadership Centre, during a recent presentation in Colombo to over 600 people on the topic “effectiveness to greatness”.

Dr. Covey, also founder of the bestseller “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, explaining about his theory said that the seven principles embodied in the “7 habits’ deal with responsibility, initiative, vision, values, integrity, execution, mutual respect, benefit, mutual understanding, creative cooperation, renewal, affirming worth and unleashing potential.

“The world has profoundly changed since The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was published. The challenges and complexity we face in our personal lives and relationships, in our families, in our professional lives, and in our organisations are of a different order and magnitude. Surviving, thriving, innovating, excelling and leading in this new reality require a new mindset, a new skill-set, a new toolset – it requires a new habit. The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness is an additional dimension to the 7 Habits that takes us beyond effectiveness and puts us onto the pathway leading to greatness,” he said explaining about the ‘8th Habit’, yet another bestseller. “The 8th Habit is about seeing and harnessing the power of a third dimension to the 7 Habits that meets this central challenge of the new Knowledge Worker Age,” he added.

Explaining the difference between motivation and inspiration, he said that motivation is an industrial age concept, whereas inspiration is a knowledge based concept. He said the eighth habit is about finding “your” voice and helping others to find theirs. “Voice is unique personal

ignificance—significance that is revealed as we face our greatest challenges and that makes us equal to them,” he explained. He said that the key to leadership is not formal authority, but moral authority. He said that in a recent survey out of 23,000 full-time employees holding key positions in key industries, only 50 percent said they were satisfied with the work they have accomplished at the end of the week.

He said that despite all the gains in technology, product innovation and world markets, most people are not thriving in the organisations they work for, because they are neither excited nor fulfilled. “They have no clarity around the most important priorities. They suffer from a loss of passion, feeling disenabled in their jobs, coping with low-trust environments, and feeling bogged down and distracted,” he said.

Dr. Covey said that the call and need of this new era is for fulfilment. It’s for passionate optimisation, for significant contribution and greatness.
“We must tap into the voice of the human spirit – full of hope and intelligence and encompass the soul of organisations so they can survive, thrive and profoundly impact the future of the world. Tapping into these higher reaches of human genius and motivation – what we would call voice, requires the eighth habit,” he said.

Dr. Covey has taught leadership principles and management skills for more than 25 years to leaders in business, government, and education. His consulting portfolio contains more than 150 of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as thousands of mid-sized and smaller organisations.

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