The 7 habits of highly

Effective People
Course instructor: Huma Akram
humaakram.bukc@bahria.edu.pk

Business Studies Department, BUKC

The 7 habits of highly Effective People
 Published in 1989
 Self-help book written by Stephen Covey
 25 million copies sold
 Translated in 38 different languages
 Provides step by step actions we can take to

achieve holistic effectiveness

Business Studies Department, BUKC

 Inside -Out
Course instructor: Huma Akram
humaakram.bukc@bahria.edu.pk

Business Studies Department, BUKC

 Contents
 Introduction
 Personality and Character ethics
 Primary and Secondary greatness
 The Power of Paradigm
 The Power of paradigm shift
 Seeing and being
 The Principle centered Paradigm
 Principles of growth and change
 The way we see the problem is the problem
 A new level of thinking
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Business Studies Department, BUKC
 Incredible degree of outward success
 But,
 Struggling with an inner hunger, a deep need

for personal congruency and effectiveness,

healthy growing relationships with the other
people
 These are deep problems-problems that

quick fix approaches can’t solve

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 Problems
◦ Career goals
◦ A new diet
◦ Training issue
◦ Rebellious son
◦ Time management issue
◦ Value of work
◦ Success of friends and family
◦ Forceful personality
◦ Marriage issue

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 Became interested in
◦ how perceptions are formed
◦ How they govern the way we see
◦ How the way we see governs how we behave
 This led me to study
◦ Expectancy theory
◦ Self-fulfilling prophecies
◦ Pygmalion effect

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 Expectancy theory
 According to expectancy theory, individual
motivation to put forth more or less effort is
determined by a rational calculation in which
individuals evaluate their situation

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 According to this theory, individuals ask themselves
three questions.
◦ The first question is whether the person believes that high
levels of effort will lead to outcomes of interest, such as
performance or success. This perception is
labeled expectancy.
◦ The second question is the degree to which the person
believes that performance is related to subsequent
outcomes, such as rewards. This perception is
labeled instrumentality
◦ Finally, individuals are also concerned about the value of the
rewards awaiting them as a result of performance. The
anticipated satisfaction that will result from an outcome is
labeled valence.
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Self-fulfilling prophecy

 Have you ever made a prediction about your

life that came true?
◦ About your Project
◦ About your speech

 This suggests peoples' beliefs influence their

actions.

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   A self-fulfilling prophecy is a belief or
expectation that an individual holds about a
future event that manifests because the
individual holds it
 “a belief or expectation, correct or incorrect,

could bring about a desired or expected

outcome.”
 Applicable to negative and positive outcomes

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 Pygmalion effect or Rosenthal
effect
 The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is the
phenomenon whereby others' expectations of a
target person affect the target person's
performance.
 The effect is named after the Greek myth of 
Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with a statue
he had carved, or alternately, after the Rosenthal–
Jacobson study
 Rosenthal and Jacobson, in their book, applied the
idea to teachers' expectations of their students
affecting the students' performance
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 Rosenthal and Jacobson held that high expectations
lead to better performance and low expectations
lead to worse
 Leading to self-fulfilling prophecy
 By the Pygmalion effect, the targets of the
expectations internalize their positive labels, and
those with positive labels succeed accordingly
◦ A similar process works in the opposite direction in the
case of low expectations.
 Increasing the leader's expectation of the follower's
performance will result in better follower
performance.
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 Realization
◦ If we wanted to change the situation
◦ We first have to change ourselves
◦ And to change ourselves effectively
◦ WE NEED TO CHANGE OUR PERCEPTIONS

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Business Studies Department, BUKC
 Character Ethics
◦ There are basic principles of effective living
(integrity, humility, justice, patience, courage etc)
and that people can only experience true success
and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate
these principles into their basic character
 Personality Ethics
◦ Success became more of a fraction of personality,
of public image, of attitude and behavior, skills and
techniques, that lubricate the processes of human
interaction

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 Initially literature was focused on Character
Ethics as the foundation of success
 But, shortly after World war 1, the basic view

of success shifted from character ethic to

Personality Ethics
 Personality Ethics took two paths:

◦ Human and Public relations techniques

◦ Positive Mental attitude (PMA)

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 Things like public image, how you dress, how
you perform in social interactions; positive
mental attitude, skills and techniques to get
people to behave in certain ways.

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Primary and Secondary Greatness
 Primary greatness – Goodness in the
character
 Secondary greatness- Social recognition for

talent
 It is the character that communicates most

eloquently
 There are people we trust absolutely because

we know their character

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 Many people with secondary greatness lack
primary greatness or goodness in their
character
 What we are communicates far more

eloquently than anything we say or do

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 The Power of Paradigm
 The 7 Habits of highly effective people
embody many of the fundamental principles
of human effectiveness
 Internalization of principles for happiness

and success
 We need to understand our own “paradigms”

and how to make “paradigm shift”

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 A Paradigm is
◦ A Model, a theory
◦ A Perception, Assumption
◦ A Frame of reference
◦ A Mental map
 It is the way we “see” the world
 Perceiving, understanding, interpreting

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 Two categories of maps
◦ Maps of the way things are (realities)
◦ Maps of the way things should be (values)
 We interpret everything we experience through
these mental maps
 We simply assume that the way we see things is

the way they really are or the way they should be

 Our attitudes and behaviors grow out of those

assumptions.
 The way we see things is the source of the way

we think and the way we act

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Business Studies Department, BUKC
Business Studies Department, BUKC
The Power of Paradigm shift
 Thomas Kuhn
 The structure of Scientific revolutions (book)
 Paradigm shifts move us away from one way

of seeing the world to another

 Shifts create powerful change
 Our paradigms-sources of our attitudes and

behavior and ultimately our relationships with

others

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 United States today is the fruit of paradigm
shift.
◦ Change from Monarchy to democracy
 Mini-paradigm shift example (from 7 habits
book)
 Minor changes-Focus on attitudes and

behavior
 Significant change-work on basic paradigms

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Seeing and Being

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The Principle Centered Paradigm

 There are principles that govern human

effectiveness
 Objective reality versus subjective reality
 Principles are guidelines for human conduct

that are proven to have enduring, permanent

value
◦ Fairness, integrity, honesty, potential, growth etc

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Principles of Growth and change
 The glitter of personality ethic
 Quick and easy way to achieve quality of life
(personal effectiveness and deep
relationships) without going through
natural process of work and growth
 Personality ethic is illusionary and deceptive
 Trying to get high quality results with quick
fixes
◦ Trying to get some place in Chicago using the
map of Detroit
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 There are sequential stages of growth and
development
 Each step is important and each one takes

time
 No step can be skipped
 This is true in

◦ All phases of life

◦ All areas of development
 It is true with individuals, families and with
organizations
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 It is impossible to violate, ignore or shortcut
the development process
 Contrary to nature
 Disappointment and frustration
 We MUST learn to LISTEN
 Listening requires emotional strength
 Listening involves

◦ Patience
◦ Openness
◦ Desire to understand
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 The way we see the problem is the
problem
 We Need To Change Our Perspective
◦ What we often fail to realize is that who we are is more
important than what we do.
◦ It’s the energy behind our actions that truly matters.
Ignorance of this causes people to fail.
 The way we see the problem is the real problem.
◦ We need to change our perspective on things if we want
to be successful.
◦ We don’t need to give up on our dreams or goals.
◦ Our life is full of possibilities, but we need to change
the way we see this world.
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 We have to look much deeper into our hearts.
There might be a fundamentally different
course we could take.
 One could argue that our problems are not

created by us, but that is just a dead-end.

 If we want to change our reality, we need to

stop being victims and take responsibility for

our life.

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 A new level of thinking
 Seven habits of highly effective people
 It’s a principle centered, character-based,

“inside-out” approach to
◦ Personal effectiveness
◦ Interpersonal effectiveness
 “Inside-out” means to start first
◦ with self
◦ With most inside part of self
◦ With your paradigms, your character, your motives
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Business Studies Department, BUKC
 The "inside-out" approach means starting
with the self first.
 How do we do begin?
 By changing our habits.
 Covey says that "our character, basically, is a
composite of our habits…
◦ [These] are powerful factors in our lives.
◦ Because they are consistent, often unconscious
patterns, they constantly, daily express our
character and produce our effectiveness… or
ineffectiveness."
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 Contrary to the Inside-Out approach is the
Outside-In approach.
 The result of the Outside-In Paradigm is

unhappy people who feel victimized and

immobilized, who focus on the weaknesses of
other people and the circumstances they feel
are responsible for their own stagnant situation.
 To recognize and develop, we need to think

differently, to shift our paradigms to a new,

deeper, "Inside-Out" level.

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Inside-Out approach Outside –in approach
Starting with the self first Focus on the weaknesses of other
people and the circumstances

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