Book Summary Preview : Principle-Centered Leadership

The Big Idea
When things go wrong - whether in your personal or professional life -¬ chances are you resort to quick-fix plans, strategies and techniques for altering and improving your environment. Often, the problem is caused by a misalignment of your actions and decisions with the correct principles. To solve it, you need to alter not the external circumstances but your perspective.

Best-selling author Stephen Covey introduces a new management paradigm that can help you transform, not only your organization, but your personal relationships as well. He reveals how you can achieve effective personal and organizational leadership by centering your actions and decisions on a set of time-tested principles.

Part One: Placing Principles at Your Center

Do most of the following apply to your organization?

• Interdepartmental rivalries
• Subgroups polarized around key philosophical issues
• Back-talking and bad-mouthing
• Cosmetic niceties on the surface exchanges
• Unionized; with people working on two cylinders
• Deep, entrenched interests between departments
• Special contests and promotions constantly going on to make sales quotas

These are signs of imbalance or misalignment. They indicate that you are using the wrong paradigm in your organization, that you are centered not on solid principles but on distorted values and beliefs.

Principles vs. Values

An example of a value is: The more profit we get, the better our organization will be and the better the lives of our members. An example of a correct principle would be: Profit should come second to ethical considerations.

Both values and principles can dictate our behavior and how we judge and evaluate our environment. How are they different?

Values are subjective, temporary maps that show us where to go or what to do given a particular situation. They can become obsolete when the situation changes. Values represent our cultural influences, personal discoveries and family scripts. They vary from person to person, or, more accurately, from role to role. A single individual can carry with him several sets of values for each of his different roles — child, sibling, parent, spouse, friend, lover, executive — and these values can contradict each other, and change over time depending on the person's newly acquired experiences and insights.

Principles are like compasses that point us to our true direction. They are objective, unchanging natural laws that are correct and relevant regardless of the external circumstances. They are timeless, universal behavioral standards that have governed the social values of all the great human societies and civilizations. They apply to all people and all roles at whatever time and place and in whatever situation. Examples are fairness, equality, justice, integrity, honesty and trust.

The Benefits of the Principle-Centered Approach

Having several sets of conflicting values can make you lose direction. When a wave of change suddenly hits, you could easily be swept off your feet. You need a center that will keep you steady and consistent through whatever crisis comes your way. By basing your actions on principles rather than values you will be able to navigate through turbulent change, all the while maintaining your perspective and judgment.

The Four Dimensions

When you are principle-centered, you gain four sources of strength:

1. Security – your sense of worth, identity, emotional anchorage, self-esteem and personal strength.
2. Guidance – the direction you receive in life.
3. Wisdom – your perspective on life; your sense of balance and understanding, judgment, discernment and comprehension.
4. Power – your capacity to act and make decisions; your strength and courage to accomplish something.

A Principle-Centered Life

When your life is guided not by principles but by alternative centers (such as work, pleasure, friends, enemies, spouse, family, self, church, possessions, and money) you have no real power. Your strength is based on other people and on external circumstances, which are never reliable.

When you center your life on correct principles, you become your own master. You chart your own course and remain steadfast and rooted whatever happens. You take control of all aspects of your life, including your possessions and relationships. You are not threatened by change, or by other people’s opinions.

A Principle-Centered Organization

When your organization is guided not by principles but by alternative centers (such as profit, supplier, employee, owner, customer, program, policy, competition, image and technology) the organization will have no real power. You will tend to control and exploit in order to gain what you want, and this can make you dependent on other people and external circumstances.

When you center your organization on correct principles, it is not easily threatened by external circumstances. Even competition becomes a healthy learning source.

The Four Key Principles

The key to becoming truly principle-centered is by aligning your life with correct principles slowly but surely, from the inside out. The change should progress on four levels:

• Level One: Personal – your relationship with yourself.
• Level Two: Interpersonal – your relationships and interactions with others.
• Level Three: Managerial – your responsibility to get your job done with others.
• Level Four: Organizational – your need to organize people (to recruit them, train them, compensate them, build teams, solve problems, and create aligned structure, strategy, and systems).

Each level has a corresponding key principle that you will need to center on:

1. Trustworthiness at the personal level.
2. Trust at the interpersonal level.
3. Empowerment at the managerial level.
4. Alignment at the organizational level.

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