We are off and running in our 7 Habits discussion group. In the first meeting, the eight participants shared our takeaways from the first part of the book, Paradigms and Principles, in which Dr. Covey conveyed his Inside-Out approach to personal development, as well as an overview of the 7 Habits. The key concepts are paradigms, principles vs. values, and the maturity continuum. But before diving into the teachings, Dr. Covey recounted how he came around to his world-changing perspective.
Covey undertook an exhaustive study of the “success literature” going all the way back to America’s founding. He discovered two distinct eras in that timeline. Up until the World Wars, the focus was on what he termed the “character ethic”–integrity, humility, fidelity, courage, justice, and the like. He wrote of that period, “The Character Ethic taught there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.”
Since the Wars, there has been a shift to the “personality ethic.” The focus is now on personality, attitude, behavior, and techniques. Covey made the case that this shift had serious defects and consequences. He wrote, “…parts of the personality approach were clearly manipulative, even deceptive, encouraging people to use techniques to get other people to like them…”
Dr. Covey was not arguing that the personality ethic does not play a role in effectiveness and success. Quite the contrary. He was merely asserting that to be optimal, especially in the long term, those traits must be based on a foundation of character.
Covey then went on to define paradigms as frames of reference, our mental maps that determine how we see the world. This is a critical piece of the teaching, and of self-awareness itself. Everything we see is filtered through our conditioning, experiences, values, and biases. He described the centrality of our paradigms in that, “Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are–or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them.”
He circled back to character by linking it to paradigms. “…what we see is highly interrelated to what we are,” he wrote. Therefore, we ought to choose what becomes a part of our character, what we value, very intentionally.
At this point, we are directed to look at universal principles that the character ethicists used to espouse to build our foundation. Those principles are immutable. They exist independent of our beliefs and opinions. They simply are. To be effective, we must learn what the principles are and align ourselves with them to both maximize benefits and minimize suffering. Covey emphasized this fact by quoting from the movie The Ten Commandments, “It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.”
Dr. Covey next noted the distinction between principles, which are objective and universal, and values, which are subjective and personal. We can value principles and should do so if we wish to be effective, and we can also value all sorts of other things that are fleeting and transitory, such as money and fame.
In Dr. Covey’s inside-out approach to personal growth and change, the “private victories” (as embodied in Habits 1-3) must come before the “public victories” (Habits 4-6). He wrote, “…making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others…it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.”
It is in this manner that we move along what Covey called the “maturity continuum” from dependence to independence to interdependence. He pointed out that much of the modern fixation on independence is actually a reaction to dependencies that haven’t truly been transcended during our formative years. He summed up the progression along the continuum concisely:
“True independence of character empowers us to act rather than be acted upon. It frees us from our dependence on circumstances and other people and is a worthy, liberating goal. But it is not the ultimate goal in effective living…As an interdependent person, I have the opportunity to share myself deeply, meaningfully, with others, and I have access to the vast resources and potential of other human beings.”
The discussion in our meeting was wide-ranging and touched on most of the points above, with each guy contributing his unique perspective. Given our shared experience of journeying through the criminal legal system, and now being imprisoned together, we naturally gravitated to that specific application of Covey’s concepts.
Dr. Covey spoke to why the BOP fails at its rehabilitative mission when he wrote, “If I try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what I want, to work better, to be more motivated, to like me and each other–while my character is fundamentally flawed, marked by duplicity and insincerity–then in the long run, I cannot be successful. My duplicity will breed distrust, and everything I do–even using so-called human relations techniques–will be perceived as manipulative. It simplY makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or not trust, there is no foundation for permanent success. Only basic goodness gives life to technique.”
Instead of getting too bogged down in the shortcomings of the system, our group came around to a more hopeful note by the end of the discussion. The consensus was that our current circumstances afforded us an opportunity to do the type of character development that Covey championed, without many of the demands and distractions that make such work difficult for our loved ones at home. One of the guys put forth the lofty and inspiring intention to do whatever it takes to make his character unassailable, even by a federal prosecutor.
I walked away from our first gathering energized and feeling anticipation for what I might learn from these men going forward. As usual, Dr. Covey had a knack for pinpointing the effective mindset when he wrote, “Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education. Thoreau taught, ‘How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?'”
I have been immersed in this material for many years, but there is still more to be gleaned from going through it as part of a group with fresh eyes. As we move into Habit 1, my ears and mind are open.
