Don't swing till it gets close to you. Get off his back. He's just learning. Nothing we did seemed to help, and we were really worried. We could see the effect this was having on his self-esteem.
We tried to be encouraging and helpful and positive, but after repeated failure, we finally drew back and tried to look at the situation on a different level. At this time in my professional role I was involved in leadership development work with various clients throughout the country. In that capacity I was preparing bimonthly programs on the subject of communication and perception for IBM's Executive Development Program participants.
As I researched and prepared these presentations, I became particularly interested in how perceptions are formed, how they behave. This led me to a study of expectancy theory and self-fulfilling prophecies or the "Pygmalion effect," and to a realization of how deeply imbedded our perceptions are.
It taught me that we must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world. As Sandra and I talked about the concepts I was teaching at IBM and about our own situation, we began to realize that what we were doing to help our son was not in harmony with the way we really saw him. When we honestly examined our deepest feelings, we realized that our perception was that he was basically inadequate, somehow "behind.
You have to be protected. And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions. The Personality and Character Ethics At the same time, in addition to my research on perception, I was also deeply immersed in an in-depth study of the success literature published in the United States since I was reading or scanning literally hundreds of books, articles, and essays in fields such as self-improvement, popular psychology, and self-help.
At my fingertips was the sum and substance of what a free and democratic people considered to be the keys to successful living. As my study took me back through years of writing about success, I noticed a startling pattern emerging in the content of the literature. It was filled with social image consciousness, techniques and quick fixes -- with social band-aids and aspirin that addressed acute problems and sometimes even appeared to solve them temporarily -- but left the underlying chronic problems untouched to fester and resurface time and again.
In stark contrast, almost all the literature in the first years or so focused on what could be called the character ethic as the foundation of success -- things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.
Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is representative of that literature. It is, basically, the story of one man's effort to integrate certain principles and habits deep within his nature.
The character ethic taught that 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. But shortly after World War I the basic view of success shifted from the character ethic to what we might call the personality ethic.
Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction.
This personality ethic essentially took two paths: one was human and public relations techniques, and the other was positive mental attitude PMA. Some of this philosophy was expressed in inspiring and sometimes valid maxims such as "Your attitude determines your altitude," "Smiling wins more friends than frowning," and "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.
Other parts of the personality approach were clearly manipulative, even deceptive, encouraging people to use techniques to get other people to like them, or to fake interest in the hobbies of others to get out of them what they wanted, or to use the "power look," or to intimidate their way through life. Some of this literature acknowledged character as an ingredient of success, but tended to compartmentalize it rather than recognize it as foundational and catalytic.
Reference to the character ethic became mostly lip service; the basic thrust was quick-fix influence techniques, power strategies, communication skills, and positive attitudes. This personality ethic, I began to realize, was the subconscious source of the solutions Sandra and I were attempting to use with our son.
As I thought more deeply about the difference between the personality and character ethics, I realized that Sandra and I had been getting social mileage out of our children's good behavior, and, in our eyes, this son simply didn't measure up. Our image of ourselves, and our role as good, caring parents was even deeper than our image of our son and perhaps influenced it.
There was a lot more wrapped up in the way we were seeing and handling the problem than our concern for our son's welfare. As Sandra and I talked, we became painfully aware of the powerful influence of our character and motives and of our perception of him.
We knew that social comparison motives were out of harmony with our deeper values and could lead to conditional love and eventually to our son's lessened sense of self-worth. So we determined to focus our efforts on us -- not on our techniques, but on our deepest motives and our perception of him. Instead of trying to change him, we tried to stand apart -- to separate us from him -- and to sense his identity, individuality, separateness, and worth.
Through deep thought and the exercise of faith and prayer, we began to see our son in terms of his own uniqueness. We saw within him layers and layers of potential that would be realized at his own pace and speed.
We decided to relax and get out of his way and let his own personality emerge. We saw our natural role as being to affirm, enjoy, and value him. We also conscientiously worked on our motives and cultivated internal sources of security so that our own feelings of worth were not dependent on our children's "acceptable" behavior. As we loosened up our old perception of our son and developed value-based motives, new feelings began to emerge. We found ourselves enjoying him instead of comparing or judging him.
We stopped trying to clone him in our own image or measure him against social expectations. Because we saw him as fundamentally adequate and able to cope with life, we stopped protecting him against the ridicule of others.
He had been nurtured on this protection, so he went through some withdrawal pains, which he expressed and which we accepted, but did not necessarily respond to. He began to blossom, at his own pace and speed. He became outstanding as measured by standard social criteria -- academically, socially and athletically -- at a rapid clip, far beyond the so-called natural developmental process.
As the years passed, he was elected to several student body leadership positions, developed into an all-state athlete and started bringing home straight A report cards. He developed an engaging and guileless personality that has enabled him to relate in nonthreatening ways to all kinds of people. Sandra and I believe that our son's "socially impressive" accomplishments were more a serendipitous expression of the feelings he had about himself than merely a response to social reward. This was an amazing experience for Sandra and me, and a very instructional one in dealing with our other children and in other roles as well.
It brought to our awareness on a very personal level the vital difference between the personality ethic and the character ethic of success. The Psalmist expressed our conviction well: "Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life. I was suddenly able to see the powerful impact of the personality ethic and to clearly understand those subtle, often consciously unidentified discrepancies between what I knew to be true -- some things I had been taught many years ago as a child and things that were deep in my own inner sense of value -- and the quick fix philosophies that surrounded me every day.
I understood at a deeper level why, as I had worked through the years with people from all walks of life, I had found that the things I was teaching and knew to be effective were often at variance with these popular voices.
I am not suggesting that elements of the personality ethic -- personality growth, communication skill training, and education in the field of influence strategies and positive thinking -- are not beneficial, in fact sometimes essential for success.
I believe they are. But these are secondary, not primary traits. Perhaps, in utilizing our human capacity to build on the foundation of generations before us, we have inadvertently become so focused on our own building that we have forgotten the foundation that holds it up; or in reaping for so long where we have not sown, perhaps we have forgotten the need to sow. 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 good 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 no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success.
Only basic goodness gives life to technique. To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don't pay the price day in and day out, you never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.
Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm -- to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut. This principle is also true, ultimately, in human behavior, in human relationships. They, too, are natural systems based on the The Law of the Harvest.
In the short run, in an artificial social system such as school, you may be able to get by if you learn how to manipulate the man-made rules, to "play the game. You can pick up quick, easy techniques that may work in short-term situations. But secondary traits alone have no permanent worth in long-term relationships. Eventually, if there isn't deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and human relationship failure will replace short-term success.
Many people with secondary greatness -- that is, social recognition for their talents -- lack primary greatness or goodness in their character.
Sooner or later, you'll see this in every long-term relationship they have, whether it is with a business associate, a spouse, a friend, or a teenage child going through an identity crisis.
It is character that communicates most eloquently. As Emerson once put it, "What you are shouts so loudly in my ears that I cannot hear what you say. But the effects are still secondary. In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. We all know it. There are people we trust absolutely because we know their character.
Whether they're eloquent or not, whether they have the human relations techniques or not, we trust them, and we work successfully with them. In the words of William George Jordan, "Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil -- the silent unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.
These habits are basic; they are primary. They represent the internalization of correct principles upon which enduring happiness and success are based. The word paradigm comes from the Greek. It was originally a scientific term, and is more commonly used today to mean a model, theory, perception, assumption, or frame of reference.
In the more general sense, it's the way we "see" the world -- not in terms of our visual sense of sight, but in terms of perceiving, understanding, and interpreting. For our purposes, a simple way to understand paradigms is to see them as maps. We all know that "the map is not the territory. That's exactly what a paradigm is. It is a theory, an explanation, or model of something else. Suppose you wanted to arrive at a specific location in central Chicago.
A street map of the city would be a great help to you in reaching your destination. But suppose you were given the wrong map. Through a printing error, the map labeled "Chicago" was actually a map of Detroit. Can you imagine the frustration, the ineffectiveness of trying to reach your destination?
You might work on your behavior -- you could try harder, be more diligent, double your speed. But your efforts would only succeed in getting you to the wrong place faster.
You still wouldn't get to the right place, but perhaps you wouldn't care. Your attitude would be so positive, you'd be happy wherever you were. The point is, you'd still be lost. The fundamental problem has nothing to do with your behavior or your attitude.
It has everything to do with having a wrong map. If you have the right map of Chicago, then diligence becomes important, and when you encounter frustrating obstacles along the way, then attitude can make a real difference. But the first and most important requirement is the accuracy of the map. Each of us has many, many maps in our head, which can be divided into two main categories: maps of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values.
We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps. We seldom question their accuracy; we're usually even unaware that we have them. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be.
And 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. Before going any further, I invite you to have an intellectual and emotional experience. Take a few seconds and just look at the picture on the following page Now look at the picture below and carefully describe what you see Do you see a woman? How old would you say she is? What does she look like? What is she wearing?
In what kind of roles do you see her? You probably would describe the woman in the second picture to be about 25 years old -- very lovely, rather fashionable with a petite nose and demure presence.
If you were a single man you might like to take her out. If you were in retailing, you might hire her as a fashion model. But what if I were to tell you that you're wrong? What if I said this picture is of a woman in her 60s or 70s who looks sad, has a huge nose, and certainly is no model.
She's someone you probably would help cross the street. Who's right? Look at the picture again. Can you see the old woman? If you can't, keep trying. Can you see her big hook nose? Her shawl? If you and I were talking face to face, we could discuss the picture. You could describe what you see to me, and I could talk to you about what I see. We could continue to communicate until you clearly showed me what you see in the picture and I clearly showed you what I see.
Because we can't do that, turn to page 45 and study the picture there and then look at this picture again. Can you see the old woman now? It's important that you see her before you continue reading. I first encountered this exercise many years ago at the Harvard Business School. The instructor was using it to demonstrate clearly and eloquently that two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right.
It's not logical; it's psychological. He brought into the room a stack of large cards, half of which had the image of the young woman you saw on page 25, and the other half of which had the old woman on page He passed them out to the class, the picture of the young woman to one side of the room and the picture of the old woman to the other.
He asked us to look at the cards, concentrate on them for about 10 seconds and then pass them back in. He then projected upon the screen the picture you saw on page 26 combining both images and asked the class to describe what they saw. Almost every person in that class who had first seen the young woman's image on a card saw the young woman in the picture. And almost every person in that class who had first seen the old woman's image on a card saw an old woman in the picture.
As they talked back and forth, communication problems flared up. She couldn't be more than 20 or 22 years old! You have to be joking. She's 70 -- could be pushing 80! Are you blind?
This lady is young, good looking. I'd like to take her out. She's lovely. She's an old hag. The arguments went back and forth, each person sure of, and adamant in, his or her position.
All of this occurred in spite of one exceedingly important advantage the students had -- most of them knew early in the demonstration that another point of view did, in fact, exist -- something many of us would never admit. Nevertheless, at first, only a few students really tried to see this picture from another frame of reference.
After a period of futile communication, one student went up to the screen and pointed to a line on the drawing. Through continued calm, respectful, and specific communication, each of us in the room was finally able to see the other point of view. But when we looked away and then back, most of us would immediately see the image we had been conditioned to see in the second period of time. I frequently use this perception demonstration in working with people and organizations because it yields so many deep insights into both personal and interpersonal effectiveness.
It shows, first of all, how powerfully conditioning affects our perceptions, our paradigms. If 10 seconds can have that kind of impact on the way we see things, what about the conditioning of a lifetime? The influences in our lives -- family, school, church, work environment, friends, associates, and current social paradigms such as the personality ethic -- all have made their silent unconscious impact on us and help shape our frame of reference, our paradigms, our maps.
It also shows that these paradigms are the source of our attitudes and behaviors. We cannot act with integrity outside of them. We simply cannot maintain wholeness if we talk and walk differently than we see.
If you were among the 90 percent who typically see the young woman in the composite picture when conditioned to do so, you undoubtedly found it difficult to think in terms of having to help her cross the street. Both your attitude about her and your behavior toward her had to be congruent with the way you saw her. This brings into focus one of the basic flaws of the personality ethic. To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which those attitudes and behaviors flow.
This perception demonstration also shows how powerfully our paradigms affect the way we interact with other people. As clearly and objectively as we think we see things, we begin to realize that others see them differently from their own apparently equally clear and objective point of view. 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.
But, as the demonstration shows, sincere, clearheaded people see things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience. This does not mean that there are no facts. In the demonstration, two individuals who initially have been influenced by different conditioning pictures look at the third picture together. But each person's interpretation of these facts represents prior experiences, and the facts have no meaning whatsoever apart from the interpretation.
The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.
The Power of a Paradigm Shift Perhaps the most important insight to be gained from the perception demonstration is in the area of paradigm shifting, what we might call the "Aha! The more bound a person is by the initial perception, the more powerful the "Aha! It's as though a light were suddenly turned on inside. Kuhn shows how almost every significant breakthrough in the field of scientific endeavor is first a break with tradition, with old ways of thinking, with old paradigms.
For Ptolemy, the great Egyptian astronomer, the earth was the center of the universe. But Copernicus created a Paradigm Shift, and a great deal of resistance and persecution as well, by placing the sun at the center. Suddenly, everything took on a different interpretation.
The Newtonian model of physics was a clockwork paradigm and is still the basis of modern engineering. But it was partial, incomplete. The scientific world was revolutionized by the Einsteinian paradigm, the relativity paradigm, which had much higher predictive and explanatory value.
Until the germ theory was developed, a high percentage of women and children died during childbirth, and one could understand why. In military skirmishes, more men were dying from small wounds and diseases than from the major traumas on the front lines. But as soon as the germ theory was developed, a whole new paradigm, a better, improved way of understanding what was happening made dramatic, significant medical improvement possible.
The United States today is the fruit of a Paradigm Shift. The traditional concept of government for centuries had been a monarchy, the divine right of kings. Then a different paradigm was developed -- government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And a constitutional democracy was born, unleashing tremendous human energy and ingenuity, and creating a standard of living, of freedom and liberty, of influence and hope unequaled in the history of the world.
Not all Paradigm Shifts are in positive directions. As we have observed, the shift from the character ethic to the personality ethic has drawn us away from the very roots that nourish true success and happiness. But whether they shift us in positive or negative directions, whether they are instantaneous or developmental, Paradigm Shifts move us from one way of seeing the world to another.
And those shifts create powerful change. Our paradigms, correct or incorrect, are the sources of our attitudes and behaviors, and ultimately our relationships with others.
People were sitting quietly -- some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene.
Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed. The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people's papers. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing. It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all.
It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, "Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people.
I wonder if you couldn't control them a little more? I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don't know what to think, and I guess they don't know how to handle it either. My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently.
My irritation vanished. I didn't have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man's pain. Feelings of sympathy and compassion flowed freely. Oh, I'm so sorry. Can you tell me about it? What can I do to help? Many people experience a similar fundamental shift in thinking when they face a life-threatening crisis and suddenly see their priorities in a different light, or when they suddenly step into a new role, such as that of husband or wife, parent or grandparent, manager or leader.
We could spend weeks, months, even years laboring with the personality ethic trying to change our attitudes and behaviors and not even begin to approach the phenomenon of change that occurs spontaneously when we see things differently. It becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.
In the words of Thoreau, "For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root. Seeing and Being Of course, not all Paradigm Shifts are instantaneous. Unlike my instant insight on the subway, the paradigm-shifting experience Sandra and I had with our son was a slow, difficult, and deliberate process. The approach we had first taken with him was the outgrowth of years of conditioning and experience in the personality ethic.
It was the result of deeper paradigms we held about our own success as parents as well as the measure of success of our children. And it was not until we changed those basic paradigms, quantum change in ourselves and in the situation.
In order to see our son differently, Sandra and I had to be differently. Our new paradigm was created as we invested in the growth and development of our own character.
Our Paradigms are the way we "see" the world or circumstances -- not in terms of our visual sense of sight, but in terms of perceiving, understanding, and interpreting. Paradigms are inseparable from character. Being is seeing in the human dimension. And what we see is highly interrelated to what we are.
We can't go very far to change our seeing without simultaneously changing our being, and vice versa. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, first published in , is a business and self-help book written by Stephen Covey. Covey presents an approach to being effective in attaining goals by aligning oneself to what he calls "true north" principles based on a character ethic that he presents as universal and timeless.
Covey defines effectiveness as the balance of obtaining desirable results with caring for that which produces those results. He illustrates this by referring to the fable of the goose that laid the golden eggs. Covey's best-known book has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide since its first publication. EMBED for wordpress.
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We typically seek first to be understood. Most people listen with the intent to reply , not to understand. At any given moment, they're either speaking or preparing to speak. When we listen autobiographically -- in other words, with our own perspective as our frame of reference -- we tend to respond in one of four ways:.
Probe: Ask questions from our own frame of reference. Interpret: Try to figure out the person's motives and behavior based on our own motives and behavior. But if we replace these types of response with empathic listening, we see dramatic results in improved communication. It takes time to make this shift, but it doesn't take nearly as long to practice empathic listening as it does to back up and correct misunderstandings, or to live with unexpressed and unresolved problems only to have them surface later on.
The second part of Habit 5 is " When we're able to present our ideas clearly, and in the context of a deep understanding of the other person's needs and concerns, we significantly increase the credibility of your ideas.
Next time you're watching two people communicating, cover your ears and watch. What emotions are being communicated that might not come across through words alone? Was one person or the other more interested in the conversation?
Write down what you noticed. Next time you give a presentation, root it in empathy. Begin by describing the audience's point of view in great detail. What problems are they facing? How is what you're about to say offering a solution to their problems? By understanding and valuing the differences in another person's perspective, we have the opportunity to create synergy, which allows us to uncover new possibilities through openness and creativity.
The combination of all the other habits prepares us for Habit 6, which is the habit of synergy or "When one plus one equals three or more and the whole is great than the sum of its parts.
For example, if you plant two plants close together, their roots will co-mingle and improve the quality of the soil, so that both plants will grow better than they would on their own. Synergy allows us to create new alternatives and open new possibilities.
It allows us as a group to collectively agree to ditch the old scripts and write new ones. So how can we introduce synergy to a given situation or environment? Start with habits 4 and 5 -- you must think Win-Win and seek first to understand.
Once you have these in mind, you can pool your desires with those of the other person or group. And then you're not on opposite sides of the problem -- you're together on one side, looking at the problem, understanding all the needs, and working to create a third alternative that will meet them. What we end up with is not a transaction, but a transformation.
Both sides get what they want, and they build their relationship in the process. By putting forth a spirit of trust and safety, we will prompt others to become extremely open and feed on each other's insights and ideas, creating synergy. The real essence of synergy is valuing the differences -- the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people. After all, if two people have the same opinion, one is unnecessary. When we become aware of someone's different perspective, we can say, "Good!
You see it differently! Help me see what you see. We seek first to understand, and then we find strength and utility in those different perspectives in order to create new possibilities and Win-Win results. Make a list of people who irritate you. Now choose just one person. How are their views different? Put yourself in their shoes for one minute. Think and pretend how it feels to be them. Does this help you understand them better? Now next time you're in a disagreement with that person, try to understand their concerns and why they disagree with you.
The better you can understand them, the easier it will be to change their mind -- or change yours. Make a list of people with whom you get along well. Now write down a situation where you had excellent teamwork and synergy. What conditions were met to reach such fluidity in your interactions?
How can you recreate those conditions again? To be effective, we must devote the time to renewing ourselves physically, spiritually, mentally, and socially. Continuous renewal allows us to synergistically increase our ability to practice each habit. Habit 7 is focused around renewal, or taking time to " sharpen the saw. There are four dimensions of our nature, and each must be exercised regularly, and in balanced ways:. Physical Dimension: The goal of continuous physical improvement is to exercise our body in a way that will enhance our capacity to work, adapt, and enjoy.
Focusing on the physical dimension helps develop Habit 1 muscles of proactivity. We act based on the value of well-being instead of reacting to the forces that keep us from fitness. Spiritual Dimension: The goal of renewing our spiritual self is to provide leadership to our life and reinforce your commitment to our value system. A focus on our spiritual dimension helps us practice Habit 2, as we continuously revise and commit ourselves to our values, so we can begin with the end in mind.
Mental Dimension: The goal of renewing our mental health is to continue expanding our mind. Focusing on our mental dimension helps us practice Habit 3 by managing ourselves effectively to maximize the use of our time and resources. Renewing our social and emotional dimension helps us practice Habits 4, 5, and 6 by recognizing that Win-Win solutions do exist, seeking to understand others, and finding mutually beneficial third alternatives through synergy.
As we focus on renewing ourselves along these four dimensions, we must also seek to be a positive scripter for other people. We must look to inspire others to a higher path by showing them we believe in them, by listening to them empathically, by encouraging them to be proactive.
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