Building a Daily Success Worksheet: Character – 7 Habits
Richard Shell teaches us that there are many schools of thought on how people achieve success – character, luck, tactics, strengths. I intend to build a comprehensive success worksheet combining these schools for his and my benefit.
I begin with the Character school – codified by Stephen Covey (who also surveyed 200 years of the literature of success):
- Be Proactive: Personal Vision
- Key Concepts: Make and keep commitments to maintain your Circle of Influence. Expand it by using proactive language, acting with initiative. Use self-awareness, imagination, conscience, independent will.
- Assessment:
- Begin with the End in mind: Personal Leadership
- Key Concepts: “Measure twice, cut once”. Ask if a creation is by design or by default. Check your personal mission statement addressing what you want to be, to do, and your principles. Use right (visualize, expand perspective) as well as left (logic) brain.
- My Center (source of security, guidance, wisdom, power): Spouse/Family/Money/Work/Possession/Pleasure/Friend/Enemy/Church/Self/Principles
- Assessment:
- Put First Things First: Personal Management
- Key Concepts: Organize and execute around priorities. Quadrant II as a way to minimize crises. Say “No” to Quadrant III and IV.
- Quadrant II Self-Management: 1) Identify Roles. 2) Select Goals. 3) Scheduling. 4) Daily Adapting. Remember to keep 1) Coherence with vision/values, 2) Balance, 3) Quadrant II Focus, 4) the “People” dimension, 5) Flexibility, 6) Portability.
- Stewardship Delegation: Set expectations for 1) Desired results, 2) Guidelines, 3) Resources, 4) Accountability, 5) Consequences.
- Assessment:
- Public Victory
- Key Concepts: The Emotional Bank Account: Deposits – 1) Understand the Individual, 2) Attending to the Little Things, 3) Keeping Commitments, 4) Clarifying Expectations, 5) Showing Personal Integrity, 6) Apologizing Sincerely When You Make a Withdrawal. Interpersonal P Problems are PC opportunities.
- Assessment:
- Think Win/Win: Interpersonal Leadership
- Key Concepts: Win/Win or No Deal.
- 5 dimensions of Win/Win: Character (Integrity, Maturity, Abundance Mentality), Relationships, Agreements (focus on results not methods), Systems (eg compensation), Processes (Problem<>Person, Interests<>Positions, Invent Options, Objective Criteria)
- Assessment:
- Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: Empathetic Communication
- Key Concepts: Diagnose before you prescribe. We tend to listen autobiographically, and then evaluate/probe/advise/interpret based on ourselves.
- Seek to be understood: Ethos (show integrity and competency/credibility), Pathos (show you are aligned), Logos (show reasoning).
- Assessment:
- Synergize: Creative Cooperation
- Key Concepts: Synergy = a whole greater than sum of its parts. High trust, high cooperation. Fishing for a third alternative. Value the differences.
- Assessment:
- Sharpen the Saw: Balanced Self-Renewal
- Key Concepts: Renewal. Rescripting others (labeling dumb kids as bright). The upward spiral (learn-commit-do)
- Physical: Exercise (focus on endurance, flexibility, strength), Nutrition, Stress Management.
- Mental: Reading, Visualizing, Planning, Writing
- Social/Emotional: Service, Empathy, Synergy, Intrinsic Security
- Spiritual: Value Clarification & Commitment, Study & Meditation (Listen carefully, try reaching back, examine your motives, write your worries on the sand)
- Assessment:
.
