The following contains excerpts from the book, The 8th Habit (Steven Covey).
At our music school in Midland, Texas we believe that music is more than sound, it is relationships. When studying the subject of Leadership, relationships play a vital role.
“Being effective as individuals and organizations is no longer optional in today’s world – it’s the price of entry to the playing field. But surviving, thriving, innovating, excelling and leading in this new reality will require us to build on and reach beyond effectiveness. The call and need of a new era is for greatness. It’s for fulfillment, passionate execution, and significant contribution. These are on a different plane or dimension. They are different in kind – just as significance is different in kind, not in degree, from success. Tapping into the higher reaches of human genius and motivation – what we could call Voice – requires a new mind-set, a new skill-set, a new tool-set…a new habit…This 8th Habit is to Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs…Voice is unique personal significance – significance that is revealed as we face our greatest challenges…voice lies at the nexus of talent (your natural gifts and strengths), passion (those things that naturally energize, excite, motivate and inspire you), need (including what the world needs enough to pay you for), and conscience (that still, small voice within that assure you of what is right and that prompts you to actually do it. When you engage in work that taps your talent and fuels your passion – that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet – therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul’s code.”
We believe that each student at our music school in Midland, Texas has a unique calling and gifting that is unique and worthy developing.
“Many have come to believe that the only things we need for success are talent, energy and personality. But history has taught us that over the long haul, who we are is more important than who we appear to be…Whenever you find lasting trust, you will find trustworthiness. It is always so. It is a principle. Just as trust comes from trustworthiness, trustworthiness comes from character and competence. When you develop both strong character and competence, the fruit is wisdom and judgement – the foundation of all great and lasting achievement and trust.”
“Maturity develops when a person pays the price of integrity and winning the private victory over self, allowing him or her to be simultaneously courageous and kind. In other words, such a person can deal with tough issues compassionately. The combination of courage and kindness is both the source and the product of integrity…to improve any relationship, you must start with yourself…When we first listen with the intent to understand others, rather than with the intent to reply, we begin true communication and relationship building.”
We encourage students at our music school in Midland, Texas to not only develop in their musical giftings, but also to learn valuable life-lessons and character development.
“Often when I speak to children at home or school, I tell them that if they will learn and use four expressions (totaling only ten words) sincerely and consistently, they can get what they want in most cases. One word – ‘please.’ Two words – ‘thank you.’ Three words – ‘I love you.’ Four words – ‘how may I help?’”
“If you study the underlying roots of almost all communication breakdowns, or broken, sick cultures, you’ll find they come from either ambiguous or broken expectations around roles and goals: in other words, who is to do what role and what are the high-priority goals of those roles.”
“The capacity and ability to produce such synergistic solutions, such creative cooperation, is built upon the foundation of moral authority at the personal level and trust in relationships…The Third Alternative isn’t my way, it isn’t your way – it’s our way. It’s not a compromise halfway between your way and my way; it’s better than a compromise…Many people believe both people have to think win-win. Not so. Only one has to think it…One simply has to first prepare the other for it by practicing empathy or deep listening, seeking his or her interest and consistently staying with it until the other person feels trust…To truly listen means to transcend your own autobiography, to get out of your frame of reference, out of your own value system, out of your own history and judging tendencies, and to get deeply into the frame of reference or viewpoint of another person. This is called empathic listening. It is a very, very rare skill.”
When students in our music school in Midland, Texas learn to play in ensembles, they begin to develop an understanding of how synergistic relationships can create something beyond what only an individual can do. This process stems from the development of empathy, learning to listen to one another.
“One of the deepest needs of the human soul is to be understood. Once that need is met, the personal focus can shift to interdependent problem solving…over 90 percent of all communication problems are caused by differences in either semantics or perceptions…the other 10 percent are the genuine disagreements.”
“There are basically two steps in searching for a Third Alternative…Would you be willing to search for a solution that is better than what either one of you (us) have proposed? Would you agree to a simple ground rule: No one can make his or her point until they have restated the other person’s point to his or her satisfaction?…Synergy is not compromise. It must be a better solution – you must know it, the other must know it, and you both must know that you both know it – no compromise.”
“Whereas modeling inspires trust, pathfinding creates order without demanding it. As soon as the people involved agree upon what matters most organizationally, they share the criteria that will drive all decisions that follow. This clarifying communication gives focus…It gives order. It creates stability. It also enables agility…The key to unleashing the power of the workforce is what I call commissioning. It’s clarifying the mission, vision and values of the organization in a way that overlaps the four needs of the individuals with the four needs of the organization. Every person’s job in the organization ought to be co-missioned to explicitly meet the four needs of both the person and the organization.”
“Strategy must adapt, but if your values are tied to changeless principles, you will have a center pin to which you can anchor yourself through all the inevitable changes. The litmus test of a good mission statement and strategic plan is being able to approach any person at any level of an organization and have them be able to describe how what they do contributes to the strategic plan and is in harmony with the governing values.”
At our music school in Midland, Texas we base our teaching on timeless principles that have been developed over the centuries, yet we apply them to modern-day styles and culture.
“How do we execute both values and strategy consistently without relying on the formal leader’s continuing presence to keep everyone going in the right direction? The answer is alignment – designing and executing systems and structures that reinforce the core values and highest strategic priorities of the organization.”
“I visited with J.W. ‘Bill’ Marriott, chairman and CEO of Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel operator. Bill, and his father before him, created one of the finest organizations in the world, and they’ve done it in part by creating a communication system that taps into the genius of their people. ‘The biggest lesson I’ve learned through the years is to listen to your people,’ he told me. ‘I find that if you have senior managers who really gather their people around them, get their ideas and listen to their input, then if you sit around a table with those managers and listen to their input, you make a lot better decisions.”
“Effectiveness is the balance between production of desired results (P) and production capability (PC). In other words, it’s the golden eggs that people want and the goose that lays them. Sometimes we call this the P/PC Balance. The essence of effectiveness is achieving the results you want in a way that enables you to get even more of these results in the future.”
“The first alternative to the empowering role of leadership is trying to get results by controlling people. The second alternative would be to set them loose, to abandon them. In other words, preach empowerment when, in fact, you’re really into abdication and ignoring accountability. The third alternative is both tougher and kinder; it’s directed autonomy through win-win agreements around cascading line-of-sight goals and accountability for results…I believe most organizations, including our homes, are over-managed and under-led.”
Our overarching goal at our music school in Midland, Texas is to bring students to a place in which they are autonomous in their capacity to learn and educate themselves, setting their creative path through self-direction.
“The new economy is based on knowledge work, and knowledge work is another word for people. Remember, eighty percent of value added to products and services today comes from knowledge work. It’s a knowledge worker economy; wealth creation has migrated from money and things to people…When you truly establish the conditions for empowerment, control is not lost: it is simply transformed into self-control…I call this directed autonomy. The manager’s role then shifts from controller to enabler – co-missioning with people, removing barriers, and becoming a source of help and support. That’s quite a shift…It’s the leadership beliefs and style of the manager, not the nature of the job or economic era, that defines whether a person is a knowledge worker or not.”
“Modeling inspires trust…Pathfinding creates order without demanding it…Aligning structures, systems and processes is a form of nourishing the spirit of trust, vision and empowerment…produces institutionalized moral authority…Empowering is the fruit of the other three roles…Empowering produces cultural moral authority. Remember, the most important modeling is done by the leader when he or she models the other three roles. In other words, pathfinding is modeling the courage to determine a course and the humility and mutual respect to involve others in deciding what matters most. Aligning is modeling the willingness to set up structures, systems and processes that are congruent with the ‘what matters most’ strategic decisions so that the organization stays constantly focused on its highest-priority goals.”