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Summary: Covey Got My Attention From The Get-Go
Review: I received this book when a company for which I worked hired the Covey team to teach the three-day Seven Habits seminar as a component of employee professional development -- and I have returned to the book several times since that class, to keep the experience fresh.Portions of the class consisted of Stephen Covey videotape lectures. The very first one told me this guy meant business, and that he and I had similar views of the world. Covey said something to the effect of the following: Be proactive, take charge of your own life. What about a guy who tells you, "I can't make any decisions this month. I'm an Aquarious, and my horoscope says I'm not supposed to make any decisions this month." Are you going to extend any credibility to a FLAKE like that?! Stephen Covey properly calls a flake a flake. He definitely has his head on correctly.
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Summary: Everyone Must Read This Book
Review: Buy it, read it, give copies to your children, your employees, your boss and anyone else you care about.
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Summary: Strategies for Effectiveness
Review: Knowledge is the quickest and safest path to success in any area of life. Stephen Covey has encapsulated the strategies used by all those who are highly effective. Success can be learned and this book is an excellent way to learn how to do that.I also highly recommend Turner, Turner, Turner: The King of Network Marketing to learn strategies from another highly spirited man who has learned how to achieve maximum effectiveness and keep balance in all aspects of life.
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Summary: Weakness of the 7 habits
Review: Mr Covey has inarguably displayed excellent skills of expression as a motivational writer. However, he could have enhanced and scoped his work by extending and linking his concepts with other detailed effects of social, economic and environmental factors which are obviously external to the Seven Habits and also most likely to affect the "paradigm shifting" experiences of the individuals negatively or positively depending on the prevailing scenarios. On the issue of acting and behaving proactively, Mr Covey argues that you have to influence your external circle and not the other way round. However, the writer does not acknowledge the existence of institutional frameworks within which we function, operate and relate to others and these systems may not be flexible enough to allow personal initiative and/or creativity. For example long-term government policies in a dictatoship. In addition, proactive thinking is virtually driven by positive/optimistic traits of an individual and these are themselves dependent on factors external to the individual. The success to acknowledge the paradigm shifts in our lives is itself contingent on other people's traits, attitudes and their goals and visions. So that proactivity should be viewed as a dependent variant of the entire paradigm model. "Seek first to understand and then to be undetstood"; In this habit, Mr Covey contends that we hardly ever listen emphathically, but are eager to offer solutions to other people based on our own autobiographies. As a result we "suffer the consequences". On this issue Mr. Covey seems to divorce emphathic listening of an individual from their ability to provide a solution based on thier experiences. In other words a choice to apply a particular solution whether based of acquired knowledge or personal experience would depend on the level of "emphathic" listening. But then, this does not guarantee accurate resolution. My view is that whether we listen with empathy or not, the solution we recommend will always reflect ourselves one way or the other. The paradigm of SYNERGY argues that you can produce huge amounts of results by working as a team. But Mr. Covey did not sufficiently reveal a clear set of inevitable assumptions and conditions under which this concept can apply. He instead, charts a diagram of Level of cooperation and trust as determining the strength of this synergy. However, his measurements of cooprration and trust are not practical and consistent with science.
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Summary: If it don't hurt, it ain't workin'
Review: It has puzzled me for some time why people could possibly regard this book, as banal and unimaginative as it is, could achieve best-seller status. But then, I wondered the same thing about some other books - like Johnson and Blanchard's "Who moved my cheese" and McGraw's "Life Strategies". And then it clicked - some people LIKE to beat up on themselves. Somewhere along the line (from a certain kind of parent, perhaps, or a certain kind of teacher?) they learned that IIDHIAW - "If it don't hurt, it ain't working". Or as Jane Fonda put it: "No pain, no gain".
And some people have captured that message and turned it into a book. Well, this is one of those IIDHIAW books. And readers who believe that pain is the only effective teacher will love every morsal of this trite nonsense. Readers who enjoy average to high self esteem, on the other hand, will most likely hate it!
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Summary: Critics Are Clueless.
Review: This book is a very good, very SOLID foundation for people who feel like they're lacking direction or motivation in their life. Plain and simple. It can help you try to prioritize things, and become an easier person to get along with, find a sense of accomplishment, etc. --IF you're willing to admit that you're human, and you have flaws that you need to work on....that is. Almost ALL the critical reviews on this site are done by people who are obviously painfully negative people. If you don't like a book...hey, that's one thing. To pretend like you're an all knowing intellect who thinks they know what's good for everyone is a totally different ballgame....and ironically, a ballgame that makes you the kind of individual that Mr. Covey is describing...but that's just my opinion. A very good book......'nuff said.
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Summary: An absolute classic
Review: Stephen Covey today counts as one of the absolute top-management gurus. If you read this book, you'll understand why. The book is divided into four parts. The first part deals with the fundamentals that everything else builds upon: paradigms and principles. An important theme running through all of Covey's work is that of ethical behaviour and delivering one's contribution to society as a necessary ingredient of succesful living. In part two the author shows you a number of principles that help you to deal with yourself, such as taking responsibility for your own actions and prioritizing your goals. Part three talks about working with other people, addressing such issues as win/win thinking and active listening. The fourth and last part talks about sustaining the things that you have learned and continuing to grow. This book is not a push-over. It has a high level of abstraction. Also, part of this book sounds more like philosophy or even religion, which will not sit well with everyone. However, the author is perfectly correct in first discussing basic values and priorities ("doing the right things") before discussing techniques for raising efficiency ("doing things right"). Also, it is important that you realise that this is not a self-help book for people who have real specific issues on their hands (self-discipline, traumas, lacking social skill etc.) They will probably need to deal with those specific issues first, before they will be able to take the maximum out of this book. For those who feel that their life is reasonably sorted out, but would like to go (much) further, this is a must-read book. Highly recommended.
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Summary: SIZE COUNTS
Review: When ordering this book, please read the details carefully..... there is a "hardbound" version that is no larger than the palm of your hand with only a few short pages of information. If you don't read all the description (including SIZE) you'll receive a teeny-tiny book in a very LARGE box at a very expensive cost to ship.
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Summary: Covey at his best
Review: Well...I'm not going to make great promises and say "this book with change your life", "you'll never be the same" or any other trite phrase. I will however, say that Covey's book has a few simple steps you can take to improve your effectiveness as a person. Just reading the book can make you aware of things you didn't even know you were doing wrong. Read it...I will say, it will definitely do more good than harm!
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Summary: changed my mind
Review: The book, 7 habits, was too difficult to read and understand. It was very interesting book though. Stephen Covey showed me his real experiences in the book, so it gave me a chance to change my mind. That was fresh impact for me. Before reading this book, I did not recognize that I am reactive person.
This book makes me confused. For example, win/win is all together all people improve together. But I don't know which is win/win or win/lose. Sometimes I think this is win/win so I acted like that. In the end there is just lose/win or win/lose. So how can I recognize about win/win?
First I thought that win/win was for everyone involved. Then, after reading more I thought that win/win was only for specific situations. In the end, I was confused about who wins and who loses. So, as you can see, none of this made sense to me and Covey's explanations didn't help me understand it any better.
Although his book is really good guide book to success or to make a relationship with other people, it is too hard for all people except people who high college degrees.
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