A Leader

APRIL 1996 | Stand True and Faithful

Gordon B. Hinckley

President of the Church

Shall the youth of Zion falter

In defending truth and right?

While the enemy assaileth,

Shall we shrink or shun the fight?

No! True to the faith that our parents have cherished,

True to the truth for which martyrs have perished,

To God’s command,

Soul, heart, and hand,

Faithful and true we will ever stand.

Being true to ourselves means being honest. 

Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.

THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE An Approach To Solving Personal and Professional Problems STEPHEN R. COVEY

1.       Be Proactive: being proactive means to actively choose what our response will be in any situation rather than to react blindly. (it is hard, maybe impossible, to lead from behind.)  Reactive people are swept away by the heat of the moment. Proactive people are driven by values that are both well thought out and internalized. It is not what happens that is important. It is our response to whatever happens that makes all the difference.  proactivity means to control a situation from the inside out. Or in other words, to affect positive change, stop focusing on the immediate circumstances and instead consider your response to the conditions that exist. Do that and you have removed the power of anything external to affect you.

2.   Begin with the End in mind: It’s easy to get so caught up in climbing the ladder of success that you fail to make sure the ladder is leaning against the right wall. It’s easy to be busy without being effective.  A particularly effective way to get into the habit of beginning with the end in mind is to write your own mission statement, philosophy or creed. This should focus on what you want to be (character), do (contributions & achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based. A mission statement is a personal constitution. It is a written standard, the key criterion by which everything is evaluated and directed. It becomes the basis by which decisions are made on a day to day basis. It is a basic direction from which to set long-term and short-term goals.

3.   First things First: The heart of effective personal time management is to spend the maximum time possible doing important jobs in a non-urgent atmosphere that increases your efficiency.  The goal is to maximize your time on important but non-urgent activities.  Rather than prioritizing your schedule, you schedule time to achieve your priorities. “The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.” — E.M. Gray

4.   Think “Win-Win”: The most effective way to work with other people is to structure a win/win relationship focused on results, not methods.  Win/Win-or-No-Deal – Means that if a mutually beneficial deal cannot be structured, then there is general agreement to disagree agreeably! In other words, if you find you are both wanting to head in different directions, it is better not to try and set up a deal between both parties. Provides tremendous emotional freedom. Of all the options, Win/Win-or-No-Deal is the most desirable, especially at the beginning of a business or personal association.

5.   First seek to Understand, then seek to be Understood: seek first to understand the other person, then to try and be understood yourself.  The amateur salesman sells products, the professional salesman sells solutions to needs and problems.  If we judge first, we will never fully understand.  Empathetic listening takes time, but not nearly as much time as it will take to back up and correct misunderstandings when you are much further down the road.

6.   Create Synergy: (Entity is bigger than sum total of parts 1+1 = more than 2): Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, each of the parts combine to create new and exciting unexpected discoveries that were not possible before.

7.   Sharpen the Saw: In other words, don’t get so busy sawing that you don’t realize you are using a blunt saw. Take the time on a regular basis to sharpen your saw in the physical, spiritual, mental and social or emotional dimensions.  Physical exercise – Spending a minimum of 30 minutes per day exercising will vastly improve the quality of the remaining hours every day. Exercise on a regular basis will preserve and enhance your capacity to work and adapt and enjoy. Exercise is rarely ever urgent, you have to be proactive and set your own standard. You also find as you exercise, you will experience a paradigm shift of your own self image.

The upward spiral consists of three steps; 1. To Learn 2. To Commit 3. To Do Moving along the upward spiral requires us to learn, commit and do on increasingly higher planes. To keep progressing, we must repeat the cycle over and over.

dependence (on others) to independence (taking care of ourselves) to interdependence (looking after others and combining strengths to multiply our individual effectiveness)

“There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.” — David Starr Jordan

A habit can be defined as the intersection of knowledge (the what to do), skill (how to do it) and desire (the motivation to do it). We need all three to form a habit.

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier - not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.” — Emerson

“The greatest battles of life are fought out daily in the silent chambers of the soul.” — David O. McKay

“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.” — Goethe

I must remember to never give up, never quit.  One foot in front of another is how the journey is accomplished.