The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (Hardcover)

by Stephen R. Covey (Author) "LISTEN TO THE VOICES: "I'm stuck, in a rut..." (more)
Key Phrases: compelling scoreboard, execution quotient, space between stimulus, Knowledge Worker Age, Talking Stick, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The original seven habits of highly successful people are still relevant, but Covey, author of the mega-bestseller of that title, says that the new Information/Knowledge Worker Age, exemplified by the Internet, calls for an eighth habit to achieve personal and organizational excellence: "Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs." Covey sees leadership "as a choice to deal with people in a way that will communicate to them their worth and potential so clearly they will come to see it in themselves." His holistic approach starts with developing one's own voice, one's "unique personal significance." The bulk of the book details how, after finding your own voice, you can inspire others and create a workplace where people feel engaged. This includes establishing trust, searching for third alternatives (not a compromise between your way and my way, but a third, better way) and developing a shared vision. This book isn't easy going; less business jargon and more practical examples would have made this livelier and more helpful. But if organizations operated with Covey's ideas—and ideals—most people would undoubtedly find work much more satisfying. DVD not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
It takes the likes of Covey--and a gap of 15 years in publication time--to hit directly on the issue confronting individuals and corporations today: the gap between effectiveness and greatness. Following his best-selling The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1996), the author demonstrates in words and a series of 16 brief DVD clips (included) exactly how to find your own voice and, for leaders, how to support the discovery of the organization's voice. He selects examples from past and present, from Abraham Lincoln to the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, demonstrating, first, the ways to uncover the four intelligences (mental, spiritual, physical/economic, and emotional/social) and, second, the roles necessary to lead others to discover their voices. Statistics and personal anecdotes (a conversation with Bill Marriott, for instance) underscore the importance of trust and the implementation of that trust; one study from Harris Interactive reveals that only 48 percent of respondents said their organizations lived up to organizational values. Timely commentary in a surefire next-seller. Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

Stephen Covey describes effective leadership principles in this exclusive essay. [75kb PDF]

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; Har/DVD edition (November 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684846659
• ISBN-13: 978-0684846651
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (100 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #25,123 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

270 of 279 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Valuable Synthesis Presented Abstractly and Ponderously, February 23, 2005

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

If you haven't read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I suggest you read that one before this book.

Dr. Covey obviously pulled out all of the stops in trying to make this book as helpful as possible to his readers. The book contains summaries of the material in his other books, repeats many stories from those books, reconciles the material with most of the business book best sellers in recent years, contains a DVD full of inspiring videos, provides references to many free materials on his web site, has extensive appendices and contains many thoughtful sections on questions and answers. As a result, the book comes across like an encyclopedia of his teachings . . . rather than as the simple communication that is so delightful in his other books. I suspect that Dr. Covey changed ghostwriters for this one (at least I assume that the other books were ghostwritten because they avoid the ponderous communications style that Dr. Covey uses in person).

So what is the 8th habit? Allow me to paraphrase. It'll be quicker that way. You act with integrity as an individual and help others to do the same.

In Covey-speak, it's the overlap of personal greatness (applying the 7 habits in the forms of vision, discipline, passion and conscience), leadership greatness (applying the 4 roles of leadership (modeling the 7 habits, path finding, aligning and Empowering), and organizational greatness (turned into a vision, mission and values that bring clarity, commitment, translation, synergy, enabling and accountability). See Figure 14.3 on page 280 for the simplest expression of the 8th habit in Covey-speak.

Can you make a book out of that point? Well, if you put in lots of examples, you can . . . which Dr. Covey did. But the basic point is about a magazine article's worth. Most people will come to that realization when they see the entire book's concepts summarized in chapters 14 and 15. If you want to check this book out, read those two chapters and see if you need more at that point.

Why do millions of people read his books? Well, the earlier ones were beautifully written. This one isn't. All of his books show unadulterated respect for the reader and a belief in the reader's unlimited potential to improve. So it's inspiring to read someone's high opinion of you. Dr. Covey obviously cares that we live moral and positive lives. He's a sort of secular priest expressing moral values that most will agree with. Would we all like to work for Dr. Covey? Sure!

How well will this book translate in the workplace? It'll be a tough row. You can have a company that's good at the 8th habit, but doesn't build the necessary skills to succeed with using the 8th habit. That's because this book is heavy on concepts . . . and light on the practical details. Dr. Covey starts up at about 100,000 feet in the air with his abstract thinking and discussions, and rarely gets any closer. So think of the 8th habit book as helpful . . . but not sufficient in and of itself . . . for creating superior performance. Perhaps it will work better if you employ Dr. Covey's firm to help you (which is abundantly pitched in the book).

Dr. Covey humbly points out that his conclusions are aimed at dealing with the problems of poor communication, lousy alignment, misunderstandings about what to do next, lacks of tools and training, and dumbed-down workplaces . . . but is not supported by research (other than anecdotes from his clients) to support that this actually works better. But you'll agree, I'm sure, that even failure would feel a lot better in such an organization. So it's very humanistic, which is a good thing.

Few will disagree with the point of this book, and most wonder what this adds to Dr. Covey's work on Principle-Centered Leadership. "Not very much" is my impression.

I suspect that this book would have worked a lot better if the material had been simplified and added to the 7 habits book . . . and renamed as "The 8 Habits of Highly Effective People."

May God bless you, Dr. Covey! Keep inspiring us to be our best!

89 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Topical, but tedious, December 18, 2004

By	Lars Bergstrom "LarsBerg" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As with most of his previous writings, Dr. Covey has a great point to get across and does an excellent job of motivating it and presenting it in a way that makes it easy to apply to yourself. Unfortunately, unlike his other books, this one was a bit tedious to get through. The mixture of inspirational content (quotes and motivational passages), reiteration of concepts, mapping of his concepts onto the presentations of others in the leadership and self-help community, and just general pacing added up to make this far longer than I would've preferred. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody who isn't a speed reader.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars sequel to a better volume, November 24, 2004

By	Jacob - See all my reviews

I bought this book after reading a review that suggested that the author may have been inspired in his discovery of his 8th habit when faced with a crisis in his Mormon faith, due to the publication of the book "Losing a Lost Tribe" that was written by a Mormon Bishop who describes how DNA evidence disproves the Book of Mormon. Covey says nothing about such a personal crisis in this book, but instead attributes his discovery of this newly discovered habit to research evidence about human behavior.

"The 8th Habit" describes how to find your own voice and then how to inspire others to do the same. Reading this book was inspirational and did excite me to further find my own voice, so I do feel I got a good return on my investment. It gives many examples of individuals who succeed by effectively individuating and who engage others to do the same. It also gives examples of those who fail to do so and how that failure will ultimately block their greatest potential for success.

The author gives the reader an additional powerful tool to enrich his life with this new book, but I did not feel that "The 8th Habit" was as strong as "7 Habits of Highly Effective People." I found myself loosing interest and skipping to the later chapters that seemed to get more to the point. Some of the conclusions seem overly simplistic. Nevertheless, on the whole, the concept is worthwhile. Unfortunately, this book lacks the punch and conciseness of the former volume. It left me with the impression that it was like a movie sequel written to capitalize on the authors past success.