The Habit: The last habit, Sharpening the Saw is the core of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This habit, if well developed, is what keeps the others going, working, and functioning. As I learned about it, I thought about my sister and her knife set, that I’ve always wanted to bring home with me. Her knives are always well sharpened, and it takes no effort to cut anything. As compared to my knives that I struggle with, have to apply a lot of pressure to even begin to slice through and depending on what I’m cutting, I end up with a sore wrist. The difference is that she has the habit of sharpening her knives, regularly and frequently, so that she doesn’t struggle when using her knives and has taken care of them so that they have lasted for years. I don’t. This habit is developed and cultivated when one maintains their investments, reinvests, and recommits to their investments. If one is committed to “Sharpening the Saw,” they will always commit to be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand, then to be understood, and synergize to maintain their interdependence. My Habit: This habit is the heart of this philosophy, and one that I need to work on. I must admit that I don’t sharpen the saw as often as I should; therefore, I have found myself in situations that require me to start from the beginning or work double. This was a result of not recommitting and reinvesting into a project, as a result, the benefits did not last. Another example that comes to mind is my habit of starting with the end in mind. In the past, I didn’t always begin this way. Due to time limitations or lack of resources, I would not consider the end in mind and begin working within the moment and only considering the next step, without having the focus on the ultimate goal. The result wasn’t as successful as planned. I didn’t plan and work with the end in mind. I stopped sharpening the saw. With this new perspective of the 7 habits and the importance of continually sharpening the saw, I know I can achieve more success. My Commitment: I commit to continue passing on my knowledge of the 7 habits to my daughter. I think this is a habit that she will easily be able to relate to, because she has been practicing it this past year without realizing what she is doing, and she has experienced a lot of improvement and success as a result. So, I want to help her make the connection to her performance and success on the court to her applying the habit of “sharpening the saw.” She made a concerted effort to improve. She started working out regularly on and off season, watching what she eats, and increasing her practice times. As a result, she has been very surprised with her improvements. I want to use this to connect her improvements and success to her reinvestment and commitment to the game. Without habit one through five in place, I believe that this one in nearly impossible. One needs to have reached independence, adopted a win-win mindset, become an empathetic listener, in order to comprehend the concept of synergy. Synergy is attained through authentic collaboration. The ability of more than one person, coming together, brainstorming ideas, sharing their expertise, working, putting forth effort, and resulting in the best possible solution. This is different than a compromise. True synergy values differences, focuses on strengths and avoids stereotypes. This is what will lead you to true interdependence.
My Habit As a district, we have a long way to go. I don’t believe that as an organization we don’t value this habit; however I do believe that the time is not allotted to make this a possibility. As an individual, I am lucky that my supervisor does her best to make the time and put forth effort to “synergize.” At the end of the last year, my supervisor, the other Supervisor of Instruction and myself came together to create a plan for this year’s back-to-school professional development. In a four hour brainstorming session, where we charted each other’s thoughts and opinions, and considered previous feedback from past professional development days, we created a plan that would meet the needs for all staff and our district. I attribute the success and positive feedback to our planning process. We didn’t compromise. We synergized and created the best, most effective professional development we have had in our district in some time. My Commitment I commit to imparting my knowledge of this habit, synergy, to my daughter. As mentioned in previous blogs, she plays basketball and has been playing for many years. The difference is that she is now playing with girls that she has only known for no more than two years and she is the captain. In middle school and throughout high school, she has played with girls that she has known since elementary. So, synergizing wasn’t very difficult. However, now, more than ever, understanding this habit will benefit the team. As a captain, the leader of the team, it is her responsibility to bring everyone together, by valuing everyone’s contributions to strengthen their team. Stephen Covey’s fifth habit, seek to understand, then to be understood, comes after independence and a step before interdependence. After learning about the fifth habit, I can understand how this leads to interdependence. The key to this habit is having the skill of listening. It sounds easy, but it definitely is a skill that requires patience and practice. The intentional act to actively listen to the meaning of the words and emotions behind the thoughts that others are sharing with us is how we can seek to understand and helps create a win win situation. Unlike conversations when one person speaks and the other is quiet, but quietly thinking about their own thoughts and opinions and not seeking to understand. This creates a win-lose situation and is described as a collective monologue, because each person is not seeking to understand and solely seeking to be understood. This doesn’t allow for true collaboration to occur and any progress to take place. My Habit As I was listening to Professor Pumpian describe the fifth habit, seek to understand, before seeking to be understood, I was thinking about reading rhetorically. This is what I have been teaching my students but using a different approach. I teach my students that reading is like having a conversation with the author. First you read to understand what the author is saying and how he/she is saying it. Then, you join the conversation recognizing and responding to the author’s thoughts, ideas, feeling and opinions in writing. This is difficult for students. I believe that the most challenging element was actively reading/listening to what they were reading without making judgments or developing opinions. When and where do they teach people to listen? To listen to the words, make meaning of those words to understand the speaker’s message and/or thoughts. I don’t know and I haven’t heard of anywhere that they focus on this skill. I am a quiet person and listening closely and actively is a way that I learn best. However, I must admit, I do struggle with listening when I hear someone talk about something I don’t like or strongly disagree with. I have found myself in several situations, speaking to express my disagreement without truly listening. In most of these situations, there was no understanding taking place. It became a series of collective monologues. Unfortunately, this resulted in no collaboration or progress and only stress on the respect. An example of a win lose situation. My commitment I commit to continue sharing my new knowledge with my daughter. However, I plan to switch the focus to our relationship. She is nineteen years-old and a college student living at home. I have had a difficult time adjusting to the fact that she is also a young adult. My struggle has caused some disagreements and misunderstandings resulting in creating some strain in our relationship. I’m going to introduce her to this habit, by explaining it to her and commit to listening, silently and completely, to her before responding. I plan to do some action research by becoming a more empathetic listener in every conversation with my daughter, with hope that she acquires this skill. Until now, I wasn’t very familiar with this habit. I had heard about it, but I hadn’t truly understood the concept of win-win. I think I might have overlooked it thinking literally of the concept win. However, this deeper understanding has led me to an epiphany. I have seen the traditional concept of the win-lose model, and how it can cause a lot of turmoil in both personal and professional relationships. Relationships should be mutually beneficial; however when one or both of the people in the relationship have this mentality, obviously there will always be a loser. In the lose-lose or lose-win relationship, personalities and pride are prioritized and people go to the extreme to give up their goals, so that no one no one wins. There are so many systems in our society that create competitive, rather than cooperative cultures in which people quickly adapt. Progress, advancement and cooperation can be the result, if people truly understood the concept of the win-win habit. If one truly understood the power of working together to achieve a better outcome, our society and culture would prosper. My Habit Epiphany moment. There have been times where I have chosen to work in isolation with the belief that I can work better and faster, alone. Without the worry of making time to get others together at the same time and place, without having to communicate, and without having to worry if things would get done, I would choose to forge ahead with the task at hand, alone. Reflecting on some of those times, I feel I was successful on making things happen and/or producing a final product; however I can’t say that it was the best, or most effective work. This past year, I have worked on several projects with a team. They were collaborative efforts, where everyone equally contributed and communicated, and the final product was a success. One of those projects was the planning of the my district’s professional development to kick-off the new school year. The planning began with three of us. We then shared our blueprint with administration and received feedback. We revised it and shared it a few more times. The end result was a successful 3-day professional development to kick-off the new school year. The overall comments and feedback from teachers and staff were all positive. This was definitely a win-win situation. My Commitment As I was reading about the win-win habit, I knew exactly how I was going to impart my new understanding of this habit to my daughter. She has been playing for many years, but it wasn’t until this past year that she has been playing with other girls that she doesn’t know, from different cities and backgrounds. Now as she is starting a new year, with new teammates, I know understanding this habit will be beneficial to her and the team. We had our weekly sessions while she was watching video of her most recent game where they came out short 12. I swayed the conversation to teamwork, and she quickly analyzed her strengths and areas of growth. She identified several instances where she and her other teammates couldn’t have involved the team more to work in their favor. She also identified the strengths of the opposing team in regards to working together. I described instances of win-lose or lose-lose and the consequences. She didn’t say much, but I know she was processing the information by the comments she made about the rest of the game. Habit #3 - Put First Things First This is the third of the three habits (Be Proactive, Put the end in mind and Put first things first) that makeup our personal effectiveness. This is where it all starts. Who are we? Once we develop our character habits, our credibility and authenticity, it is at this point that we will be able start moving from dependence to independence. I see it as the foundation of who we are and with a solid foundation, one can begin to build towards independence. Without a strong foundation and sound character habits, the building process will encounter many challenges. This third habit, put first things first, will come easily, only if we are in charge of our actions, know where we want to go and what the most important steps are, then we put first things first. My Habit This is definitely one of my areas of growth and I am a self proclaimed procrastinator. I can easily get distracted and lose track of my priorities. Closely analyzing the four quadrants, I realize that at times, when I’m working on detailed projects with multiple parts, my stress levels rise, and sometimes I deviate from the important parts, and I begin working “below the line” on tasks that are not important or as urgent as others. With my reassignment to Instructional Coach last year, I do feel that I have begun to develop this habit, put first things first. I was forced to quickly refine my skills organizing, prioritizing and focusing on the important tasks. I am now faithfully using tools such as: google calendar, task lists, sketchnotes that serve as a visual representation of a project to keep me focused on the final product and working on the important tasks. My Commitment I’ve made the decision that my daughter will be my student for each of the 7 habits. I am seeing how they build on each other, so every week, I feel the need to share my knowledge with her. So I’m committing to teaching them to her during our usual weekend lunch or dinner out. For the past two weeks, this platform has worked out well. Since she continues to threaten to leave next year to continue her education away from home, I plan to have her map out all the steps she needs to take to get her where she wants to be next year, then prioritize the steps. After listening to Professor Pumpian explain Habit #2 - Start with the End in Mind, all I could think about is lesson planning. About 7 years ago is when my district was encouraging using this concept when planning lesson and units of instruction. I remember that I struggled a bit at the beginning I couldn’t comprehend why it was recommended that we begin at the end rather than from the beginning. After a little research, limited training, opening my mind to this new concept and applying my learning, I slowly started making the connection between starting with the end in mind and an effective, focused lesson. I also realized that the process was a lot smoother, because I didn’t have as many questions or stopping points, because I knew where I needed to go with my instruction. This is the same reasoning behind the habit.
My Habit Processing this habit, I can see the link between the Habit #1 - Be Proactive and Habit #2 - Start with the End in Mind. Visionaries are proactive. Being proactive means being responsible for our behavior. This type of character will be open minded and see what we want, understand that in order to get what we want, we will need and be willing to take some action to get the results we are anticipating. In the past year and a half, I believe that I significantly developed this habit. With the guidance and support of my supervisor, the majority of our work, begins with the end in mind. I have seen the improvement in the quality of my work and the results, but more importantly I have seen the positive impact it makes on my colleagues when I communicate upcoming initiatives, provide training or share information when I practice this habit. After receiving positive results, I plan to continue to apply this habit, not only at work, but also in my personal life. At this point in my professional life, due to the consist changes, I set goals for the year. This year, my end in mind is earning a Master’s that is providing me with knowledge and skills that transfer perfectly to my current position as District Instructional Coach. My Commitment Today, I did teach this habit to a small group of colleagues that I was collaborating with on curriculum planning. They didn’t start with the end in mind and the process was slow. After reviewing the process and work that was done. I explained Habit #2 and guided them through the initial stages. They were familiar with the concept; however since they were already in the habit of starting at the beginning, it was a shift for them, but one that they embraced. I also plan to reinforce my learning of Habit #2 by continuing to teach it to my daughter. Once again, because she is in this transition phase in her life, that can be confusing and stressful, I want to expose her to starting with the end in mind. This is something that I wish I would’ve known at her age. Most of my learning at her age came through experience, which is sometimes better; however, I know if I would’ve known how these habits influence my behavior and outcomes, the road to my goal would’ve been less bumpy. The best work we can all do is create the highest vision possible for our lives... and be led by the vision for the greatest good...Oprah. Habit #1: Be Proactive Stephan Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People defines Habit #1 - Be Proactive, as, “...taking responsibility for your life.” In other words, one has the ability to create, positive or negative, future events and situations in their own life. It is very easy to blame external forces for unfavorable events or situations we experience in our lives. According to Covey, the only person to blame is ourselves. The opposite of being proactive is being reactive. This concept clarified this habit for me. Reactive people are ready to blame other people or things, never looking in the mirror. On the other side, proactive people, look in the mirror, and understand that they have the freedom and ability to choose their actions and words that will determine the result. My Habit Am I proactive or reactive? This is a good question. The answer will depend on if I’m talking about my personal or professional life. As I’m writing this, it is sounding weird. How can I be one way at home and different at work? Easy. In my professional life, for the most part, I am proactive. Since the day I started working in my freshman year of high school, to this day, my job has been an vital part of my life. Therefore, I recognized that being reactive could be detrimental to the future of my job. So, I knew I must be responsible and make decisions to ensure that I would succeed at my job/career. On the other side, as a young adult, I experienced some difficult situations. I couldn’t understand why I was encountering all these obstacles. Instead of attempting to understand these circumstances and attempt to change them, it was easier to place the blame elsewhere. When my daughter was four years old, I became a single parent. Soon after, I realized that my only option was to take control of my life. I must be the change that I want to see. My commitment I’m making a personal commitment to teach Habit #1 - Be Proactive to my daughter. She is currently in her second year of college. She has big dreams of having a successful life in law enforcement and continue playing basketball at a four year university. In the past two years, I have seen a positive change in her, in regards to her attitude and decisions she has made to get her closer to attaining her goals. We’ve had a few conversations, in which she shares her connections between the work and effort she puts into something and the positive outcomes. Yet, I don’t think she realizes that being proactive, is a characteristic that should be true in all parts of your life. I want to teach her the difference between being proactive and being reactive by sharing some personal stories from my youth. In addition to discussing about habit #1, I plan to continue modeling proactive behavior. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Covey Covey, S. (n.d.). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Habit 1 Be Proactive. Retrieved September 1, 2015. https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit1.php. |
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December 2015
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