Book Review - The 8th Habit by Stephen R. Covey
Category Book Reviews
Since Covey's prior book (The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People) was such an impactful book, I decided it was necessary to read The 8th Habit - From Effectiveness to Greatness. While it does have valuable information to convey, it's much harder to get there.
The overriding theme of the 8th habit is to find our voice and inspire others to find theirs. This has to do with leadership, modeling, pathfinding, empowering, and all those other concepts that you know are important but that seem to get lost in the day to day living of life. The thing that worked so well for 7 Habits is that each concept (or chapter) was easy to understand, it was easy to place it in context with the other habits, and you could easily decide what you needed to do to implement the concept. The 8th Habit is much more complex, and it's a system/philosophy/set of habits all to itself. While it's easy to grasp and comprehend the idea behind being a trim-tab spirit in your organization, it's a bit more difficult trying to see the practical application of Circle Of Knowledge/Ignorance by the time you get to the end.
I'd only recommend this book to people who are serious about leading and assisting others, and only for those who are willing to take the book in small chunks, trying hard to learn it as you go. If you try and read the book through in a session or two, you'll come away with a few good tips, but nothing close to what Covey intended you to take away. It's not a bad book... it's just not nearly as intuitive as 7 Habits was...
Since Covey's prior book (The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People) was such an impactful book, I decided it was necessary to read The 8th Habit - From Effectiveness to Greatness. While it does have valuable information to convey, it's much harder to get there.
The overriding theme of the 8th habit is to find our voice and inspire others to find theirs. This has to do with leadership, modeling, pathfinding, empowering, and all those other concepts that you know are important but that seem to get lost in the day to day living of life. The thing that worked so well for 7 Habits is that each concept (or chapter) was easy to understand, it was easy to place it in context with the other habits, and you could easily decide what you needed to do to implement the concept. The 8th Habit is much more complex, and it's a system/philosophy/set of habits all to itself. While it's easy to grasp and comprehend the idea behind being a trim-tab spirit in your organization, it's a bit more difficult trying to see the practical application of Circle Of Knowledge/Ignorance by the time you get to the end.
I'd only recommend this book to people who are serious about leading and assisting others, and only for those who are willing to take the book in small chunks, trying hard to learn it as you go. If you try and read the book through in a session or two, you'll come away with a few good tips, but nothing close to what Covey intended you to take away. It's not a bad book... it's just not nearly as intuitive as 7 Habits was...
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Comments
Its never been easy to do self analysis and change your self in one day-no wonder it requires a lot of work and continuous practice
Posted by Sheraz At 23:53:39 On 28/03/2007 | - Website - |
You can read summary of the book Covey: The 8th Habit - From Effectiveness to Greatness
http://covey.ru/en/8th-habit.html
Posted by tima At 12:47:17 On 06/04/2007 | - Website - |
Thanks!
Posted by Stephen Covey Seven (7) Habits Blog Owner At 05:08:09 On 07/09/2005 | - Website - |
Posted by null At 01:01:38 On 03/04/2012 | - Website - |