on the 7 habits of highly effective people 🌱
(4 minute read)
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If you’ve been following along, you know that 2025 is the year I’m reading as many airport books as I can tolerate. Last week, I finished the classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Written by Dr. Stephen R. Covey, it was first published in 1989 (36 years ago!), and its popularity resulted in a flurry of subject-matter spin-offs with the same premise and framework. Covey’s books have sold over 40 million copies in 50 languages.
That is a popular book.
Naturally, my cynicism expected to hate it. I expected to read some nonsense, such as antiquated leadership drivel, that would explain the terrible people management behaviors I’ve seen from leaders over the years. I expected to find a piece of the puzzle that would help me untangle and rebuild leadership skills and strategies for my clients, learning the language they’ve come to rely on so I can best communicate new, better leadership relationships.
Boy, oh boy, was I wrong. While certainly dated in a handful of ways, the book was great. Like, I realized so many of these airport books are simply rewriting this book over and over again. Many of the strategies he details (and my goodness, there are a lot) are those I employ with my clients in people management and organizational design: mission, values, interdependence, and abundance. They were heavily supported by the research literature then and even more so now.
I felt a bit hopeless reading the book, to be honest, because the core concepts are still considered radical when employed within the workplace. I’m having a hard time reconciling that one of the most popular and highly recommended leadership books of all time contains simultaneously old and new concepts. How have so many copies of this book sold globally, but so many businesses continue to default to cultural and operational paradigms that motivate people through fear, anxiety, and scarcity?
It touched a nerve in me that seems to be constantly activated nowadays: how do we continue to look at the science and yet actively reject it? This book is almost as old as I am, and Covey asserts that the science he’s presenting is already validated. This means if an organization or leader were to engage with the recommendations in the book, they’re already half of a lifetime behind the science. Think of if we were to take contemporary scientific behavioral and organizational sciences seriously! Think of what kinds of businesses we could run! The social implications and outcomes! Would we even be arguing about DEI? Probably not. But then again, I went on a (short) date with a guy who told me viruses aren’t real, so who even knows?
My dismay around this isn’t new or unique, either. Change practitioners exist for a reason (though they are underutilized, to be honest), and the gap between theory and practice is a forever struggle. And if I’m really honest with myself, I’m just as guilty of knowing what I should do and then doing the exact opposite while also internalizing the should as a part of my identity without behavioral evidence to support it. Ope!
I seem to write about the ways we default to comfortable behaviors over replacing them with new and more effective behaviors a lot (see Conservation of Resources Theory), and this is no different, I guess. I’m finding commitment and consistency matter most when it comes to individual and organizational behavioral changes. Ultimately, reading a book about climbing Everest doesn’t make me a mountain climber. I drink water daily, but my familiarity with high-quality H2O doesn’t mean I can swim the English Channel. Reading a book about leadership doesn’t make you that kind of leader.
Leadership practice and organizational behavior aren’t built through osmosis! Have you seen the 1993 movie The Meteor Man? When he can touch a book to absorb and use its contents for 30 seconds? I swear people act like that’s a thing when they buy a book. It’s also not enough to simply read the book (or just the introduction, lol); we must employ the strategies we learn with dedication and consistency and then go from there. There are genuinely no quick fixes.
So, all in all, I would recommend reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s certainly not perfect, and I have some criticisms about his lean on changing through individualism and independence since we heal and change through our relationships with each other (which he also says…?), but the bones are solid.
When you read it, keep an eye out for the ways so many businesses have taken the concepts in this book and buzzified them. Synergy (interdependence) comes to mind. Reminds me of THIS SCENE from one of my favorite movies of all time, In Good Company, where my forever crush, Topher Grace, talks about using synergy to sell ads while we learn that true synergy comes from the collaboration and creativity that emerges from addressing conflict. This scene also slaps and feels too relevant. Ugh, it's a GREAT movie.
I’m going to go watch The Meteor Man and In Good Company now and hope they still stand up. Fingers crossed.
See you next Monday!
