Stephen Covey

Stephen R. Covey (born October 24, 1932 in Salt Lake City, Utah) wrote the best-selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Other books he has written include First Things First, Principle-Centered Leadership and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families. His latest book, The 8th Habit, appeared in 2004.

Covey lives with his wife Sandra and their family in Provo, Utah, home to Brigham Young University, where Dr. Covey taught prior to the publication of his best-selling book. A father of nine and a grandfather of forty-seven, he received the Fatherhood Award from the National Fatherhood Initiative in 2003.

Dr. Covey established the "Covey Leadership Center" which, on May 30, 1997, merged with Franklin Quest to form FranklinCovey, a global professional-services firm and specialty-retailer selling both training and productivity-tools to individuals and to organizations. Their mission statement reads: "We enable greatness in people and organizations everywhere".

Covey holds a BS degree in Business Administration from University of Utah in Salt Lake City, an MBA from Harvard University, and a Doctorate of Religious Education (DRE) in Mormon Church History and Doctrine from Brigham Young University. He also holds membership of the Pi Kappa Alpha International Fraternity.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey's most well-known book, has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide since its first publication in 1989. (The audio version became the first non-fiction audio-book in U.S. publishing history to sell more than one million copies.) Many of the ideas and much of the language recast the content of the classic 1966 Peter F. Drucker book The Effective Executive, wherein Drucker wrote: "Effectiveness, in other words, is a habit", and which includes a chapter called "First Things First". In Covey's version, he argues against what he calls "The Personality Ethic", something he sees as prevalent in many modern self-help books. He instead promotes what he labels "The Character Ethic": aligning one’s values with so-called "universal and timeless" principles. Covey adamantly refuses to confound principles and values; he sees principles as external natural laws, while values remain internal and subjective. Covey proclaims that values govern people’s behaviour, but principles ultimately determine the consequences. Covey presents his teachings in a series of habits, manifesting as a progression from dependence via independence to interdependence

The Habits

• Habit 1: Be Proactive: Principles of Personal Vision
• Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind: Principles of Personal Leadership
• Habit 3: Put First Things First: Principles of Personal Management
• Habit 4: Think Win/Win: Principles of Interpersonal Leadership
• Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood: Principles of Empathetic Communication
• Habit 6: Synergize: Principles of Creative Communication
• Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw: Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal

Honors and Awards

• 2003 Fatherhood Award from the National Fatherhood Initiative
• The Thomas More College Medallion for continuing service to humanity
• The Sikh's 1998 International Man of Peace Award[2]
• The 1994 International Entrepreneur of the Year Award[3]
• The National Entrepreneur of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurial Leadership[4]
• One of Time Magazine's 25 most influential Americans (1996)[5]
• Accepted the inaugural nationally-acclaimed California University of Pennsylvania's Corporate Core Values Award from the California University of Pennsylvania on behalf of the FranklinCovey Corporation at the "national Franklin Covey Conference" (December 2006).^[6]