The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families

FROM SURVIVAL … TO STABILITY … TO SUCCESS … TO SIGNIFICANCE

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: The only ones among you who will really be happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

—Albert Schweitzer

Now that we’ve been through each of the 7 Habits, I’d like to share with you the “bigger picture” of the power of this inside-out approach and how these habits work together to make it happen.

To begin with, I’d like to ask you to read a fascinating account of one woman’s inside-out odyssey. Notice how this experience reveals a proactive, courageous soul becoming a force of nature in her own right. Notice the impact her approach has on her, on her family, and on society:

By the time I was nineteen, I was divorced with a two-year-old child. We were in difficult circumstances, but I wanted to make the best possible life for my son. We had very little food. In fact, I reached the point where I would give food to my son but I wouldn’t eat. I lost so much weight that a coworker asked me if I was sick, and I finally broke down and told her what had happened. She put me in touch with Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which made it possible for me to attend community college.

At that point I still had this vision in my mind that I’d had when I was seventeen and pregnant with my son—a vision that I would go to college. I had no idea how I was going to do it. At seventeen I didn’t even have a high school diploma. But I just knew I was going to make a difference in the lives of others and be a light to others who faced the darkness I was facing. That vision was so strong that it got me through everything—including doing what was necessary to graduate from high school.

As I entered community college at nineteen, I still didn’t see how my vision was going to be fulfilled. How was I going to help anybody when I was still pretty traumatized from going through it all myself? But I felt driven because of the vision and because of my son. I wanted him to have a good life. I wanted him to have food and clothes and a yard to play in and an education. And I couldn’t provide those things for him without getting an education myself. So I kept rationalizing, “If I can just get a degree and make money, we will have a good life.” And I went to school and worked really hard.

When I was twenty-two I got married for the second time—this time to a wonderful man. We had a beautiful little daughter. I quit school to be with my children while they were small. We managed to make it okay financially, but I was still obsessed with fighting that monster called hunger. I just could not let that go. So when my children were a little older, it was “get the degree or bust.” My husband was basically “Mom” to the kids while I went to school.

I finally completed my degree—two, in fact: a four-year degree and a master’s degree in business administration. And this turned out to be very helpful. Later, when my husband lost his job as a factory worker, I was able to help him through school. My education saved us financially. He got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and has been a counselor for several years now. He said he doesn’t think he would have done it without my support.

For some time I was very busy working and raising my family, and I thought: I’ve done it. I got my degree. I have a successful family. I should be happy. But then I realized that my vision had included helping others, and that still wasn’t part of my life. So when one of the alumni directors at school asked me to speak at an honors night for graduating seniors, I agreed. When I asked her what she wanted me to talk about, she said, “Just tell them how you got your education.”

To be quite honest, standing up in front of a group of at least two hundred highly educated women who were going to be honored for their expertise in science and math was a bit overwhelming. The thought of telling them where I had come from was not very thrilling to me. But by this time I’d learned about mission statements and I’d written one. It basically said that my mission in life was to help others to see the best in themselves. And I think it was the mission statement that gave me the courage to share my story.

I went into that speech making deals with God: “Okay, I’m going to do this. But if it fails, I’m never going to tell my story again.” It turned out to be a success because of what occurred afterward. After listening to my story, several of the faculty women got together and decided to do something to help welfare mothers, and the school started a scholarship fund. It was named after a woman who believed that if you educate a woman, you make a great impact not only on her life but on the lives of her children.

I was happy about what had happened and figured I’d done my part to help others, but then a little later I went through a developmental course for women where I had the opportunity to share my story again. One of the women there got the idea that we should fund a scholarship for one low-income woman, and we all agreed that we would each contribute $125 a year to do this.

From those beginnings my efforts have grown so that now I act as an advisor on a scholarship board for welfare women at a local women’s liberal arts college. I’m also involved in fund-raising for a scholarship for low-income women with high potential. These things may not seem like much to some, but I know what a big difference they can make. I had a lot of help along the way from people who felt they were doing “small things,” and I hope the small things I do for others now show my thanks.

All of this has had a positive impact on my family as well. My son, who is now working on his master’s degree, has a job where he helps people who have disabilities. He is very committed to these people and to their welfare. And my daughter—a first-year college student—is a volunteer teacher of English as a second language. She is also very committed to the underprivileged. They both seem to have a sense of responsibility to others. They have a deep awareness of the importance of contribution and actively seek it. And my husband’s work as a counselor provides a constant opportunity for him to serve people in a very personal way as well.

I guess I hadn’t really thought about it before, but as I look at it now, I see that in one way or another our entire family is serving and contributing to society as a whole. That makes me feel as though my vision is coming to pass—in a more expanded and complete way than I had originally understood it.

I believe that helping others is the most significant contribution anyone can make in life. I’m grateful that we’ve developed to the point where we’re able to do it.

Just think about the difference this woman’s proactivity has made in her own life, in the lives of the members of her family, and in the lives of all those who have benefited from her contribution. What a tribute to the resiliency of the human spirit! Instead of allowing her circumstances to overpower the vision she had inside, she held on to it and nurtured it so that it eventually became the driving force that empowered her to rise above those circumstances.

Notice how, in the process, she and her family moved through each of the four levels mentioned in the title of this chapter.

Survival

At first this woman’s consuming concern was for the basic need for food. She was hungry. Her child was hungry. The one focus of her life was to make enough to feed her son and herself so that they wouldn’t starve. This need to survive was so basic, so fundamental, so vital that even when her circumstances changed, she was still “obsessed with fighting that monster called hunger” and “could not let that go.”

This represents the first level: survival. And many families, many marriages, are literally fighting for it—not only economically but also mentally, spiritually, and socially as well. These people’s lives are filled with uncertainty and fear. They’re scrambling to make it through the day. They live in a world of chaos with no predictable principles to operate from, no structures or schedules to depend on, no sense of what tomorrow is going to hold. They often feel that they are victims of circumstances or of other people’s injustice. They’re like a person who has been rushed into the emergency room and then put into the intensive care unit: Their vital signs may be present but are unstable and unpredictable.

Eventually these families may hone their survival skills. They may even have brief breathing spaces between their efforts to survive. But their day-in, day-out objective is simply to survive.

Stability

Going back to the story, you’ll notice that through her efforts and help from others, this woman eventually moved from survival to stability. She had food and the basic necessities of life. She even had a stable marriage relationship. Although she was still struggling with scars from the “survival” days, she and her family were functional.

This represents the second level, which is what many families and marriages are trying to achieve. They’re surviving, but different work schedules and different habit patterns result in their hardly ever getting together to talk about what would bring more stability to the marriage or family. They live in a state of disorganization. They don’t know what to do; they have a sense of futility and feel trapped.

But the more knowledge these individuals acquire, the more hope they get. And as they act on this knowledge and begin to organize some schedules and some structures for communication and problem-solving, even more hope emerges. The hope overcomes ignorance and futility. And the family, the marriage, becomes stable, dependable, and predictable.

So they’re stable—but they’re not yet “successful.” There’s a degree of organization so that food is provided and bills are paid. But the problem-solving strategy is usually limited to “flight or fight.” People’s lives touch from time to time in order to deal with the most pressing issues, but there’s no real depth in the communication. People generally find their satisfactions away from the family. “Home” is just a place that has to take you in. There’s boredom. Interdependence is exhausting. There’s no sense of shared accomplishment. There’s no real happiness, love, joy, or peace.

Success

The third level, success, involves accomplishing worthy goals. These goals can be economic, such as having more income, managing existing income better, or agreeing to cut expenses in order to save or have money for education or a planned vacation. They can be mental, such as learning some new skill or getting a degree. You’ll notice that most of the goals reflected in this woman’s story were in these two areas. They involved economic well-being and education. But goals can also be social, such as having more time together as a family with good communication or establishing traditions. Or they can be spiritual, such as creating a sense of shared vision and values and renewing their faith and common beliefs.

In successful families, people set and achieve meaningful goals. “Family” matters to people. There’s genuine happiness in being together. There’s a sense of excitement and confidence. Successful families plan and carry out family activities and organize to accomplish different tasks. The focus is on better living, better loving, and better learning, and on renewing the family through fun family activities and traditions.

But even in many “successful” families, a dimension is missing. Look back once again at this woman’s account. She said, “For some time I was very busy working and raising my family, and I thought: I’ve done it. I got my degree. I have a successful family. I should be happy. But then I realized that my vision had included helping others, and that still wasn’t part of my life.”

Significance

The fourth level, significance, is where the family is involved in something meaningful outside itself. Rather than being content to be a successful family, the family has a sense of stewardship or responsibility to the greater family of mankind, as well as a sense of accountability around that stewardship. The family mission includes the leaving of some kind of legacy—of reaching out to other families who may be at risk, of participating together to make a real difference in the community or in the larger society, possibly through their church or other service organizations. This contribution brings a deeper and higher fulfillment—not just to individual family members but to the family as a whole.

The woman in this story felt a sense of responsibility and began to contribute in her own life. And because of her example, her children developed it in their lives. Families ideally would reach the point where this sense of stewardship or responsibility would be an integral part of their family mission statement—something the entire family would be involved in.

At times that might mean that one family member would contribute in a particular way and the rest of the family would work together to support that effort. In our own family, for example, it meant that we all rallied around Sandra to support her when she spent hours working as president of a women’s service organization. We tried to provide support and encouragement for some of our children when they chose to devote a couple of years to church service in foreign lands. We’ve all felt a sense of unity and contribution over the years as the family supported me in my work—and later some of our children’s work—in the Covey Leadership Center (now Franklin Covey). All of these things have been family efforts, though not all family members were involved directly in making the contribution.

There are other times when the entire family is directly involved in something such as a community project. I know of one family that works together to provide visits and entertaining videos for elderly people in rest homes. This began when their own grandmother had a stroke that forced them to put her in a rest home, and it seemed the only thing she really enjoyed was videos. The family decided that they would visit her at least once a week and bring her different old movies from the video store. It became such a success with the grandmother and with other patients that they started getting videos for others as well. Through all the years the five children in this family were teenagers, they continued serving in this manner. And it helped these kids not only to stay close to their grandmother but also to serve many other older people.

Another family spends each New Year’s Eve cooking for and feeding the homeless. They hold several planning meetings beforehand, deciding what they want to serve, how to decorate the tables, and who’s going to take care of what responsibility. It’s become a joyous tradition for them to work together to provide a wonderful evening in the county soup kitchen for the poor.

I’m aware of many other families in which contribution has meant, at least for a time, rallying around an extended or intergenerational family member in need. One husband and father shared how his family did this:

Near the end of 1989 my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. For sixteen months we fought it with chemotherapy and radiation. Finally, near the end of 1990, he was no longer able to take care of himself, and my mother—who was in her 70s—was unable to provide the help he needed.

My wife and I were therefore confronted with some very serious decisions. After discussing it together, we decided to move my mother and father into our home. We put my father in a hospital bed in the middle of our family room, and that’s where he stayed for the next three months until he died.

I realize now that had I not had the grounding of principles and a clear understanding of what “first things” meant in my life, I might not have made that decision. But although this was one of the most difficult times in my life, it was also one of the most rewarding. I feel I can look back and know that we did what was the right thing to do in our circumstances. We did everything we possibly could to make him comfortable. We gave him the best it is humanly possibly to give—our selves. And we feel good about that.

The intimacy we were able to develop with my father in those last months was profound. Not only did my wife and I learn from this experience, but my mother did also. She knows she can look forward to the future and trust how we would handle the situation should she get into a similar position. And our children learned invaluable lessons in service as they watched what my wife and I did, and helped in the ways they could.

For those few months the significant contribution of this family was to help a father and grandfather die with dignity, surrounded by love. What a powerful message this sent to his wife and to everyone else in the family! And how enabling this experience will be for these children as they grow up with a sense of genuine service and love.

Often, even those who suffer in these difficult situations can leave a legacy of inspiration for their families. My own life has been profoundly affected by my sister Marilyn’s example of contribution and significance as she lay dying of cancer. Two nights before she passed away, she told me, “My only desire during this time has been to teach my children and grandchildren how to die with dignity and to give them the desire to contribute—to live life nobly based on principles.” Her whole focus during the weeks and months prior to this time had been on teaching her children and grandchildren, and I know they will be inspired and ennobled by her example—as I have been—for the rest of their lives.

There are many ways to become involved in significance—within the family, with other families, and in society as a whole.

There are many ways to become involved in significance—within the family, with other families, and in society as a whole. We have friends and relatives whose intergenerational and extended families have rallied around them in their struggles with a Down’s syndrome child, a severe drug problem, an overwhelming financial problem, or a failing marriage. The entire family culture went to work and came to the aid of those so involved, enabling them to reclaim their heritage and erase many psychic scars of the past.

Families can also become involved in local schools or communities to increase drug awareness, reduce crime, or assist children in families that are at risk. They can become involved in fund-raising, mentoring programs, tutoring programs, or other church or community service. Or they can become involved in significance on a higher level of interdependence—not just within the family but between families on common projects. This might include families working together in a “Neighborhood Watch” program or joining forces with other community- or church-sponsored service projects or events.

There are even some communities in the world where the entire population is involved in a massive interdependent and significant effort. One is Mauritius—a tiny, developing island nation in the Indian Ocean, two thousand miles off the east coast of Africa. The norm for the 1.3 million people who live there is to work together to survive economically, take care of the children, and nurture a culture of both independence and interdependence. They train people in marketable skills so that there is no unemployment or homelessness and very little poverty or crime. The interesting thing is that these people come from five distinct and very different cultures. Their differences are profound, yet they value these differences so highly that they even celebrate each other’s religious holidays! Their deeply integrated interdependence reflects their values of order, harmony, cooperation, and synergy, and their concern for all people—particularly children.

Contributing together as a family not only helps those who benefit from the contribution, but it also strengthens the contributing family.

Contributing together as a family not only helps those who benefit from the contribution, but it also strengthens the contributing family in the process. Can you imagine anything more energizing, more unifying, more filled with satisfaction than working with the members of your family to accomplish something that really makes a difference in the world? Can you imagine the bonding, the sense of fulfillment, the sense of shared joy?

Living outside ourselves in love actually helps the family become self-perpetuating. Its very giving increases the family’s sense of purpose and thus its longevity and ability to give. Hans Selye, the father of modern stress research, taught that the best way to stay strong, healthy, and alive is to follow the credo, “Earn thy neighbor’s love.” In other words, stay involved in meaningful, service-oriented projects and pursuits. He explains that the reason women live longer than men is psychological rather than physiological. A woman’s work is never done. Built into her psyche and cultural reinforcement is a continuing responsibility toward the family. Many men, on the other hand, center their lives on their careers and identify themselves in terms of these careers. Their family becomes secondary, and when they retire, they do not have this same sense of continuing service and contribution. As a result, the degenerative forces in the body are accelerated and the immune system is compromised, and so men tend to die earlier. There is much wisdom in the saying by an unknown author, “I sought my God, and my God I could not find. I sought my soul, and my soul eluded me. I sought to serve my brother in his need, and I found all three—my God, my soul, and thee.”

On the level of significance, the family becomes the vehicle through which people can effectively contribute to the well-being of others.

This level of significance is the supreme level of family fulfillment. Nothing energizes, unites, and satisfies the family like working together to make a significant contribution. This is the essence of true family leadership—not only the leadership you can provide to the family, but the leadership your family can provide to other families, to the neighborhood, to the community, to the country. On the level of significance, no longer is the family an end in and of itself. It becomes the means to an end that is greater than itself. It becomes the vehicle through which people can effectively contribute to the wellbeing of others.

From Problem-Solving to Creating

As you move toward your destination as a family, you may find it helpful to look at these four different levels as interim destinations on your path. The achieving of each destination represents a challenge in and of itself, but it may also provide the wherewithal to move to the next destination.

You will also want to be aware that in moving from survival to significance, there’s a dramatic shift in thinking. In the areas of survival and stability, the primary mental energy focus is on problem-solving:

“How can we provide food and shelter?”

“What can we do about Daryl’s behavior or Sara’s grades?”

“How can we get rid of the pain in our relationship?”

“How can we get out of debt?”

But as you move toward success and significance, that focus shifts to creating goals and visions and purposes that ultimately transcend the family itself:

“What kinds of education do we want to provide for our children?”

“What would we like our financial picture to look like five or ten years down the road?”

“How can we strengthen family relationships?”

“What can we do together as a family that will really make a difference?”

That doesn’t mean that families who have moved to success and significance don’t have problems to solve. They do. But the major focus is on creating. Instead of trying to eliminate negative things from the family, they’re focused on trying to create positive things that were not there before—new goals, new options, new alternatives that will optimize situations. Instead of rushing from one problem-solving crisis to another, they’re focused on coming up with synergistic springboards to future contribution and fulfillment.

When you’re problem minded, you want to eliminate something. When you’re opportunity or vision minded, you want to bring something into existence.

In short, they’re opportunity minded, not problem minded. When you’re problem minded, you want to eliminate something. When you’re opportunity or vision minded, you want to bring something into existence.

And this is an altogether different mind-set, a different emotional/spiritual orientation. And it leads to a completely different feeling in the culture. It’s like the difference between feeling exhausted from morning until night and feeling rested, energized, and enthused. Instead of feeling frustrated, mired in concerns, and surrounded by dark clouds of despair, you feel optimistic, invigorated, and full of hope. You’re filled with positive energy that leads to a creative, synergistic mode. Focused on your vision, you take problems in stride.

The wonderful thing about moving from survival to significance is that it has very little to do with extrinsic circumstances. One woman said this:

We’ve discovered that economics really has very little to do with achieving significance as a family. Now that we have more, we’re able to do more. But even in the early years of our marriage, we were able to give of our time and talents to help others. And it really united us as a family. When our children were very young, we were able to teach them the value of helping a neighbor, visiting a rest home, or taking a meal to someone who was sick. We found that these kinds of things helped define our family: “We are a family who helps others.” And that made a big difference while our children were growing up. I am convinced that their teenage years were very different because of that contribution focus.

Driving and Restraining Forces

As you move from survival toward significance, you’ll find that there are forces that energize you and help move you forward. Knowledge and hope will push you toward stability. Excitement and confidence drive you toward success. A sense of stewardship and a contribution vision will impel you toward significance. These things are like the tailwinds that help an airplane move more quickly toward its destination—sometimes arriving before the scheduled time.

But you’ll also find there are strong headwinds—forces that tend to restrain you, to slow or even reverse your progress, to push you back, to keep you from moving ahead. Victimism and fear tend to drive you back into the fundamental struggle for survival. Lack of knowledge and a sense of futility tend to keep you from becoming stable. Feelings of boredom and escapism thwart the effort to be successful. Self-focused vision and a sense of ownership—rather than stewardship—tend to keep you from significance.

You’ll notice that the restraining forces are generally more emotional, psychological, and illogical; driving forces are more logical, structural, and proactive.

Of course, we need to do what we can to power up the driving forces. This is the traditional approach. But in a force field, the restraining forces will eventually restore the old equilibrium.

Most important, we need to remove restraining forces. To ignore them is like trying to move toward your destination with your thrusters in reverse. You can put forth all kinds of effort, but unless you do something to remove the restraining forces, you’ll be going nowhere fast, and the effort will exhaust you. You do need to work on driving and restraining forces at the same time, but give the primary effort to working on the restraining forces.

Habits 1, 2, 3, and 7 fire up the driving forces. They build proactivity. They give you a clear, motivating sense of destination that is greater than self. In fact, without some kind of vision or mission of significance, the course of least resistance is to stay in your comfort zone, to use only those talents and gifts that are already developed and perhaps recognized by others. But when you share this vision of true significance, of stewardship, of contribution, then the course of least resistance will be to develop those capacities and fulfill that vision because fulfilling the vision becomes more compelling than the pain of leaving your comfort zone. This is what family leadership is about—the creating of this kind of compelling vision, the securing of consensual commitment toward it and toward doing whatever it takes to fulfill it. This is what taps into people’s deepest motivations and urges them to become their very best. Then Habits 4, 5, and 6 give you the process for working together to accomplish all those things. And Habit 7 gives you the renewing power to keep doing it.

But Habits 4, 5, and 6 also enable you to understand and unfreeze the restraining cultural, emotional, social, and illogical forces so that even the smallest amount of proactive energy on the positive side can make tremendous gains. In fact, a deep understanding of the fears and anxieties that hold you back changes their nature, content, and direction, enabling you to actually convert restraining forces into driving ones. We see this all the time when a so-called problem person feels listened to and understood and then becomes part of the solution.

Consider the analogy of a car. If you had one foot on the gas pedal and the other foot on the brake, which would be the better approach to go faster—flooring the gas pedal or releasing the brake? Obviously, the key is to release the brake. You could even lighten up on the gas pedal and still go faster as long as you got that other foot off the brake.

Consider the analogy of a car. If you had one foot on the gas pedal and the other foot on the brake, which would be the better approach to go faster—flooring the gas pedal or releasing the brake?

Similarly, Habits 4, 5, and 6 release the emotional brake (or give air) in the family so that even the slightest increase in driving forces will take the culture to a new level. In fact, there is extensive research to show that by involving people in the problems and working out the solution together, restraining forces are transformed into driving forces.1

So these habits enable you to work on driving and restraining forces at the same time and free you to move from survival to significance. You may find it helpful to go over the chart on the previous page with your family to get a sense of perspective, to see where you feel you are as a family, and to identify driving and restraining forces, and decide what to do about them. You may also want to use it as a tool to help your family move from a problem-solving to a creative orientation.

Where Do I Begin?

Most of us have an innate desire to improve our families. Subconsciously we want to move from survival toward success or significance. But we often have a tough time. We may try as hard as we possibly can and do everything we can think of, and yet the results may be the exact opposite of the ones we want.

This is especially true when we’re dealing with a spouse or a teenager. But even when we’re dealing with young children, who are generally more open to influence, we wonder how to influence them in the best possible way. Do we punish? Do we spank? Do we send them to a room by themselves? Is it right to use our superior size or strength or mental development to force them to do what we want them to do? Or are there principles that can help us understand and know how to influence in a better way?

Any parent (or son, daughter, brother, sister, grandparent, aunt, uncle, nephew, niece, or other person) who really wants to become a transition person—an agent of change—and help a family move higher on the destination chart can do it, particularly if the person understands and lives the principles behind the four basic family leadership roles. Because family is a natural, living, growing thing, we’d like to describe these roles in terms of what we call the Principle-Centered Family Leadership Tree. This tree serves as a reminder that we’re dealing with nature and with natural laws or principles. It will help you understand these four basic leadership roles and also help you diagnose and think through strategies to resolve family problems. (You might want to take a look at the tree here.)

With the image of this tree in mind, let’s take a look at the four family leadership roles and how cultivating the 7 Habits in each role can help you move your family along the path from survival to significance.

Modeling

I know of one man who loved to go hunting with his father when he was a young boy. The father would plan weeks ahead with his sons, preparing and creating anticipation for the event.

As an adult, this son told us:

I will never forget one Saturday opening of the pheasant hunt. Dad, my older brother, and I were up at 4:00 A.M. We ate Mom’s big, hearty breakfast, packed the car, and drove to our designated field by 6:00 A.M. We arrived early to stake out our spot before any others, anticipating the 8:00 A.M. opening hour.

As that hour drew near, other hunters were frantically driving around us, trying to find spots in which to hunt. As 7:40 arrived, we saw hunters driving into the fields. By 7:45 the firing had started—fifteen minutes before the official start. We looked at Dad. He made no move except to look at his watch, still waiting for 8:00 A.M. Soon the birds were flying. By 7:50 all hunters had moved into the fields, and shots were everywhere.

Dad looked at his watch and said, “The hunt starts at eight o’clock, boys.” About three minutes before eight, four hunters drove into our spot and walked past us into our field. We looked at Dad. He said, “The hunt starts for us at eight.” At eight the birds were gone, but we started our drive into the field.

We didn’t get any birds that day. We did get an unforgettable memory of a man I fervently wanted to be like—my father, my ideal, who taught me absolute integrity.

Now what was at the center of this father’s life—the pleasure and recognition of being a successful hunter or the quiet soul satisfaction of being a man of integrity, a father, and a model of integrity to his boys?

On the other hand, I also know of another man who set quite a different example for his son. His wife recently said to us:

My husband, Jerry, leaves the guidance of our fourteen-year-old son Sam to me. It’s been that way ever since Sam was born. Jerry has always been sort of an uninvolved observer. He never tries to help.

Whenever I get after him and tell him he should get involved, he just shrugs. He tells me he has nothing to offer, and I am the one who should teach and lead our son.

Sam is now in junior high school, and you would not believe the problems he has! I told Jerry that the next time Sam’s school principal called, he would have to take the call because I’ve had it. That night Jerry told Sam that his mom wasn’t going to help him anymore, so he’d better quit causing problems.

I got so mad when he said that, I just wanted to get up and leave. When I exploded, Jerry said, “Hey, don’t blame me. You’re the one who’s been in charge. You’ve taught and led him, not me.”

Who is really teaching and leading this young boy? And what is this father teaching his son? The father has tried to forfeit his influential position by stepping aside and supposedly letting his wife do the influencing. But has he not had a powerful influence as well? When Sam grows up, won’t his father’s actions (or lack of actions) have influenced him in profound ways?

There is no question that example is the very foundation of influence. When Albert Schweitzer was asked how to raise children, he said, “Three principles—first, example; second, example; and third, example.” We are, first and foremost, models to our children. What they see in us speaks far more loudly than anything we could ever say. You cannot hide or disguise your deepest self. In spite of skillful pretending and posturing, your real desires, values, beliefs, and feelings come out in a thousand ways. Again, you teach only what you are—no more, no less.

You cannot not model. It’s impossible. People will see your example—positive or negative—as a pattern for the way life is to be lived.

That’s why the deepest part of this Principle-Centered Family Leadership Tree—the thick fibrous root structure—represents your role as a model.

This is your personal example. It’s the consistency and integrity of your own life. This is what gives credibility to everything you try to do in the family. As people see in your life the model of what you’re trying to encourage in the lives of others, they feel they can believe in you and can trust you because you are trustworthy.

The interesting thing is that, like it or not, you are a model. And if you’re a parent, you are your children’s first and foremost model. In fact, you cannot not model. It’s impossible. People will see your example—positive or negative—as a pattern for the way life is to be lived.

As one unknown author so beautifully expressed it:

If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn.

If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith in himself.

If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight.

If a child lives with acceptance, he learns to love.

If a child lives with fear, he learns to be apprehensive.

If a child lives with recognition, he learns to have a goal.

If a child lives with pity, he learns to be sorry for himself.

If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.

If a child lives with jealousy, he learns to feel guilty.

If a child lives with friendliness, he learns that the world is a nice place in which to live.

If we are careful observers, we can see our own weaknesses reappear in the lives of our children. Perhaps this is most evident in the way differences and disagreements are handled. To illustrate, a mother goes to the family room to call her young sons to lunch and finds them arguing and fighting over a toy. “Boys, I’ve told you before not to fight! You work it out so each has a turn.” The older grabs it away from his smaller brother with “I’m first!” The younger cries and refuses to come to lunch.

The mother, puzzled as to why her boys never seem to learn, reflects for a moment on her own handling of differences with her husband. She remembers “only last night” when they had a sharp exchange over a matter of finances. She remembers “only this morning” when her husband left for work rather disgruntled after a disagreement on plans for the evening. And the more this mother reflects, the more she realizes she and her husband have demonstrated over and over again how not to handle differences and disagreements.

This book is filled with stories that illustrate how the thinking and actions of children are shaped by what parents think and do. The thinking of the parents will be inherited by their children, sometimes to the third and fourth generations. Parents have been scripted by their parents … who have been scripted by their parents in ways that none of the generations may even be aware of.

That is why our role modeling as parents to our children is our most basic, most sacred, most spiritual responsibility. We are handing life’s scripts to our children—scripts that, in all likelihood, will be acted out for much of the rest of their lives. How important it is for us to realize that our day-to-day modeling is far and away our highest form of influence in our children’s lives! And how important it is for us to examine what is really at the “center” of our lives, to ask ourselves, Who am I? How do I define myself? (Security) Where do I go and what do I do to receive direction to guide my life? (Guidance) How does life work? How should I live my life? (Wisdom) What resources and influences do I access to nurture myself and others? (Power) Whatever is our “center,” or the lens through which we look at life, will profoundly affect our children’s thinking—whether we are aware of it and whether we want to have this influence or not.

If you choose to live the 7 Habits in your personal life, what is it that your children will learn? Your modeling will provide an example of a proactive person who has developed a personal mission statement and is attempting to live by it; of a person who has great respect and love for others, who seeks to understand them and be understood by them, who believes in the power of synergy and is not afraid to take risks in working with others to create new third-alternative solutions. You will provide a model of a person who is in a state of constant renewal—of physical self-control and vitality, continual learning, continual building of relationships, and constant attempting to align with principles.

What impact will that kind of model have on your children’s lives?

Mentoring

I know a man who is very committed to his family. Even though he is involved in many good and worthwhile activities, the most important thing to him by far is to teach his children and to help them become responsible, caring, contributing adults. And he is an excellent model of all he is trying to teach.

He has a large family, and one summer two of his daughters were planning to marry. One evening when they both had their fiancés in the family home, he sat down with all four of them and spent several hours talking with them, sharing many things he had learned that he knew would help them along the way.

Later, after he had gone upstairs to get ready for bed, his daughters went to their mother and said, “Dad just wants to teach us; he doesn’t want to get to know us personally.” In other words, Dad just wants to dispense all this wisdom and knowledge he has accumulated through the years, but does he really know us as individuals? Does he accept us? Does he really care about us, just as we are? Until they knew that, until they could feel that unconditional love, they were not open to his influence—however good that influence might have been.

Again, as the saying goes, “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care.” That’s why the next level of the tree—the massive, sturdy trunk—represents your role as a mentor. “Mentoring” is building relationships. It’s investing in the Emotional Bank Account. It’s letting people know that you care about them—deeply, sincerely, personally, unconditionally. It’s championing them.

This deep, genuine caring encourages people to become open, teachable, and open to influence because it creates a profound feeling of trust. This clearly reaffirms the relationship we mentioned in Habit 1 between the Primary Laws of Love and the Primary Laws of Life. Again, only when you live the Primary Laws of Love—when you consistently make deposits in the Emotional Bank Accounts of others because you love them unconditionally and because of their intrinsic worth rather than because of their behavior or social status or for any other reason—do you encourage obedience to the Primary Laws of Life, laws such as honesty, integrity, respect, responsibility, and trust.

Now, if you’re a parent, it’s important to realize that whatever your relationship with your children, you are their first mentor—someone who relates to them, someone whose love they deeply desire. Positively or negatively, you cannot not mentor. You are your children’s first source of physical and emotional security or insecurity, their feeling of being loved or being neglected. And the way you fulfill your mentoring role will have a profound effect on your child’s sense of self-worth and on your ability to influence and teach.

The way you fulfill your mentoring role will have a profound effect on your child’s sense of self-worth and on your ability to influence and teach.

The way you fulfill your mentoring role with any family member—but particularly with your most difficult child—will have a profound impact on the level of trust in the entire family. As we said in Habit 6, the key to your family culture is how you treat the child that tests you the most. It is that child who will really test your ability to love unconditionally. When you can show unconditional love to that one, the other children will know that your love for them is also unconditional.

I have become convinced there is almost unbelievable power in loving another person in five ways simultaneously:

1. Empathizing: listening with your own heart to another’s heart.

2. Sharing authentically your most deeply felt insights, learnings, emotions, and convictions.

3. Affirming the other person with a profound sense of belief, valuation, confirmation, appreciation, and encouragement.

4. Praying with and for the other person from the depths of your soul, tapping into the energy and wisdom of higher powers.

5. Sacrificing for the other person: going the second mile, doing far more than is expected, caring and serving until it sometimes even hurts.

Most often neglected of the five are empathizing, affirming, and sacrificing. Many people will pray for others; many will share. But to truly listen empathically, to truly believe in and affirm others, and to walk with them in some kind of sacrifice mode so that you are doing what they would not expect you to do—in addition to praying and sharing—reaches people in ways that nothing else can.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to teach (or influence or warn or discipline) before they have the relationship to sustain it. The next time you feel inclined to try to teach or correct your child, you might want to push your pause button and ask yourself this: Is my relationship with this child sufficient to sustain this effort? Is there enough reserve in the Emotional Bank Account to enable this child to have an open ear, or will my words just bounce off as though he or she were surrounded by some kind of bulletproof shield? It’s very easy to get so caught up in the emotion of the moment that we don’t stop to ask ourselves if what we’re about to do will be effective—if it will accomplish what we really want to accomplish. And if it won’t, much of the time it’s because there’s not enough reserve to sustain it.

So you can make deposits into the Emotional Bank Account. You can build the relationship. You can mentor. As people feel your love and caring, they will begin to value themselves and become more open to your influence as you try to teach. What people identify with far more than what they hear is what they see and what they feel.

Organizing

You could be a wonderful model and have a great relationship with the members of your family, but if your family is not organized effectively to help you accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish, then you’re going to be working against yourself.

It’s like the business that talks teamwork and cooperation but then has systems—such as compensation—that reward competition and individual achievement. Instead of being in alignment with and facilitating what you want to accomplish, the way you have things organized actually gets in the way.

In a like manner, in your family you may talk “love” and “family fun,” but if you never plan any time together to have family dinners, work on projects, go on vacations, watch a movie, or have a picnic in the park, then your very lack of organization gets in the way. You may say “I love you” to someone, but if you’re always too busy to spend meaningful one-on-one time with that person and fail to prioritize that relationship, you will allow entropy and decay to set in.

You may talk “love” and “family fun,” but if you never plan any time together, then your very lack of organization gets in the way.

Your organizing role is where you would align the structures and systems in the family to help you accomplish what’s truly important. This is where you would use the power of Habits 4, 5, and 6 at the mentoring level to create your family mission statement and set up two new structures that most families don’t have: dedicated weekly family times and calendared one-on-one dates. These are the structures and systems that will make it possible to carry out the things you’re trying to do in your family.

Without creating principle-based patterns and structures, you will not be able to build a culture with common vision and shared values. Moral authority will be sporadic and shallow because it will be based only on the present actions of a few people. It won’t be built into the culture of the family.

But the more moral or ethical authority grows and becomes institutionalized into the culture in the form of principles—both lived and structurally embodied—the less dependent you are on individual persons to maintain a beautiful family culture. The mores and norms inside the culture itself will reinforce the principles. The very fact that you have weekly family time says a hundredfold that family is truly important. So even though someone may be flaky or duplicitous and someone else may be lazy, the setting up of these structures and processes compensates for most—though not all—of those human deficiencies. It builds the principles into the patterns and structures that people can depend on. And the results are similar to those that happen when you go on a vacation: A family may have emotional ups and downs on a vacation, but the fact that they went on a vacation together and that it was renewing a tradition builds the principles into the culture. It frees the family from always being dependent on good example.

Again, in the words of sociologist Emile Durkheim, “When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.” In adapting this to the family we might say, “When mores are sufficient, family rules are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, family rules are unenforceable.”

“When mores are sufficient, family rules are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, family rules are unenforceable.”

Ultimately, if people won’t support the patterns and structures, then you’ll see instability enter the family, and the family may even struggle for survival. But if these patterns become habits, they become strong enough to subordinate individual weaknesses that manifest themselves from time to time. For example, you may not begin a one-on-one or family time with the best of feelings, but if you spend the entire evening doing some fun thing together, you’ll probably end with the best of feelings.

This is one of the most powerful things that I have learned in my professional work with organizations. You must build the principles into the structures and systems so that they become part of the culture itself. Then you are no longer dependent on a few people at the top. I’ve seen situations in which an entire top management team moved into another company, but because of the “deep bench strength” in the culture, there was hardly a blip in the economic and social performance of the organization. This is one of the great insights of W. Edwards Deming, a guru in the field of quality and management and one of the key reasons for Japan’s past economic success. “The problem is not in bad people, it’s in bad processes, bad structures and systems.”2

That is why we give such energy to this organizing role. Without some basic organizing it’s easy for family members to become like ships that pass in the night. So the third level of this tree—depicted by the trunk breaking out into the larger and then smaller limbs—represents your role as an organizer. This is where people experience how the principles are built into the patterns and structures of everyday life so that not only do you say that family is important but they experience it—in frequent meals together, family times, and meaningful one-on-ones. Soon they come to trust these family structures and patterns. They can depend on them, and this gives them a sense of security and order and predictability.

By organizing around your deepest priorities, you’re creating alignment and order. You’re setting up systems and structures that support—rather than get in the way of—what you’re trying to do. Organizing becomes an enabler—literally transforming restraining factors into driving or enabling factors on the path from survival to significance.

Teaching

When one of our sons started junior high school, he began coming home with poor test scores. Sandra took him aside and said, “Look, I know you’re not dumb. What seems to be the problem?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.

“Well,” she said, “let’s see if we can’t do something to help you.”

After dinner they sat down together and went over some of the tests. As they talked, Sandra began to realize that this boy wasn’t reading the instructions carefully before taking the tests. Furthermore, he didn’t know how to outline a book, and there were several other gaps in his knowledge and understanding.

So they began to spend an hour together every evening, working on reading, outlining books, and understanding instructions. By the end of the semester he had gone from 40 percent test scores to all A’s and one A plus!

When his brother saw his report card on the fridge, he said, “You mean that’s your report card? You must be some kind of a genius!”

Teaching moments are some of the supreme moments of family life—those incomparable times when you know you’ve made a significant difference in the life of another family member.

I am convinced that part of the reason Sandra was able to have that kind of influence at that time in his life is because of her modeling, mentoring, and organizing. She placed a high value on education, and everyone in the family knew it. She had a great relationship with this son. She had spent hours and hours with him over the years, building the Emotional Bank Account and doing things he enjoyed. And she organized her time so that she could be with him to help him in this way.

These teaching moments are some of the supreme moments of family life—those incomparable times when you know you’ve made a significant difference in the life of another family member. This is the point at which your efforts help “empower” family members so that they develop the internal capacity and skill to live effectively. And this is at the heart of what parenting and family are all about.

Maria (daughter):

I’ll never forget an experience I had with my mother many years ago when I was a teenager. My father was away on a business trip, and it was my turn to stay up late with Mom. We made hot chocolate, chatted for a while, and then got comfortable in her big bed in time to watch a rerun of Starsky and Hutch.

She was a few months pregnant at the time, and while we were watching TV, she got up abruptly and ran to the bathroom where she stayed for a long time. After a while I realized that something was wrong as I heard her quietly weeping in the bathroom. I went in to find her with her nightgown covered in blood. She had just had a miscarriage.

When she saw me come in, she stopped crying and explained to me in a matter-of-fact way what had happened. She assured me that she was fine. She said that sometimes babies aren’t fully formed the way they should be, and this was for the best. I remember taking comfort in her words, and together we cleaned up and then went back to bed.

Now that I am a mother, I am amazed at how my mother was able to subordinate what must have been heart-wrenching emotions into a learning experience for her teenage daughter. Instead of wallowing in her grief, which would have been the natural thing to do, she cared more about my feelings than her own and turned what could have been a traumatic experience for me into a positive one.

Thus, the fourth level of the tree—the leaves and the fruit—represents your role as a teacher. This means that you explicitly teach others the Primary Laws of Life. You teach empowering principles so that as people understand them and live by them, they come to trust those principles and trust themselves because they have integrity. Having integrity means their lives are integrated around a balanced set of principles that are universal, timeless, and self-evident. When people see good examples or models, feel loved, and have good experiences, then they will hear what is taught. And the likelihood is very high that they will live what they hear so that they, too, become examples and models and even teachers for other people to see and trust. And this beautiful cycle begins again.

This kind of teaching creates “conscious competence.” People can be unconsciously incompetent—they can be completely ineffective and not even know it. Or they can be consciously incompetent—they know they’re ineffective but don’t have the internal desire or discipline to create needed change. Or they can be unconsciously competent—they’re effective but don’t know why. They’re living out positive scripts they’ve been handed by others; they can teach by example but not by precept because they don’t understand it. Or they can be consciously competent—they know what they’re doing and why it works. Then they can teach by both precept and example. It’s this level of conscious competence that enables people to effectively pass knowledge and skill from one generation to another.

Your role as a teacher—in creating conscious competence in your children—is absolutely irreplaceable. As we said in Habit 3, if you do not teach them, society will. And that is what will mold and shape them and their future.

Now, if you’ve done your own interior work so that you are modeling these Primary Laws of Life, if you’ve built relationships of trust by living the Primary Laws of Love, and if you’ve done the organizational work—having regular family times and one-on-ones—then this teaching will be much, much easier.

What you teach will essentially come out of your mission statement. It will be the principles and values that you have determined to be supremely important. And let me tell you here to pay no attention to people who say you shouldn’t teach values until your children are old enough to choose their own. (That statement itself is a “should” statement that represents a value system.) There is no such thing as value-free living or value-free teaching. Everything is hinged and infused in values. You therefore have to decide what your values are and what you want to live by and, since you have a sacred stewardship with these children, what you want them to live by as well. Get them into the wisdom literature. Expose them to the deepest thoughts and noblest feelings of the human heart and mind. Teach them how to recognize the whisperings of conscience and to be faithful and truthful—even when others are not.

When you teach will be a function of the needs of family members, the family times and one-on-ones you set up, and those serendipitous “teaching moments” that present themselves as wonderful gifts to the parent who is watching for opportunity and is aware.

With regard to teaching, I would offer four suggestions:

1. Discern the overall situation. When people feel threatened, an effort to teach by precept—or telling—will generally increase the resentment toward both the teacher and the teaching. It’s often better to wait for or create a new situation in which the person is in a secure and receptive frame of mind. Your forbearance in not scolding or correcting in the emotionally charged moment will communicate and teach respect and understanding. In other words, when you can’t teach one value by precept, you can teach another by example. And example teaching is infinitely more powerful and lasting than precept teaching. Combining both, of course, is even better.

2. Sense your own spirit and attitude. If you’re angry and frustrated, you can’t avoid communicating this regardless of the logic of your words or the value of the principle you’re trying to teach. Restrain yourself or distance yourself. Teach at another time when you have feelings of affection, respect, and inward security. A good rule of thumb: If you can gently touch or hold the arm or hand of your son or daughter while correcting or teaching and you both feel comfortable with this, you’ll have a positive influence. You simply cannot do this in an angry mood.

3. Distinguish between the time to teach and the time to give help and support. To rush in with preachments and success formulas when your spouse or child is emotionally fatigued or under a lot of pressure is comparable to trying to teach a drowning man to swim. He needs a rope or a helping hand, not a lecture.

4. Realize that in a larger sense we are teaching one thing or another all the time because we are constantly radiating what we are.

Always remember that, as with modeling and mentoring, you cannot not teach. Your own character and example, the relationship you have with your children, and the priorities that are served by your organization (or lack of it) in the home make you your children’s first and most influential teacher. Their learning or their ignorance of life’s most vital lessons is largely in your hands.

How the Leadership Roles Relate to the Four Needs and Gifts

In the following Principle-Centered Family Leadership model, you will see the four roles—modeling, mentoring, organizing, and teaching. In the left column, notice how the four basic universal needs—to live (physical/economic), to love (social), to learn (mental), and to leave a legacy (spiritual)—relate to those four roles. Remember, too, the fifth need in the family—to laugh and have fun. Notice in the right column how the four unique human gifts also relate to the four roles.

Modeling is essentially the spiritual. It draws primarily upon conscience for its energy and direction. Mentoring is essentially social and draws primarily upon self-awareness as manifested in respecting others, understanding others, empathizing and synergizing with others. Organizing is essentially the physical and taps into the independent as well as the social will to organize time and life—to set up a family mission statement, weekly family times, and one-on-ones. Teaching is primarily mental. The mind is the steering wheel of life as we are guided into a future that we create first in our minds through the power of our imagination.

In fact, the gifts are cumulative at every level so that mentoring involves conscience and self-awareness. Organizing involves conscience, self-awareness, and willpower. And teaching involves conscience, self-awareness, willpower, and imagination.

You Are a Leader in Your Family

As you look at these four leadership roles and how they relate to the four basic human needs and the four human gifts, you can see how fulfilling them well will enable you to create change in the family.

You model: Family members see your example and learn to trust you.

You mentor: Family members feel your unconditional love and begin to value themselves.

You organize: Family members experience order in their lives and grow to trust the structure that meets their basic needs.

You teach: Family members hear and do. They experience the results and learn to trust principles and themselves.

As you do these things, you exercise leadership and influence in your family. If you do them in a sound, principle-centered way, by modeling, you create trustworthiness. By mentoring you create trust. By organizing you create alignment and order. By teaching you create empowerment.

Like it or not, you are a leader in your family, and one way or another you are already fulfilling each of these roles.

The important thing to realize is that no matter where you are on the destination chart, you are doing all four of these things anyway. You may be modeling the struggle for survival, goal setting, or contribution. You may be mentoring by putting people down, “rewarding” success with conditional love, or loving unconditionally. The organization in your family may be a system of repeated disorganization, or you may have calendars, job charts, rules, or even a family mission statement. Informally or formally, you may be teaching anything from disrespect for the law to honesty, integrity, and service.

The point is that, like it or not, you are a leader in your family, and one way or another you are already fulfilling each of these roles. The question is how you are fulfilling them. Can you fulfill them in a way that will help you create the kind of family you want to create?

Are You Managing or Leading? Doing What’s “Urgent” or What’s “Important”?

For many years now I have asked audiences this question: “If you were to do one thing you know would make a tremendous difference for good in your personal life, what would that one thing be?” I then ask them the same question with regard to their professional or work life. People come up with answers very easily. Deep inside they already know what they need to do.

Then I ask them to examine their answers and determine whether what they wrote down is urgent or important or both. “Urgent” comes from the outside, from environmental pressures and crises. “Important” comes from the inside, from their own deep value system.

Almost without exception the things people write down that would make a tremendous positive difference in their lives are important but not urgent. As we talk about it, people come to realize that the reason they don’t do these things is that they’re not urgent. They’re not pressing. And, unfortunately, most people are addicted to the urgent. In fact, if they’re not being driven by the urgent, they feel guilty. They feel as if something is wrong.

But truly effective people in all walks of life focus on the important rather than the merely urgent. Research shows that worldwide, the most successful executives focus on importance, and less effective executives focus on urgency. Sometimes the urgent is also important, but much of the time it is not.

Clearly, a focus on what is truly important is far more effective than a focus on what is merely urgent. It’s true in all walks of life—including the family. Of course, parents are going to have to deal with crises and with putting out fires that are both important and urgent. But when they proactively choose to spend more time on things that are truly important but not necessarily urgent, it reduces the crises and “fires.”

Just think about some of the important things that have been suggested in this book: building an Emotional Bank Account; creating personal, marriage, and family mission statements; having weekly family times; having one-on-one dates with family members; creating family traditions; working together, learning together, and worshiping together. These things are not urgent. They don’t press on us in the same way as urgent matters such as rushing to the hospital to be with a child who has overdosed on drugs, responding to an emotionally hurting spouse who has just asked for a divorce, or trying to deal with a child who wants to drop out of school.

But the whole point is that by choosing to spend time on important things, we decrease the number and intensity of true emergencies in our family life. Many, many issues are talked over and worked out well in advance of their becoming a problem. The relationships are there. The structures are there. People can talk things over, work things out. Teaching is taking place. The focus is on fire prevention instead of putting out fires. As Benjamin Franklin summarized it, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

The reality is that most families are overmanaged and underled. But the more quality leadership that is provided in the family, the less management is needed because people will manage themselves. And vice versa: The less leadership is provided, the more management is needed because without a common vision and common value system, you have to control things and people to keep them in line. This requires external management, but it also stirs up rebellion or it breaks people’s spirit. Again, as it says in Proverbs, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

This is where the 7 Habits come in. They empower you to exercise leadership as well as management in the family—to do the “important” as well as the “urgent and important.” They help you build relationships. They help you teach your family the natural laws that govern in all of life and, together, institutionalize those laws into a mission statement and some enabling structures.

Without question, family life today is a high-wire trapeze act with no safety net. Only through principle-centered leadership can you provide a net in the form of moral authority in the culture itself, and simultaneously build the mind-set and the skill-set to perform the necessary “acrobatics” required.

The 7 Habits help you fulfill your natural family leadership roles in the principle-based ways that create stability, success, and significance.

The Three Common Mistakes

People often make one of three common mistakes with regard to the Principle-Centered Family Leadership Tree.

Mistake #1: To Think That Any One Role Is Sufficient

The first mistake is to think that each role is sufficient in and of itself. Many people seem to think that modeling alone is sufficient, that if you persist and set a good example long enough, children will eventually follow that example. These people see no real need for mentoring, organizing, and teaching.

Others feel that mentoring or loving is all-sufficient, that if you build a relationship and constantly communicate love, it will cover a multitude of sins in the area of personal example and render organizational structure and teaching unnecessary, even counterproductive. Love is seen as the panacea, the answer to everything.

Some are convinced that proper organizing—which includes planning and setting up structures and systems to make good things happen in relationships and in family life—is sufficient. Their families may be well managed, but they lack leadership. They may be proceeding correctly but in the wrong direction. Or they’re full of excellent systems and checklists for everybody but have no heart, no warmth, no feeling. Children will tend to move away from these situations as soon as possible and may not desire to return—except perhaps out of a sense of family duty or a strong spiritual desire to make some changes.

Others feel that the role of parents is basically to teach by way of telling and that explaining more clearly and consistently will eventually work. If it doesn’t work, it at least transfers responsibility to the children.

Some feel that setting the example and relating—in other words, modeling and mentoring—are all that is necessary. Others feel that modeling, mentoring, and teaching will suffice, and organizing is not that important because in the long run, it’s relationship, relationship, relationship that really counts.

This analysis could go on, but it essentially revolves around the idea that we don’t really need all four of these roles, that only one or two is sufficient. But this is a major—and a very common—mistake. Each role is necessary, but absolutely insufficient without the other three. For example, you might be a good person and have a good relationship, but without organization and teaching, there will be no structural and systemic reinforcement when you are not present or when something happens that negatively affects your relationship. Children need not only to see it and feel it but also to experience it and hear it—or they may never understand the important laws of life that govern happiness and success.

Mistake #2: To Ignore the Sequence

The second mistake, which is even more common, is to ignore the sequence: to think that you can explicitly teach without having the relationship; or that you can build a good relationship without being a trustworthy person; or that verbal teaching is sufficient and that the principles and laws of life contained in this verbal teaching do not need to be embodied into the patterns and process, the structures and systems of everyday family life.

Just as the roots of the tree bring nutrients and life to every other part of the tree, so your own example gives life to your relationships, to your efforts to organize, to your opportunities to teach.

But just as the leaves on the tree grow out of the branches, the branches grow out of the limbs, the limbs grow out of the trunk, and the trunk grows out of the roots, so each of these leadership roles grows out of those that precede it. In other words, there is an order here—model, mentor, organize, teach—that represents the true inside-out process. Just as the roots of the tree bring nutrients and life to every other part of the tree, so your own example gives life to your relationships, to your efforts to organize, to your opportunities to teach. Truly, your modeling is the foundation of every other part of the tree. And every other level is a necessary part of those that grow out of it. Effective family leaders recognize this order, and whenever there’s a breakdown, use the sequence to help diagnose the source of the problem and take the steps necessary to resolve it.

In Greek philosophy human influence comes from ethos, pathos, logos. Ethos basically means credibility that comes from example. Pathos comes from the relationship, the emotional alignment, the understanding that is taking place between people and the respect they have for one another. And logos deals with logic—the logic of life, the lessons of life.

As with the 7 Habits, the sequence and the synergy are the important things. People do not hear if they do not feel and see. The logic of life will not take root if you don’t care or if you lack credibility.

Mistake #3: To Think That Once Is Enough

The third mistake is to think that when you have fulfilled these roles once, you don’t have to do them anymore—in other words, to look at fulfilling these roles as an event rather than as an ongoing process.

Model, mentor, organize, and teach are present-tense verbs that must continually take place. They must go on day in and day out. Modeling or example must always be there, including the example of apologizing when we get off course. We must continually make deposits in the Emotional Bank Account because yesterday’s meal does not satisfy today’s hunger, especially in family relationships where expectations are high. Because circumstances are constantly changing, there is always the role of organizing to accommodate that changing reality so that the principles are institutionalized and adapted to the situation. And explicit teaching must constantly go on because people are continually moving from one level of development to another, and the same principles apply differently at different levels of development. In addition, because of changing circumstances and age and stage realities, new principles apply and come into play that must be taught and reinforced.

In our own family we’ve discovered that each child represents his or her own unique challenge, unique world, and unique needs. Each represents a whole new level of commitment and energy and vision. We even sensed with our last child—out of nostalgia for the past glorious years of raising a family—a tendency to overindulge. Perhaps this comes from our own need to be needed, even though our mission statement focuses on producing independence and interdependence.

Joshua (son):

Being the youngest of nine has its advantages. The older kids are always complaining and moaning to Mom and Dad that I’m spoiled and get away with murder. They say that Mom and Dad aren’t half as strict as they used to be, that I don’t have to work and slave like they did. They ask, “What do you do anyway besides pick up your room and take out the garbage?”

They tell me that when they were growing up, it was harder to become an Eagle Scout, their schoolteachers were meaner and tougher, and Mom and Dad weren’t nearly as well off. They complain that while they have to stay home and put food on the table, I get to go on trips. The boys say they used to lift weights and work out and have muscles, but now they have to be responsible—and that’s why they can’t beat me in a game of tennis or basketball anymore. They say I’d better buckle down and get straight A’s if I want to get into a good college, and I’ll never go to graduate school if I read Cliffs Notes instead of doing my own thinking. They tell me that’s why I should listen to their advice and not make the same mistakes they did. They also say for sure I’ll get to go “pro” in whatever sport I choose because they’ve all offered to train me. And if I just do what they say, my life will be a lot easier than they had it.

Even as I write this book, I find myself increasingly grateful for the significance of the airplane metaphor and the opportunity to constantly change and improve and to apply what I’m trying to teach. This has been a forceful reminder to me that we need to keep on keeping on, to endure to the end and respect the laws that govern growth, development, and happiness in all of life. Otherwise, we become like the well-intended person who, seeing a butterfly struggling to come out of its cocoon, wildly swinging its wings to break the one small tendon that holds it to the old form, the old structure, out of a spirit of helpfulness takes a penknife and cuts the remaining tendon. As a result, the butterfly’s wings never fully develop and the butterfly dies.

So we must never think that our work is done—with our children, our grandchildren, even our great-grandchildren.

Once in the Florida Keys I spoke to a group of extremely wealthy retired couples about the importance of the three-generation family. They acknowledged they had essentially compartmentalized their sense of responsibility to their grown children and their grandchildren. Family involvement was not the central force in their lives; it was an occasional “holidays only” guilt reliever justified by the rationale of helping the kids to become independent from them. But as they opened up and leveled, many acknowledged their sadness in this compartmentalization, even abdication, and resolved to become engaged with their families in a number of new ways. Helping our children become independent is important, of course, but this kind of compartmentalized attitude will never create the intergenerational family support system that is needed today to deal with the onslaught of the culture on the nuclear family.

Families often get caught in one of two extremes. Either they become too enmeshed—that is, too emotionally dependent upon one another (and perhaps socially, financially, or intellectually dependent as well)—or, perhaps through fear of dependence, they become too detached, too independent. This is actually a kind of counter/dependence. Sometimes families cultivate independent lifestyles that have the appearance of interdependence even though deep within, there is profound dependence. Usually, you can distinguish between such dependence and true interdependence by listening to the language; people are either in a blaming and accusing mode, or they focus on the future and opportunities and responsibilities.

Only as family members really pay the price by winning the private victory and producing a genuine and balanced independence can they begin to work on the issues of interdependence. With regard to our own intergenerational family, Sandra and I have concluded that the responsibility of being grandparents is secondary to that of being parents. In other words, we have defined our primary job as that of affirming our own children arid the job they’re doing with their children. That clear value gives us direction in our involvement with our married children and their families. We are convinced that grandparents must never become anesthetized by the “retirement” mind-set into thinking that there is no longer a vital need for family involvement. You never “retire” from the family. There is always a need for providing ongoing support and affirmation, for being at the crossroads, for building a sense of vision of what the intergenerational family is about.

Even when the children are out of the nest, parents need to recognize their children’s need for affirmation of their roles as parents and of how well they’re doing; they need to recognize their grandchildren’s need to have special time with their grandmother and grandfather, both collectively and one-on-one. In this way they serve as another source of reinforcing the teachings given in that home or help compensate for temporary deficiencies in the home.

You never “retire” from the family.

The opportunities for intergenerational love and support and for creating a legacy only keep growing as your posterity keeps growing. And regardless of your age, you can always be that “someone” who the best research shows is vital to healthy, happy children and grandchildren—someone who is absolutely, positively, unconditionally “crazy” about them.3 A grandparent is uniquely able to do that.

Sandra and I feel a tremendous obligation toward each one of our nine children and their spouses and our (so far) twenty-seven grandchildren. We look forward to continuing a sense of stewardship and responsibility toward more grandchildren and toward the fourth generation, the great-grandchildren. We hope we’ll even be around long enough to help raise the great-great-grandchildren.

The first line of defense must always be the family—the nuclear family, the intergenerational family, and the extended family. So we must never think our modeling, mentoring, organizing, and teaching is done.

The Trim Tab Factor

This journey from survival to significance can seem overwhelming at times. It may seem as though there’s too much to do. The gap between the real and the ideal may seem huge. And you’re only one person. Just how much can one person really do?

One of the most helpful images to have of yourself in your family is that of a trim tab—the small rudder that moves the big rudder and eventually changes the entire direction of the plane.

I’d like to suggest a single, powerful image for the transition person to keep in mind.

Airplanes and ships have a small surface often called the trim tab. When this trim tab is moved, it moves a larger surface that acts as a rudder and affects the direction of the ship or plane. While it takes a long period of time to turn a big ocean liner 180 degrees, a plane can be turned quite rapidly. But in both cases it takes that small trim tab to make it happen.

One of the most helpful images to have of yourself in your family is that of a trim tab—the small rudder that moves the big rudder and eventually changes the entire direction of the plane.

If you are a parent, you are obviously a trim tab. In you lies the power to choose, to commit. Commitment is the gear that connects vision to action. If commitment is not there, actions will be governed by circumstance instead of vision. So the first and most fundamental requirement out of which everything else emerges is to make a total commitment to yourself and to your family, including a commitment to live the 7 Habits. Interestingly, this total leadership commitment, or TLC, also stands for “tender, loving care.”

Though parents play the primary leadership role, we have also seen many others—sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and foster parents—represent the trim tab in their families. They have brought about fundamental change and improvement in the family culture. Many have been the real transition figures. They have stopped the transmission of negative tendencies from one generation to another. They have transcended genes, programming, conditioning, and environmental pressures to begin anew.

One man who came from a background of welfare and abuse said this:

All through high school I had this desire to go to college. But Mom would say, “You can’t do that. You’re not smart enough. You’re going to have to be like everyone else and go on welfare.” It was so discouraging.

But then I’d spend the weekend with my sister, and through her I was able to see that there was more to life than just living on welfare and receiving food stamps. She was able to show me that by the way she lived.

She was married. Her husband had a nice job. She worked part-time when she wanted to—she never had to. They lived in a nice neighborhood. And it was through her that I was able to see the world. I’d go on camping trips with their family. We did a lot of things together. Through her I got the thirst for a good life. I thought, This is what I want to do. This is how I want to be able to live. And I can’t do that on welfare.

She’s had a profound influence on my life over the years. Because of her I had the courage to move out west, to go to school, to make something more of my life. Even now we travel back and forth to see each other once a year. We do a lot of talking, a lot of confiding in each other, a lot of sharing of dreams, aspirations, and goals in life. Having and being able to renew that relationship has been a really great thing in my life.

Another husband and father who became an agent of change himself reflected on the agent of change in his life:

When I was nine years old, my parents divorced. My dad left my mom with seven children from seventeen down to one and a half. He was an alcoholic and was not supportive emotionally or financially to the family. He never paid alimony or child support. The year after my dad left, my brother left for the Navy. So I was there at home with five sisters and a mom. I guess that is why I’m kind of crazy. I can hang wallpaper better than I can work on an engine. At any rate, I didn’t have much of a father’s influence in my life.

When I married Cherlynn, I was exposed to a completely different family situation. Her dad was a very strong role model. He was very involved with his children. He devoted tremendous time and energy to them. He encouraged them to set educational and other important goals. He planned family vacations. He called everyone together for family prayer. When there were problems, he hung in there and resolved them in true win-win ways.

This man was such a strong, active participant in the family’s rearing that it left an indelible impression on me. Here was a family that was turning out really well, and I recognized that this father had a big influence on that. So I became something of a sponge—just watching everything, observing, and being very impressed. Without question, Cherlynn’s father has been the largest role model in my life.

Can you see the influence these transition people—these agents of change, these “trim tab” people—have had? Even when there’s no need to overcome a negative past but just to build a positive future, trim tab people can make a profound difference.

The truth is that each of us belongs to a family, and each has the power and the capacity to make a tremendous difference. As author Marianne Williamson has said:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.4

This truly represents the fullness of the human condition and nature—to see in ourselves such capacity that we can transcend our own history and provide leadership for our families, that we can lead our families into becoming catalysts who provide leadership in society as well.

Letting Go

I will never forget the first experience I had rappelling down a mountain. The cliff was probably 120 feet high. I watched as several others were trained to rappel and then did it. I saw them reach the safety of waiting arms and receive the cheers of the people at the bottom.

But when it came to my turn, all my intellectualization went into my stomach, and I experienced sheer terror. I was supposed to walk backward off the cliff. I knew there was a safety rope around me in case I should black out. In my mind I could see the other people who had done it successfully. I had an intellectual understanding of the whole situation and an intellectual sense of security. I was even one of the instructors—not dealing with the technical side but with the social, emotional, and spiritual sides. And forty students were looking to me for leadership and guidance. Nevertheless, I was terrified. That first step off the cliff was the moment of truth, the paradigm shift from faith in my comfort zone to an intellectual, physical system of ideas and ropes. As terrifying as it was, I did it—as did others. I arrived safely at the bottom, invigorated by the success of meeting the challenge.

I can’t think of an experience that better describes the feeling of some who may struggle with the ideas in this book. Perhaps you may feel this way. The idea of a family mission statement and of having a weekly family time and regular one-on-one bonding experiences may be so far out of your comfort zone that you just can’t imagine how you could do it even though it makes intellectual sense to you and you really want to do it.

All I would like to say to you is “You can do this!” Take that step. As the expression goes, “Put your money in your left hand and your guts in your right hand and jump.”

I know we’ve covered a lot of material in this book. But do not let it overwhelm you! If you will just start where you are and keep working, I promise you that unbelievably wonderful insights will come. The more you live these habits, the more you will see how their greatest power is not in the individual habits but in the way they work together to create a framework—or a sort of mental map—that you can apply in any situation.

Consider how helpful an accurate map is in helping you reach any destination. An inaccurate map, on the other hand, is worse than useless—it’s misleading. Imagine trying to reach a destination in the United States when all you have to go by is a map of Europe. You might try harder, but you’d be lost twice as fast. You might think positively and end up being cheerful, but you would still be lost. The bottom line is that, assuming this is the only source of information you have, it’s very unlikely you would ever reach your destination.

In working with families, there are at least three common misleading maps:

1. The “advice from others” map. Projecting our own experience onto other people’s lives is a common thing to do. But think about it: Would your glasses work for someone else? Would your shoes fit someone else’s feet? In some cases, yes, but most often, no. What works in one situation does not necessarily work in another.

2. The social values map. Another common map consists of theories that are based on social values rather than principles. But as we saw in Habit 3, social values are not necessarily the same as principles. For example, if you love a child based on his or her behavior, you may manipulate that behavior in the short run. But the child learns to win love by good behavior. Can that possibly bring good results over time? And does it give a realistic picture of what “love” really is?

3. The “deterministic” map. One of the most subtle of all paradigms is the map that is based on deterministic assumptions. The picture it creates is that essentially we are victims of our genes and circumstances. People who live with this map tend to speak and think in terms such as these:
“That’s just the way I am. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“My grandmother was like that, my mother was like that, and so am I.”
“Oh, that character trait comes from my father’s side of the family.”
“He makes me so mad!”
“These kids are driving me crazy!”
The deterministic map gives a skewed picture of our own deep inner nature, and it denies our fundamental power to choose.

Now these and other maps are at the root of many of the things we think and do in the family. And as long as we have these maps, it is very difficult for us to act outside them.

To illustrate, one time when I spoke to a large group of people, my mother was in the audience. She sat up close to the front, and she became very upset during my speech because two people in the front row kept talking. She felt it was inconsiderate—and even insulting—to her son, and she fretted over what she considered rude and inappropriate behavior.

At the end of the speech she went up to another person who had been sitting in the front row and began to comment rather heatedly on the situation. The other person responded, “Oh, yes! That woman is from Korea, and the gentleman is her interpreter.”

My mother was totally chagrined. Suddenly she saw the whole thing differently. She was ashamed and embarrassed about her judgmental attitude. And she realized that she had lost much of what was offered in the presentation because of it—all because of a wrong map.

Throughout the speech she may have tried to think more charitably toward those two people in the front row. Afterward, she may even have tried to interact with them in positive ways. But as long as her “map” said that they were being rude and discourteous, any effort to simply change her attitude or her behavior would have brought minimal results. It wasn’t until she got a more accurate map that she was able to effect a change in herself and in the situation.

The point is that we all act based on our maps. And if we want to create change in our lives and in our families, it’s not enough to focus on attitudes and behaviors. We have to change the map.

Outside-in will no longer work. Only inside-out will work. As Einstein put it, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” The real key is in learning and using a new way of thinking—a new, more accurate map.

Experiencing the 7 Habits Framework

Next to the emotion of hope and resolve, I would like you, the reader, to take from this book an appreciation of the usefulness and power of the 7 Habits map or framework as a whole in understanding and in resolving any family problem you may have. The key is not in any particular habit or any particular story, however fascinating, or any particular practice, however well it has worked for others. The key is in learning and using this new way of thinking.

You might well ask, “But how can a single approach possibly deal with every conceivable situation—with the challenges of a large growing family, a childless couple, a single-parent family, a blended family, grandparents and grown siblings?” You might also ask, “Can a single approach work in different nations, different cultures?”

The answer is: It can—if it is based on universal needs and universal principles.

The 7 Habits framework is based on a principle-centered approach to fulfilling our needs—physical/economic, social, mental, and spiritual. This framework is simple but not simplistic. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.” The 7 Habits approach is simplicity on the far side of complexity because all the habits are based on universal principles, organized inside-out, to be adapted to any situation by the individuals involved. It addresses both the acute and the chronic problems—both the felt pain and the underlying cause. The 7 Habits approach is not heavy academic theory, nor is it a bunch of simplistic success formulas. It truly is a third alternative in family literature.

To illustrate how you can apply this framework, let me share with you two stories of people who did so successfully in very different situations. As you read these stories, watch for instances where the people involved begin to use the 7 Habits—either to understand or to resolve their concern.

One woman shared this experience of a crisis she had in her marriage:

My husband and I have always had a really volatile marriage. We’re both extremely stubborn people who know exactly what we want and are determined to get it at all costs.

About a year and a half ago, we hit an absolute wall. Three years earlier, Jeff had informed me that he was going to graduate school—across the country in Pennsylvania, no less. I was not happy with that at all because I had a promising career, we had just purchased a home, my family all lived nearby, and I was as happy as a clam right where I was.

So I dug in my heels and resisted ferociously for about six months. Finally I decided, Well, I’m married to this guy, so I guess I’ll go with him. I followed him, resentfully, across the country to Pennsylvania. I supported him financially for the next two years, but that’s about it. I was very grumpy about being there. I’m not much of an easterner, so it took me quite a while to get accustomed to living in Pennsylvania. I had no friends and no family there. I had to start all over. And I totally blamed Jeff for how miserable I was because it had been his idea to drag me there.

When Jeff finally graduated, I said, “Okay, I’ve been working all this time, and now it’s your turn to start looking for a job.” He dutifully went about the normal process of job hunting, applying all over the country and going on interviews. But things just weren’t panning out for him, and he was miserable.

And I didn’t even care that he was miserable. I just wanted him to find a job somewhere—anywhere—and get me out of this hick college town.

Off and on he tried to talk with me about his feelings. He’d say, “You know, Angie, what I’d like to do is start my own business. I don’t really want to work for somebody else.”

And I said, “You know what? I really don’t care. We’re in debt for school. We have no equity. You need to get a job and support us. I want to have more children. I want to settle down. I want to stay in one place for a while, and you’re not making that happen for me.” Finally, I had just had it with his not being able to decide what he wanted to be when he grew up. I got really frustrated and went out west to visit my parents.

While I was there, I decided to interview for a job. And I got it. I called Jeff and said, “You’re not getting a job, so guess what I did. I went out and got a job because I wanted to.” I worked at this job for about three months. During this time I was exposed to the 7 Habits.

Jeff finally decided to come out and talk things over. We were so at odds with each other. He was living in Pennsylvania, and I was living in Utah. We barely spoke to each other. We had no home. Everything we owned was in storage. We had a child. We had come to this crisis point: Were we going to be married or were we going to barrel through our lives separately?

We went to dinner the night he arrived, and I thought, I’m going to try this. I’m going to think win-win if it kills me. I’m going to try to synergize if it’s the last thing I do.

I explained some of these things to Jeff, and he agreed to try it. For the next four or five hours we sat in the restaurant talking things over. We started making a list of what we really wanted from our marriage. He was surprised to find that what I really wanted was stability, that I didn’t care so much if he had a normal job, but a normal job was the way that I perceived stability.

“If I can give you stability and open my own business, would that be acceptable to you?” he asked.

I said, “Sure.”

“If I were able to do this and you were able to find work that you enjoy and live in a part of the country that you enjoy, would that be good for you?”

Again I said, “Sure.”

Then he asked, “Do you not like working? Is that why you keep telling me to get a job?”

And I said, “No. I actually love working, but I don’t like feeling that it’s all my responsibility.”

We went back and forth, and we hammered all these things out. We walked out of the restaurant that night with a list of shared, clearly defined expectations. We wrote them down because we were afraid we wouldn’t commit to our plan if we didn’t have it in writing.

Last September, on the one-year anniversary of that dinner, Jeff pulled out the list, and we took inventory of what had happened.

He had opened his own business, which is flourishing. It’s still a huge struggle. He sometimes works twenty hours a day, and I’ve had to keep mum about the debt we’ve incurred to get it started. But the business has actually paid for itself, and we’re already making significant progress in getting out of debt.

I came to consider my own job more seriously—in part because of the risk involved in Jeff’s setting up his own business. But I also came to enjoy my work. I was promoted several times and finally found exactly what I like to do.

We bought a home. In fact, we discovered we’d done everything on the list. For the first time in our lives, I feel that we’re stable. And I’m happy. It all began on that night when we sat down determined to practice Habits 4, 5, and 6.

Did you notice how this woman made the proactive choice (Habit 1: Be proactive) to face the challenge in her marriage? Even though it was difficult, she decided to practice Habits 4, 5, and 6 (Think win-win; Seek first to understand, then to be understood; Synergize). She explained the process to her husband, and together they created a list of what they really wanted from their marriage (Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind).

Notice how they started to think in terms of mutual benefit (Habit 4: Think win-win) and moved toward mutual understanding (Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood). As they talked back and forth and each became more open, they made more and more discoveries about how the other felt inside. They hammered out the issues and finally left the restaurant with a list of shared expectations (Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind). Later, they reconnected with that list and evaluated their progress (Habit 7: Sharpen the saw).

Can you see how this couple used the 7 Habits framework to create positive change in their marriage and in their lives?

Let’s look at another example. A single mother shared this experience of going through the disability and death of her husband.

Five years ago my husband, Tom, was in an accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. At that point any future planning stopped for us. We had no focus on the future. We weren’t sure there would even be a future. The only focus we had was on Tom’s survival from day to day.

Just when we would begin to feel secure in his progress, he would go back into the hospital again. This happened about every six months. And these weren’t short hospital stays. He would be there for four to eight weeks at a time. During those stays, any progress he’d made would generally fade, and he’d have to start developing what little skills he had all over again.

It was like being on a roller coaster every minute. You knew you were going over the edge, but you never knew when. There was nothing to hold on to. We knew that the accident meant a shorter life expectancy for Tom, but no one could tell us what that meant. It could be an hour, a day, a year, ten years. We lived in a timeless world waiting for the next shoe to drop.

It was during this time that I changed jobs. The environment I had come out of was one where if you weren’t working sixty hours a week and your work wasn’t first, you weren’t working hard enough or smart enough or fast enough. And suddenly I found myself in an environment where Habit 3 (Put first things first) was the rule of thumb. In this environment, I was told, “You decide what’s first. Not only can you decide what’s first, but you can make it first in your life.”

It was very clear that Tom’s life had a very limited time frame, and I realized that his quality of life was a real priority for me. And suddenly I had been given permission to put him first.

So after work I would go home and spend time with Tom. Sometimes I’d take him places. Sometimes we’d just sit and hold hands or watch TV. But I didn’t have to worry about whether I was working hard enough or smart enough or fast enough. Before, I would run home, feed him, and hurry to get everything done before I had to get back to work the next day. My time with him had been very, very limited. But now that I found I could make him the priority he was in my life, I actually spent the most incredible quality time with him. We talked about his death. We planned his funeral. We talked about our life. Mostly we talked about the things we shared and how much we had enriched each other’s lives. We developed a bond in our relationship during those last six months that went far beyond anything we had ever gained in our lifetime before.

The mission statement I wrote during that time contained this phrase: “I will serve the world one person at a time.” And for six glorious months Tom was the person I served. Tom was very clear what his mission was: to make sure that whatever hardships he had to face he faced with dignity and that he was to find the best learning from his experience and share it with others. He felt that part of his purpose in life was to be a role model for his sons, to make sure they knew that whatever life deals you is something to learn from.

Tom’s death gave us, as a family, a sense of freedom. And my mission statement continued to give me a sense of direction. It was hard. After dedicating every moment of my life to my husband, I was left with a terrible void. But suddenly there was time that needed to be spent with children who were also facing a critical time in their lives. And that mission statement gave me permission to spend time in the healing process that all of us needed. During the next few months that “one person” I had determined to serve sometimes became the children; at other times it was myself.

I have found as a single parent that when I remember to focus on my children, when I remember that my role as a mother is my most important role each day, I don’t have any problem making my children the first things in my life. And that has given me something I never had from my own family. It’s given me the opportunity to spend time with my kids and make sure as we go along that I share with them the experiences and values and principles that have helped me through my darkest hours. I can do that without pulling away from anything else in my life. I can still work hard, and my work doesn’t suffer because I’m constantly nurturing and being nurtured by the most important relationships in my life.

Notice how this woman began to use Habit 3 (Put first things first) to organize around her real priorities. Notice how she and her husband talked and began to understand each other’s deepest thoughts and feelings (Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood). Notice how they both practiced Habit 2 (Begin with the end in mind) by creating their mission statements, which gave each of them a tremendous sense of purpose during this difficult time. And notice how this woman’s mission statement continued to give her strength even after her husband died.

Notice her sense of purpose and service orientation in dealing with her children (Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind) and her proactive decision to spend much-needed time with them (Habit 3: Put first things first). Notice, too, the spirit of renewal (Habit 7: Sharpen the saw) and her comfort in spending time with herself and her children in healing.

Even in the midst of her struggles, this woman became a transition person, an agent of change. Instead of passing on the kind of treatment she had received from her own parents, she proactively chose to give her children a legacy of love.

Now, even though these situations are different, can you begin to see how the 7 Habits framework can address both effectively?

Again, the greatest power of this framework is not in each habit individually but in how they work together. In their synergy they create a whole—a powerful, problem-solving framework—that is even greater than the sum of its parts.

Applying the 7 Habits Framework in Your Own Situation

I’d like to invite you now to consider a family challenge that you have and to see how you might apply this framework in your situation. I’ve included a worksheet on the following page to make it easier. I suggest that if you develop the habit of going through this or a similar process with each of your family challenges, you will find your family becoming more and more effective because you will be accessing and integrating the principles that govern in all of life.

And as each challenge brings you back to these underlying principles and as you see how they play out in each situation, you will begin to recognize their timeless, universal nature and to really understand them—almost for the first time. As T. S. Eliot has said, “We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”5

You probably will also discover that one of the most significant benefits (aside from the fact that it works) is that you will have a language with which you can communicate more effectively what’s happening inside your family. In fact, this is one of the things I hear most often from families who are working with the 7 Habits.

One husband and father said this:

I think one of the most important things that has come out of being exposed to the 7 Habits is that we now have a common language to talk about things on a higher level. The language used to be slamming doors or walking out or yelling something in a rage. But now we can talk. We can express ourselves when we feel anger or pain. And when we use words like “synergy” or “Emotional Bank Account,” our kids understand what we’re talking about. And that’s really important.

One wife said this:

The 7 Habits have made us a lot more teachable, more humble. They are a part of everything we do every day. If I say something unkind to my husband, he’ll just remind me that it was a withdrawal, not a deposit. Those words are part of our conversation, and so we can acknowledge it. We don’t get into a fight about it or suffer in silence with hurt feelings over it. It’s a way to put things that isn’t hostile or volatile. It’s subtle and kind.

A woman who was recently married said this:

Becoming a transition person or a transition family probably takes courage more than anything else.

With the 7 Habits there’s an actual language and a framework. Now I can recognize “Oh, yes, we’re thinking win-win here” or “Yes, this is a proactive choice we can lovingly make together” or “Yes, we disagree, but I really do want to understand what you’re believing and saying. It’s truly important to me, and I’m convinced that we will come up with a third alternative that is going to be much better than my own monovision on the subject.”

Truly, the 7 Habits framework will give your family a new language and a new level of communication. It will also empower you to become a transition person, an agent of change, in any situation.

Making “Courage” a Verb

As the rappelling experience I shared earlier suggests, becoming a transition person or a transition family probably takes courage more than anything else. Courage is the quality of every quality at its highest testing point. Take any quality or virtue you can think of—patience, persistence, temperance, humility, charity, fidelity, cheerfulness, wisdom, integrity. Go as far as you can go with that quality until the resisting forces push back and the whole environment is discouraging. At that very moment courage comes into play. In a sense you didn’t need courage until that moment came because you were carried by the momentum of the circumstance.

In fact, it’s because of discouraging circumstances that you exercise courage. If the circumstances and people surrounding you are encouraging—if they put courage into you—then you can often be carried by the energy of their influence. But if they are discouraging—if they draw courage out of you—then you need to draw courage from within.

If you will recall, in Habit 3 we talked about how forty to fifty years ago society was encouraging to the family. Therefore, successful family life took less commitment and prioritization from within because those things were instilled from without. But today the environment is discouraging, so much so that the very hallmark of transition people and transition families today is inner courage. It takes tremendous personal and also family courage today to create an encouraging and nurturing home environment in the midst of the wider, discouraging environment of society.

But we can do it. Perhaps we ought to turn “courage” into a verb so that we can clearly understand that it lies in our power, that we can make it happen. We could say, “I couraged myself through that struggle. I couraged myself into synergy. I couraged myself into seeking first to understand.” Just as forgive is a verb and love is a verb, we could make courage a verb. It’s something that lies in our power. That very thought is encouraging. That very thought strengthens the heart and gives one bravery. When you combine that thought with the vision of what your family can be, it can energize and excite you. It’s compelling. It drives you.

One of the best parts of being a family is that you can encourage one another. You can believe in one another. You can affirm one another.

One of the best parts of being a family is that you can encourage one another. You can put courage into one another. You can believe in one another. You can affirm one another. You can assure one another that you are never going to give up, that you see the potential, and that you are acting in faith based on that potential rather than on any particular behavior or circumstance. You can be bold and strengthen one another’s hearts and minds. You can weave a strong and secure safety net of encouraging circumstances in the home so that family members can cultivate those kinds of internal resiliencies and strengths that will enable them to deal with the discouraging, anti-family circumstances outside.

“Sweet Love Remembered”

A short while before my mother died, I opened a love letter from her on a plane flying to some speaking engagement. She wrote such letters frequently even though we talked daily on the phone and visited personally every week or so. Private, effusive letters were her special form of expressing affirmation, appreciation, and love.

I remember reading her letter and feeling the tears roll off my cheeks. I remember feeling a little embarrassed, a little childlike, a little ashamed for being so vulnerable. Yet I felt so warmed and nurtured and treasured. I thought, Everyone needs a mother’s love and a father’s love.

When Mother passed away, we put on her tombstone a line from one of Shakespeare’s great sonnets: “For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings…”

I would encourage you to read this sonnet slowly and carefully. Let your imagination fill in the richness and meaning of each phrase.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least.

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate:

For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings,

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

All of us can be our children’s and grandchildren’s “sweet love remembered.” Can anything be more important or more significant than that?

As with many of you parents, Sandra and I have shared supernal, marvelous, spiritual experiences with the birth of each of our children—particularly the last three when fathers were permitted to be present in the delivery room—and also when we were invited to be with our daughter Cynthia at the birth of her sixth child.

Our children were born before the modern-day miracle of the epidural was commonplace. I remember once when Sandra was in the last stages of labor with no anesthetic, she asked me to help her breathe correctly. She had been trained in this breathing technique during fourteen special preparation classes we had attended together at the hospital. As I encouraged and tried to model, Sandra said that all her instincts were to breathe opposite to the training given and that she had to “discipline herself and really focus to do it right.” She also said I was clueless as to what she was really experiencing although she valued my intention and effort.

As I saw Sandra go into the “valley of the shadow,” I felt an inexpressible, overwhelming love and reverence for her—in fact, for all mothers, for their many acts of sacrifice. I came to feel that all truly great things are born of sacrifice and that only through sacrifice—focused, dedicated parental sacrifice—can a truly good family come into being.

Through it all and despite the fact that we’re off track 90 percent of the time, I am absolutely convinced that the highest role and the most important stewardship we could ever have is that of mother or father. As my own grandfather, Stephen L Richards, said—and his words have impacted me powerfully over the years with regard to my own role as husband and father—“Of all the vocations that men may pursue in this life, no vocation is fraught with as much responsibility and attended with as much boundless opportunity as the great calling of husband and father. No man, whatever his accomplishments may be, can, in my judgment, be said to have achieved success in life if he is not surrounded by his loved ones.”

The Union of Humility and Courage

After a lifetime of study, Albert E. N. Gray made a profound observation in a speech titled “The Common Denominator of Success.” He said, “The successful person has the habit of doing the things unsuccessful people don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either, but they subordinate their disliking by the strength of their purpose.”6

As leaders in your family, you have a very strong and worthy purpose. And that purpose—that sense of destination—will motivate you to have courage and to subordinate your fears and your discomfort in starting some of the things you learned about in this book.

In fact, humility and courage could be compared to the mother and father of a metaphorical family we all have within us. It takes humility to recognize that principles are in control. It takes courage to submit to principles when the social value systems go in another direction. And the child of the union of courage and humility is integrity, or a life that is integrated around principles. The grandchildren are wisdom and an abundance mentality.

These are the things that enable each of us—as individuals and as families—to have hope even when we get off track and to keep coming back time and time again. We must always remember that there are “true north” principles that govern unerringly, that we have the power of choice to apply those principles in our own situation, and that our destination can be reached.

Even with all the struggles inherent in family life, there is no effort that brings richer rewards, sweeter treasures, and deeper satisfactions. With all the energy of my soul, I affirm that despite its challenges, family life is worth all the effort, sacrifice, giving, and long-suffering. And there is always a brightness of hope.

I once watched a television program where two prisoners independently expressed how unfeeling they had become as a result of their incarceration; they had reached a point where they no longer cared about anyone and were no longer influenced by anyone else’s pain. They told how completely selfish they had become, how totally wrapped up they were in their own lives, how they essentially saw people as “things” that either helped them get what they wanted or kept them from getting it.

Both of these men were given an opportunity to learn more about their ancestors. They became acquainted with how their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had lived their lives—their struggles, triumphs, and failures. In their interviews, both prisoners spoke about how enormously meaningful this had become to them. Realizing that their ancestors also had challenges and struggled to overcome them caused something to happen inside the prisoners’ hearts. They began to see others differently. Each began to think, Even though I have made terrible mistakes, my life is not over. I’m going to make my way through this, and like my ancestors, I’m going to leave a legacy that my descendants will be able to see. It doesn’t even matter if I never leave prison. They will have my history and my intentions. They will better understand the way I lived my life here. These men—sitting there in their orange prison suits, all the hardness gone from their eyes—had found conscience and hope. It came from coming home, from finding out about their ancestors—their family.

We never know when human beings will be inspired to reach into the depths of their soul and exercise their most precious gift of life: the freedom to choose to finally come home.

Everyone has a family. Everyone can ask, “What is my family legacy?” Everyone can seek to leave a legacy. And I personally believe that even beyond our own influence and the strength of our family, we have the ability to tap into a higher form of influence: the power of God. If we continue in faithfulness—never giving up on wayward sons or daughters but doing everything in our power to reach them and continually offering a prayer of faith—God may take a hand in the situation in His way and in His time. We never know when human beings will be inspired to reach into the depths of their soul and exercise their most precious gift of life: the freedom to choose to finally come home.

God bless you in your effort to create a beautiful family culture. And God bless your family. As I quoted in Chapter 1:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.

Some of the most cherished moments in my life have come fairly frequently when disembarking a plane. I would see a loving family waiting there for a family member who had been away and was coming home. I would stop and watch and feel. As these loved ones embraced one another, with tears of joy and gratitude and reuniting showing their precious caring and true wealth, my eyes also moistened and my heart longed to come home. They—and I—were all reaffirmed once again in the truth that life is really about coming home.

SHARING THIS CHAPTER WITH ADULTS AND TEENS

Moving to Higher Destinations

• Review the material here. Identify the four levels—survival, stability, success, and significance—and discuss the main characteristics of each level. Ask family members: Where are we as a family? What is our desired destination?

• Discuss the statement: “Contributing together as a family not only helps those who benefit from the contribution, but also strengthens the contributing family in the process.”

• Review the material here. Talk together about the idea of being problem minded (foot on the brake) versus being opportunity minded (foot on the gas). Ask family members: How can we remove restraining forces so that driving forces will move us forward?

Leadership in the Family

• Review the material that describes the Principle-Centered Family Leadership Tree (here). Discuss the four leadership roles: modeling, mentoring, organizing, and teaching. Talk about the main characteristics of each role. Ask the following questions:

—Why is being trustworthy important to modeling?

—Why is building trust a vital part of mentoring? How can the idea of the Emotional Bank Account help build trust?

—Why does planning and organizing play such a significant role in family influence and leadership? What is the principle of alignment and how is it applied here?

—Why is teaching important in the family? How does the principle of empowerment work?

• Discuss the three common mistakes with regard to principle-centered family leadership (here).

• Review the difference between discipline and punishment. You may want to refer back to Habit 4, here. Ask: How can principle-centered leadership help us discipline without punishing?

• Discuss the trim tab factor (here), letting go (here), courage (here), and humility (here). Talk about how these ideas relate to family guidance and child development.

• Consider together: Are we managing or leading in our family? What is the difference?

• Discuss the statement: “Whether you realize it or not, you are a leader in your family!” Why is this statement true?

SHARING THIS CHAPTER WITH CHILDREN

“We are kind to others and try to help them”

• Discuss the following situations:

1. Amy asked her dad to help her with her homework. He was tired, but he smiled and helped anyway.

2. Adam wanted to play with his toy car, but his twin brother was playing with it. Mom asked Adam, “Couldn’t your brother play with it just a little longer?”

Ask: What happens when family members are kind and unselfish with one another? How do family members feel?

• Write the name of each family member on a slip of paper and put all the slips in a box. Have family members draw names without letting anyone else know whose name they have. Encourage everyone to be kind and helpful toward the person whose name they drew throughout the coming week and to notice how it makes them feel.

• Tell the following story:
Sammy stood looking out the window, watching the rain pouring down. He heard a crying sound coming from outside. He listened very carefully. He tried to see through the glass, but it was raining too hard to see clearly. He quickly went to the front door and opened it. On the doorstep was a little brown kitten, soaking wet and meowing over and over again. Something inside Sammy swelled up at the sight of that little wet animal. He gently picked up the kitten and felt it shivering. He held the kitten tightly next to his chest and walked into the kitchen. Sammy’s sister put some clean rags in a little box. She dried off the kitten. She put some milk in a saucer. Sammy sat down beside the box and put his hand on the kitten to warm it. It stopped shivering. Sammy felt warm and good. “I’m so glad we heard the kitten,” Sammy said. “Maybe we saved his life.”
Ask family members: How did Sammy feel about the kitten? Responses may include: He felt sorry for it because it was wet and cold. He wanted to be kind and help it. It made him feel good to be kind and want to help.

• Share stories from your personal or family experience of times when you or others showed kindness and helped others. Share how it made you feel. Help children think of ways they can help others who are outside the family. Encourage them to follow through during the week. Have them share their feelings.

• Involve younger children in service projects that you perform for neighbors, friends, and community. As you model an abundance mentality, your children will grow up to be sharing, contributing adults who truly have an interest in the welfare of others.