Character First

Character First by Stephen R. Covey Inte rvie w with St e ph e n R. C ov ey May 1994 Eve n t he ve ry be st str uct ur e, s yst em, st yle, a n d skills c an 't c om pe ns at e c om plet ely fo r defici en cies i n c h ar act er. Wh y d o y o u e mp h asi ze t he im p ort an ce of c h ar act er in th e live s of le ad er s? Because I believe that character (what a person is) is ultimately more important than competence (what a person can do). Obviously both are important, but character is foundational. All else builds on this cornerstone. Also, I believe that courage and consideration are the key building blocks of emotional maturity, and that emotional maturity is foundational to all decisions and all relationships. It relates to all the great management themes of the past. That's why I place my Seven Habits along a maturity continuum to suggest that the aim of all these habits is to help us achieve character and competence, courage and consideration. We can then be highly effective with tasks and with people. Wh y is t he em otio n ally mat ur e pe rs on als o hi g hly eff ec tive ? Mature people may have a lot of ego strength, but they also have high respect for other people. They balance their courage with consideration. So they communicate in the spirit of "I and thou," the expression philosopher Martin Buber used in his book, I and Thou. Immature people communicate in terms of "I and it" where they treat people like objects or things, or "it and it" where they manipulate and treat themselves in the same way. Or they may think in term of "it and thou," having respect for others, but not for themselves. Wh e n di d y ou first arriv e at t his n otio n of m atu rity b ein g a b ala nc e bet we e n c ou ra g e a n d co nsid er atio n ? I first learned this concept from one of my professors at the Harvard Business School, Rhand Saxenian. At the time, Rhand was working on his own doctoral thesis on the subject. This is how he taught it: emotional maturity is the