Stephen Covey's Principle-Centered Leadership Model - Summary

Natural laws also called principles operate in the nature whether you discover them or not, and whether you use them or not. If you use, natural laws, and act in their direction you will succeed. If want a result contrary to them and act against them you are bound to fail. This is the essence of Covey's Principle-centered leadership model. It is scientific leadership. Develop science, find out or discover natural laws and develop your leadership method based on it. Find the principles and develop practice based on it.

People have to recognize and live in harmony with such basic principles as fairness, equity, justice, integrity, honesty, and trust.

Stephen Covey proposed a wheel of personal life centered on principles. Principles are at the center of the wheel. This center of principles guides us in four dimensions specified by Covey.

1. Security dimension of a person: It represents sense of worth, identity, emotional anchorage, self-esteem and personal strength.

2. Guidance: It is the direction was one receives and absorbs in life. There is an internal monitor that compares the conduct of a person with the standards and principles that he has accepted and he has to accept. Covey gives the name conscience to it.

3. Wisdom: Wisdom refers to a sage perspective on life. It is a keen understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. The development of wisdom involves observation (discernment), comprehension and judgment.

When people are low on wisdom, their maps are inaccurate, and their actions and thinking are based on distorted and discordant principles. A person with high end wisdom dimension has a good life compass that shows him the true north and all the parts of his behavior and the principles he uses in developing his behavior are properly related to each other. Also as we move from low end to high end in wisdom, there is higher commitment to the ideal (things as they should be) in managing the realities (things as they are). Wisdom also provides the ability to identify pure joy (sat-chidananda) from temporary pleasure.

4. Power: Power is the capacity to act and accomplish something. It also includes the strength and courage. It is also the vital energy to observe or identify choices and to take a decision, that is selection of one of them as the right way. At the low end, we have powerless people. At the high end are visionaries who plan and make things happen which seem to be impossible to many in the existing conditions.

These four dimensions or factors are interdependent. When these four factors are developed in a balanced and harmonious manner, a noble personality emerges. A great leader becomes available to the organization.

While principles are the center of a wheel of relationships and a person develops certain dimensions of his personality based on the principles, the relations are with self, spouse, other family members,, money, possessions, work, pleasure, friend, enemy and church. Many more can be named. It is in these relations that principles and the four great personality dimensions come into behavioral manifestations that give effectiveness and efficiency.

In the case of organizations, the relationships are with owner, customer, employee, supplier, programs, policies, competition, image, technology, and profit. Some more can be added.

Real empowerment comes from educating a person in both principles and practices. Principles are the why to do explanations. Practice is how to do explanation.

The challenge for a leader is to be a light. He should not be judge. He has to be a model, not a critic.

In the words of Stephen Covey, "The Challenge is to be a light, not a judge; to be a model, not a critic."

Principle centered leadership is to be practiced from the inside out on four levels.

1. Personal or self level (leading self)
2. Interpersonal (leading others)
3. Managing task (short term with existing people and processes)
4. Managing an organization  (developing it, recruiting people, training them, building teams, solving problems, compensating them, creating alignment etc. strategy and systems development)

There are certain master principles to be used at each level.


Level                                -             Principles

At personal level             -  trustworthiness at the personal level (Character and Competence)
(My relation with myself)

At interpersonal level -      trust - Trust at the interpersonal level
(my relationships and interactions with others)  -  If two people trust each other they can enjoy clear communications, empathy, synergy, and productive interdependency.

At task level - management -       empowerment
(My responsibility to get a job done with others)

At organizational level management - alignment
(My need to organize people - to recruit them, train them, compensate them, build teams, solve problems, and create aligned structure, strategy and systems.)

Chapter 1  Characteristics of Principles-Centered Leaders

1. They are continually learning.
2. They are service oriented.
3. They radiate positive energy
4. They believe in other people
5. They lead balanced lives.
6. They see life as an adventure.
7. They are synergistic: Principles centered leaders practice the principle of synergy. Synergy is a state in which the whole is more than the sum of the parts. The output from the combination of a synergistic leader and a follower is always more than the individual outputs of the leader and the follower. The leader increases his followers and a follower follows a leader for this benefit. Leader who practice this principle are amazingly productive with  new and creative ways and help their followers to increase their output helping them to work smartly. In team endeavors, these leaders strive to complement the weaknesses of some members with the strengths of some others so that team becomes more productive
8. They exercise for self-renewal: This is the practice of the seventh habit. Sharpen the Saw. In a way, it is restatement of first principle. They are continually learning and practicing to increase their productive capability.

Chapter 2 Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

1. Be Proactive

2. Begin with the End in Mind

3. Put First Things First

4. Think Win - Win

5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood.

6. Synergise

7. Sharpen the Saw


More on the 7 Habits

1. Be Proactive
Proactive people feel control of their life is in their hands.

Proactivity is the essence of real leadership.

Every great leader has a high level of proactive energy and vision - a sense that (they feel: )

 "I am not a product of my culture, my conditioning and the conditions of my life; I am a product of my principles, values, attitudes, beliefs and behavior - and those things I control."

7. Sharpen the Saw
Detailed article on Sharpen the Saw
Sharpen the Saw - The Mental Dimension - Stephen Covey's Explanation

A Poem on Sharpening the Saw and Seven Habits

I keep myself fit by exercising and  eating right

I improve my knowledge I read and write

I help my friends and feel delight

I wish in the world all enjoy without a fight

I live my life according to Covey's principles

I  remember them as important values

I try to understand what is said by others

Covey said that gives victories

Let me recount the effective seven

Be proactive, think of end and begin

Do first thing first and think win win

Understand first, synergize, and sharpen

Poem written by Narayana Rao K.V.S.S. on 1 March 2015

Chapter 3. Three Resolutions

1. To overcome the restraining forces of appetites and passions:

I resolve to exercise self-discipline and self-denial.

2. To overcome the restraining forces of pride and pretension:

I resolve to work on character and competence.

3. To overcome the restraining forces of unbridled aspiration and ambition:

I resolve to dedicate my talents and resources to noble purposes and to provide service to others.

Chapter 4. Primary Greatness

Three Essential Character Traits

Integrity: As we clearly identify our values and proactively organize and execute around our priorities on a daily basis, we keep meaningful promises and commitments.

Maturity: Balance between Courage and Consideration
If a person can express his feelings and convictions with courage balanced with consideration for the feelings and convictions of another person, he is mature.

Abundance Mentality: Our thinking that there is plenty out there for everybody.

Chapter 5 A Break with the Past

Five Suggestions

• Never make a promise we will not keep.
• Make meaningful promises, resolutions, and commitments to do better and to be better - and share with a loved one.
• Use self-knowledge and be very selective about the promises we make.
• Consider promises as a measure of our integrity and faith in ourselves.
• Remember that our personal integrity or self-mastery is the basis for our success with others.

Chapter 9

Principles Centered Power

• Persuasion
• Patience
• Gentleness
• Teachableness
• Acceptance
• Kindness
• Openness
• Compassionate Confrontation
• Consistency
• Integrity

Eight ways to enrich marriage and family relationships

1. Retain a long-term perspective.
2. Rescript your marriage and family life.
3. Reconsider your roles.
4. Reset your goals.
5. Realign family systems.
6. Refine three vital skills (time management, communication, and problem-solving).
7. Regain internal security.
8. Develop a family mission statement.


Making Champions of Your Children

1. Build your children’s self-esteem.
2. Encourage primary greatness.
3. Encourage your children to develop their own interests.
4. Try to create an enjoyable family culture.
5. Plan ahead for family events.
6. Try to set an example of excellence.
7. Teach them to visualize so that they can recognize their own potential.
8. Adopt their friends.
9. Teach your children to have faith, to believe and trust others, and to
affirm, build, bless, and serve others.


Chronic Problems of the Organization

The organization has:

1. No shared vision or values.
2. No strategic path.
3. Poor alignment.
4. Wrong style.
5. Poor skills.
6. Low trust.
7. No self-integrity.


Quality leadership values people. It is rooted in the timeless principles of faith and hope, constancy and consistency, and virtue and truth in human relations.


 Principle-centered leadership “embraces the principles of fairness and kindness and makes better use of the talents of people for increased efficiency, but also leads to quantum leaps in personal and organizational effectiveness” (p. 180).

Leader has to empower the followers and trust them. They in turn empower the leader and trust him.

Top 100 Management Theory Articles of the blog

Updated 25 December 2019,  2 May 2019, 29 July 2016, 2 March 2015,

Improvised Choreography Model of Management - Management Model Appropriate for Turbulent Frontline Activities

In dance, choreography is the act of designing dance.  A choreographer is one who creates dances.
In general, choreography is used to design dances that are intended to be performed as concert dance.

The art of choreography involves the specification of human movement and form in terms of space, shape, time and energy.

Dances are designed by applying one or both of these fundamental choreographic methods:

Improvisation, in which a choreographer  might specify a sequence of movements that are to be executed in an improvised manner over the course of a musical phrase. Improvisational scores typically offer wide latitude for personal interpretation by the dancer.

Planned choreography, in which a choreographer dictates motion and form in detail, leaving little or no opportunity for the dancer to exercise personal interpretation.  (Wikepedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choreography_(dance))


Important points of the research paper
Dancing in the dark: creativity, knowledge creation and (emergent) organizational change
Fabrizio Maimone and Marta Sinclair
Journal of Organizational Change Management
Vol. 27 No. 2, 2014 pp. 344-361

39 citations according to google scholar

Purpose –  to define the key elements at individual and collective level that may contribute to the development of organizational spaces that favour a climate for creativity and knowledge creation as precondition of “emergent change”; and to contribute to the development of a multi-perspective approach to creativity and knowledge creation in twenty-first century organizations.

 It uses the metaphor of dance to explore the relationship between emergent change and knowledge creation and sharing, and identifies the main factors that may impact this relationship.

These factors are critical for change management in modern organizations. The authors propose guidelines and provide examples how to manage work spaces and facilitate the organizational work. .

This paper provides a systematic, multi-perspective approach to the understanding and management of social, cultural and individual characteristics of bottom-up organizational change, focusing on its fundamental aspects of creativity and knowledge creation.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for driving change in organizations operating in today’s chaotic environment.

The study is focused on the bottom-up and emergent side of organizational change. All days in every organization people discover new ideas and new ways to solve problems, do things, collaborate, communicate, negotiate, etc. and sometimes these new ways are distributed through the internal borders of the organization and transformed into shared routines and practices. This kind of organizational change is set in the context of knowledge creation and sharing within the so-called ba (space of knowledge). It is particularly critical for organizations operating in the turbulent scenarios of the twenty-first century that need to enhance their flexibility in order to become more adaptable to external changes and proactive toward technological and market transformations.

The hidden dimensions of this process: creativity, emotional climate, intuition and organizational diversity, and the critical role of organizational space are explored. The authors  argue that the metaphor of dance is apt to describe the complex and paradoxical nature of emergent organizational change. The metaphor of dance describes effectively the dynamics of emergent change observable in complex organizations coping with a turbulent environment.

Every time a group (or an individual) needs to solve new problems, or to cope with the unexpected, they have to explore, improvise the current practice and create collectively new strategies and tools. The dance metaphor describes the processes of adaptation and continuous improvement that are enacted every day in many organizations, to fit standardized procedures and shared routines into organizational variety and emergent change.

The implicit idea is that organizations and their environment are supposed to evolve faster than policies, processes and procedures. The complex organization has to maintain  coherence but change to adapt to the environment. Such organizations need to balance creativity and routines, fluidity and definition, diversity and identity.

Since modern organizations are supposed to be a mixture of patterned behaviors and day-by-day emerging change, they need to reconcile routines with spontaneous and unplanned change and this involves horizontal processes of knowledge creation (knowledge creation by participants instead of the manager). People discover and try every day new ways to adapt prescribed procedures and practices to an environment characterized by continuous evolution. In fact, they interpret endlessly a choreography, composed of a set of goals, processes and procedures established by the management, in order to dance harmoniously with other organizational members and act the plot of organizational routines. This choreography is based on a mix of structure and improvization, management and autonomy, heteronymous and self-organizing processes.

As we know, all dancers need to adapt the choreography to their style and abilities, to specific conditions of the stage and to different characteristics of the market that changes continuously. As a result, they are supposed to reinterpret the choreography on a daily basis. And sometimes one dancer creates new steps, sometimes a group of dancers create a new partition of the choreography. The dance thus becomes a mix of planning and improvization that depends on the people but also on the place where it is performed. When the choreographer decides to change the script, the dancers need to learn and reinterpret a new choreography. Then a new adaptation and change process may occur. We can achieve a better choreography, and therefore a better dance, if the dancers are allowed to participate in the rendition of the choreography: if people are involved and may contribute to the project of change.

The key concepts that may enhance change-related creativity and knowledge creation

The key concepts of emergent change that may enhance change-related creativity and knowledge creation in twenty-first century organizations examined are:

. the concept of “chaordic” emergent change;
. the main characteristics of organizational flexibility;
. the dynamic structure of (social) organizational space and its relationship with organizational change;
. the critical role played by creativity and knowledge creation as enablers of emergent change;
. the main affective and cultural catalysts that might foster emergent change: intuition, emotional and organizational climate and organizational diversity; and
. practical implications of the proposed approach.

Emergent organizational change

Modern organizations could be described as complex systems in continuous search of equilibrium between order and chaos. They function in a non-linear fashion through interdependence, self-organizing processes, continuous change, paradoxes and ambiguity.  Complex organizational systems are characterized by the so-called “emergence”, e.g. by “the arising of new, unexpected structures,

patterns, properties, or processes in a self-organizing system” .

According to the authors, scope and freedom of continuous stream of minor adjustments encourages improvization, continuous adaptation and learning. This process occurs also when change is not totally spontaneous but is driven by specific interventions of change management. According to Orlikowski (1996), change programs “work” only if they are fine-tuned and adjusted by organizational actors in specific contexts. Tsoukas and Chia (2002) defined this kind of change as “organizational becoming.”

The theoretical perspectives presented above may be integrated, adopting the chaordic change theory. Most successful innovative companies operating in the high-tech sector adopt chaordic organizational models, in order to facilitate innovation and continuous change. This requires not only improvization but also “rhythmically choreographed transitions”. This perspective could be applied also to other types of organizations that need to cope with a very turbulent and hypercompetitive scenario. “Chaordic change” may arise from chaos as a result of the inter-play between managerial strategies and spontaneous change . Change is not only the product of engineered effort, nor solely the result of completely free improvization of organizational players, but a complex process that happens somewhere on the edge between order and chaos.

The relationship between emergent change and organizational flexibility

According to Ashby’s (1964) Law of Requisite Variety, modern organizations need to increase the level of internal variety to cope with the complexity of environment.

A flexible organizational has to  conserve its identity, mission and purpose but has to change in certain directions or features to  discover new opportunities and solutions that are in line with its mission and also to sustain the organization. Organizational flexibility requires both adaptability and dominance because it is important to maintain the system’s identity but at the same time it is necessary to assure that it evolves with the external environment.

We argue that the metaphor of dance could help explain the dynamics making organizations more flexible and adaptable.  Using our metaphor, managers have to teach workers how to manage their freedom of interpreting the dance, producing harmony from diversity. To show them how to be good dancers, managers as well should perform their ballet in harmony with their peers and superiors. Otherwise each manager could potentially create his own dystonic choreography.

Volberda and Lewin (2003) propose, to foster their flexibility, organizations need to develop a leadership style based on delegation and people’s commitment at every level of the structure. According to the authors, managers should become the stewards of the change process and focus their managerial role on value management, creating the necessary framework to guide and enabling decision making on every level of the hierarchy. This approach implies that management commits to guiding the evolution of behaviors that emerge in the course of interaction of independent agents and invests in implementing process controls whenever possible instead of relying on outcome controls”. We argue that to improve their level of flexibility and adaptability, organizations need to facilitate the shift from the management of behaviors that emerge in the course of interaction of “independent” agents, to the management of behaviors that emerge in the course of interaction of “inter-dependent” agents. For this reason, adopting again our metaphor of dance, organizational agents need to learn to dance together, in order to find a balance between chaos and order, identity and fragmentation. Therefore, we assume that managers need to pay attention not only to individual behavior, but also to behavior at inter-individual, group, personal network, unit and branch level. If the dance is only individual, it could produce misalignments that favor organizational fragmentation and schizophrenia. This might affect unfavorably the balance between adaptation and maintenance of identity traits, which is critical for organizational survival in the long run.

Organizational space: the place where the emergent change begins

Organizations should improve their communication system, in terms of strategies, policies, tools and communication spaces, and develop people’s communication skills, in order to catalyze organizing processes and provide a smart interface for the proactive management of complexity. It will  assure the necessary level of coordination and coherence of the organizational system.

Organizational space is a typical emergent phenomenon of organizational complexity,  related to the process of organizing. Its configuration changes organically in response to the ongoing enactment of relationships among all involved players/dancers, within and across the organization. Organizational space does not necessarily correspond to a physical space. It is rather a topological configuration produced by social interactions, an inter-subjective dimension that could transcend the limits of physical boundaries and organizational structures (Wai-chung Yeung, 2005). In this sense, it is relational and discursively constructed.  The concept of organizational spaces is derived from the theory of social space Lefebvre (1991). Space can be viewed as a product of social relations that affect and change the environment . One organization may produce several organizational spaces and ICT, especially Enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools, that extend the dominium of organizational spaces beyond the organizational boundaries (Maimone, 2007). An apt management of organizational spaces may thus help solve the apparent paradox between control and autonomy,  as it would assure the maintenance of organizational identity and schemata. Using the dance metaphor, organizational space could be seen as the space of performance, a product of the interaction of the stage, the dancers, the audience.

Organizations need to facilitate the development of intra- and inter-organizational networks, provide a meta-narration and construct an inclusive and dynamic identity, in order to build a bridge among different organizational spaces. Leadership, climate management, competence development, communication fluxes and network management could favor a managerial control based on proactive management of emergent change in flexible organizational spaces.

Creativity, knowledge creation and emergent organizational change

Since emergent change is the result of a continuous process of adaptation of existing organizational processes, routines and practices and the creation of new ones, creativity and knowledge creation can be considered its key factors.  Emergent change is based on bottom-up spontaneous behaviors and therefore, like in an improvised dance performance, it implies a creative act that may lead to the production of new knowledge. The term “new” refers to the adaptation and the active re-combination of “old” knowledge in the present choreography.

The collective power of creative individuals is shaped by organizational spaces and their social structure, which in turn emanate magnetism for creative people, similar to characterization of creative cities. This can be achieved by a leadership style that incentivizes greater autonomy, corporate entrepreneurship, critical and creative thinking, and information and knowledge sharing interaction, freedom to experiment (and to fail), organizational and supervisory encouragement, resource availability and work group support. Creativity is a learning process that needs to be practiced and encouraged. Organizations can practice creative behavior through sympathetic leadership and support systems. Hence they should incentivize the expression of new ideas and divergent thinking, nurturing unconventional problem solving and exploratory thought.

Personality, cognitive preferences and relevant knowledge play also an important role in the creative process.  Organizational environment fosters creativity if it is effectively managed. Creativity in a workplace dance needs the “right place” to be incentivized and nurtured; it does not happen by itself but is rather the outcome of hard work. Many authors argued that knowledge creation is the flip side of creativity.  Human creativity results in knowledge by discovering ‘truth,’ justifying observations, defining problems, and solving them”. Therefore creativity, at individual, group and organizational level, plays an important role in the process of knowledge creation  where change occurs through individual and environmental interactions in a space generating knowledge.  Metaphorically speaking, ba is the place where dance is created and diffused through the process of socialization  This could be a physical space  or it could be also a cyber ba, e.g. digital media. As we know, personal networks are critical for the process of knowledge sharing . These rely on communications and relational factors to share new interpretations of the choreography and/or new steps, e.g. to enable organizational dissemination of changes. Organizations can encourage this by developing communities of practice, creating Web 2.0 communication infrastructures, like corporate social networks and digital tools, such as knowledge wikies.

 Next step would be an integrated and participatory design of physical and virtual work spaces, aimed to foster collaboration, relationship building, knowledge sharing and collective intelligence within and across organizational boundaries. Sensitive leadership may also nurture trust that it is necessary to facilitate knowledge sharing and, using our dance metaphor, to choreograph the dance so its interpretation and the proposition of new steps by interacting players can yield their full potential.



The role of intuition
Intuition as a form of direct knowing (Sinclair, 2011).

Emotional climate as enabling factor

Employees’ emotional perceptions of work environment are an integral part of the context that influences also levels of creativity.

Several emotional conditions appear to be present when the organization values and encourages creativity. An important role plays psychological comfort, stemming from freedom to express one’s emotions and personality in the workplace as well as perceptions of a pleasant and safe environment. Other relevant factors are management focus on employee welfare and employees’ contentment with structural efficacy, the sense of satisfaction with relationships and communication. Such environment requires smooth social interactions and an effective emotions management . In order to achieve these results organizations have to nurture and manage emotional climate actively through selection and development of appropriate staff, and emphasis on effective communication . They also need to pay attention to physical and emotional attributes of the organizational space so that staff can remain comfortable and “true to themselves”

Practical implications

Consistent with the theoretical framework proposed above, we provide suggestions for the improvement of organizational dance. Managers should adopt a leadership style that encourages active listening and stimulating staff to challenge their bosses; use managerial communication as a tool to make people feel as part of a team and a process, and employ managerial negotiation to reconcile individual and collective interests, finding win-win solutions to balance personal, group and organizational goals with a shared identity.

Organizational space is a social space, both physical and virtual, that facilitates emergent change, fosters creativity and favors processes of knowledge creation and sharing. An organizational space where players can interpret freely their dance and may propose new steps and choreographies, enacting creative processes at individual and collective level  shall drive double-loop or deutero learning  in organizations.

At the same time a mindful leader who nurtures a favorable climate and creates a dynamic organizational space for productive diversity that can be channeled into creativity and emergent change is also needed.

The proposed framework suggests that creativity is an emergent phenomenon that can be facilitated.  A flexible, adaptive, “knowledge creating” company is a dynamic complex system that is able to find over time its point of equilibrium between order and self expression, in a continuous search for excellence. A company that lets dancers improvise, finding harmony and coordination through creativity and intuitive attunement, and tries to learn from them will be more successful. This results in an organizational dance in which leaders and organizational players cooperate to cope proactively with the turbulence of societies and markets and with technological change.

A mindful leader will be able to  build a framework that facilitates free expression of differences and mediating among different identities and cultures to produce an inclusive narration that makes people feel united in diversity. Such leader will enhance conditions for the emergence of creativity and adopt a participative and bottom-up approach to management, enabling the organization to set up good organizational spaces for emergent change and knowledge creation.

Dance and Organization: Integrating Dance Theory and Methods into the Study of Management

Brigitte Biehl
Taylor & Francis, 03-Feb-2017 - Business & Economics - 194 pages
Dance and Organisation is the first comprehensive work to integrate dance theory and methods into the study of management, which have developed an interest in the arts and the humanities. Dance represents dynamics and change and puts the moving body at the centre, which has been ignored and oppressed by traditional management theory. ‘Being’ a leader however also means to ‘move’ like one, and critical lessons can be learned from ballerinas and modern dancers. Leadership is a dialogue, as in the work of musicians, conductors and DJs who manage groups without words. Movement in organisational space, in a museum or a techno club can be understood as a choreography and site-specific performance. Movement also is practically used for leadership and employee development workshops and can be deployed as an organisational research method.

By taking a firm interdisciplinary stance in dance studies and organisational research to explore management topics, reflecting on practitioner accounts and research projects, the book seeks to make an innovative contribution to our understanding of the moving body, generating new insights on teamwork, leadership, gender in management, organisational space, training and research methods. It comprises an important contribution to the organizational behaviour and critical management studies disciplines, and looks to push the boundaries of the academic literature.
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=tCQlDwAAQBAJ


Let me entertain you?: Some reflexions on the professor as a DJ
Brigitte Biehl-Missal, BSP Business School Berlin Potsdam
2015
https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/oa/vol4/iss1/2/


Dance in New Areas: Integrating dance methods into businesses
and management for personnel and leadership development
Brigitte Biehl
Research in Dance and Physical Education
2019. Vol. 3, No. 1, 17-30
https://doi.org/10.26584/RDPE.2019.6.3.1.17