Nuclear family: The core or essential family around which the extended family (grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins) is grouped.
One-on-one bonding time: Regular time set aside to have meaningful, relationship-building interactions.
Opportunity minded: Being focused on bringing something into existence.
Organizing: Creating order and systems to help accomplish what is valued by the family.
Outside-in: Influenced more by external surroundings than internal commitments.
Paradigm/Framework: Our perspective or map or the way we think about and see things.
Pause button: Something that reminds us to stop, think, and act in a better way.
Primary Laws of Life: The basic principles or natural laws of effectiveness that govern in all of life.
Primary Laws of Love: Natural laws that affirm the inherent worth of people and the power of unconditional love.
Principles: Universal, timeless, self-evident, natural laws that govern in all of life’s human interactions.
Proactive: Being responsible for our own choices; having the freedom to choose based on values rather than moods or conditions.
Problem minded: Being focused on eliminating something. Compare with Opportunity minded.
Restraining force: Pressure that hinders or prevents us from achieving our goals.
Scarcity mentality: A mind-set of competition and being threatened by others’ successes.
Self-awareness: The ability to stand apart and examine our own thoughts and behaviors.
Sharpening the Saw: Renewal, rejuvenation, and re-creation of one’s spiritual, mental, social-emotional, and physical self and family.
Significance: A condition in which the family has developed a beautiful family culture and is making a larger contribution both inside and outside of the family.
Social will: The norms and the moral or ethical force created by the culture of the family.
Stability: A condition in which the family is predictable, dependable, and functional with basic structure and organization, and has some communication and problem-solving ability.
Stewardship: Something we are entrusted with.
Success: The condition in which the family is accomplishing worthy goals, feels genuine happiness, has fun and meaningful traditions, and is serving one another.
Survival: A condition in which the family is struggling physically, economically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually to live and love at the minimum day-to-day existence level.
Synergy: The result of two or more people producing together more than the sum of what they could produce separately (one plus one equals three or more).
Teaching: Intentionally sharing with, explaining to, and informing other people.
Transcending ourselves: Overcoming past negative scripting and becoming the creative force in our own lives.
Transition person: One who stops negative tendencies and cycles and becomes an agent of change.
Trim tab: A person who influences and helps set the direction of the family, like the rudder of a ship.
Win-win agreement: A shared expectation and commitment regarding desired results and guidelines.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen R. Covey, husband, father, and grandfather, is an internationally respected leadership authority, family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, founder of the former Covey Leadership Center, and co-chairman of Franklin Covey Company. He has made teaching Principle-Centered Living and Principle-Centered Leadership his life’s work. He holds an MBA from Harvard and a doctorate from Brigham Young University, where he was a professor of organizational behavior and business management, and also served as director of university relations and assistant to the president. For more than thirty years he has taught millions of individuals and families and leaders in business, education, and government the transforming power of principles or natural laws that govern human and organizational effectiveness.
Dr. Covey is the author of several acclaimed books including The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which has been at the top of the best-seller lists for over seven years. More than ten million copies have been sold in twenty-eight languages and seventy countries. His books Principle-Centered Leadership and First Things First are two of the best-selling business books of the decade.
Dr. Covey and other Franklin Covey authors, speakers, and spokespersons, all authorities on leadership and effectiveness, are consistently sought by radio and television stations, magazines, and newspapers throughout the world.
Among recent acknowledgments, Dr. Covey has received the Thomas More College Medallion for continuing service to humanity, the Toastmaster’s International Top Speaker Award, Inc. magazine’s National Entrepreneur of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurial Leadership, and several honorary doctorates. He has also been recognized as one of Time magazine’s twenty-five most influential Americans.
Stephen, his wife, Sandra, and their family live in the Rocky Mountains of Utah.