Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan
#485: Habits That MAKE or BREAK Your Career with Todd Davis, Author, Senior Leadership Consultant, & 7 Habits Content Expert
Tue, 17 Dec 2024
In This Episode You Will Learn About: How visualizing your success before you start makes it ACHIEVABLE. The best way to take charge of your life today. Why BOLD, intentional action is the key to thriving. What happens when you make every moment an opportunity to GROW, connect, and inspire. Why you must focus on the important, not just the urgent. Resources: https://www.franklincovey.com/ Read: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter/X: @ToddDavisFC Go to ConstantContact.com and start your FREE trial today. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/monahan. Oracle is offering to halve your cloud bill if you switch to OCI. See if you qualify at oracle.com/MONAHAN. Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/MONAHAN. Get 10% off your first Mitopure order at timeline.com/CONFIDENCE. Get 15% off your first order at jennikayne.com when you use code CONFIDENCE15 at checkout. Get 15% off your first order at oakessentials.com when you use code CONFIDENCE15 at checkout. Call my digital clone at 201-897-2553! Visit heathermonahan.com Reach out to me on Instagram & LinkedIn Sign up for my mailing list: heathermonahan.com/mailing-list/ Overcome Your Villains is Available NOW! Order here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com If you haven't yet, get my first book, Confidence Creator Show Notes: Have you ever wondered what truly sets SUCCESSFUL people apart? My conversation with Todd Davis brings it all into focus. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People isn’t just a book—it’s a roadmap for living and leading with PURPOSE. Todd’s insight on being proactive is EMPOWERING—we always have the POWER to choose our response, no matter the chaos around us. The best part? These TIMELESS habits are as RELEVANT as ever, even in a tech-driven world, with tools like AI enhancing, not replacing, human connection. This conversation leaves me feeling INSPIRED to lead boldly, listen deeply, and make every moment COUNT. If You Liked This Episode, You Might Also Like These Episodes: #427: How To Bounce Back When Things Don’t Go As Planned with Heather! #425: The Secret To Leaving When You Aren't Valued with Heather! #421: GO For It: Shattering Limits in Life & Business with Heather!
Chapter 1: What are the most important habits for career success?
And so how do we learn to prioritize and determine what are the most important things? I can't do it all. Nobody can do it all. So how do effective people decide what am I going to accomplish this day, this week, and what am I going to be okay with not getting to? In this age of technology, that's one of the most important questions I think we can figure out for ourselves.
Come on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. I'm ready for my closeup. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back with us this week. Okay. I'm really excited for you to meet our guest today.
Todd Davis is a senior leadership consultant, seven habits, content expert, and thought leader at Franklin Covey with over 35 years of experience in human resources, talent development, and executive recruiting. As the former chief people officer and executive vice president, Davis was responsible for the global talent development in over 40 offices, reaching 160 countries.
Additionally, he authored and co-authored Wall Street Journal bestselling books, including Get Better, 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work, and Everyone Deserves a Great Manager. Todd, thank you so much for being here today.
Well, thanks for the invitation. And maybe we could just read that over again. That felt really good. I love being introduced.
It's so funny. Everybody always loves the bio. I always think it's so funny. It's like our highlight reel.
Well, you're very gracious. Thank you very much. And thanks for inviting me.
Well, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is an iconic book. Can you give us, obviously, you are the master at all this. Why is it so powerful and why is it so timeless?
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Chapter 2: Why are the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People still relevant?
Yeah, thanks for asking. So as you mentioned, I've been with FranklinCovey. I've been with them for 29 years now. And I first read Seven Habits about 31 years ago. It was first published in 1989, so about 35 years old. And if I were new listening about this and never heard of seven habits, I might think, OK, well, that's great. But 35 years old, what am I going to learn from that?
But to your question, Heather, it is the seven habits are based on principles of effectiveness. Dr. Covey, Stephen R. Covey, who made the point who wrote the book and made the point always that he didn't invent the habits. What he did was.
watch individuals like heather and other people who were so effective in their roles and teams and organizations how effective they were and watched what do they do on a consistent basis to get not just get any results but get the results they're really seeking and then he put those principles into a context that we could discuss them and talk about them and so all of that is to say because these are based on principles of effectiveness they are as relevant today if not more so than they were when dr covey first wrote about them
It's just amazing to me that they seem pretty simplistic. I'd love it if we could get into actually talking about the seven principles and understand why each one is so powerful.
You bet. Happy to do that. One other thing that you just brought to mind when we talked about irrelevancy, I was out delivering a keynote two weeks ago now, and a gentleman came out to me after. He was probably in his mid-50s, and he said, Todd, I got to tell you, my son just graduated college in Portland. And he called me two nights ago and said, Dad, I just read the most amazing book.
Have you ever heard of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? And the gentleman's name was Ross. We both laughed. But in addition to laughing, I just thought, isn't it amazing how timeless these are? You know, this recent college grad is reading is going, wow, this is going to make a huge difference in my life.
So to give a quick overview, we'll do the Reader's Digest condensed version for those who are new to Seven Habits. The seven habits, the whole intent of the seven habits is to become even more effective than we are right now. And to become effective, we want to reach this maturity level of interdependence. So they're built around a framework we call the maturity continuum.
And we start out in the world as dependent. You know, we have the mindset of you're responsible for me. Tell me what to do. It's not my fault. That kind of mindset. And that's fine. Of course, when you're a newborn, you're dependent on everybody to take care of you. But have you ever worked with an adult who's dependent and tell me what to do and it's not my fault? Yeah.
And so the goal, of course, is to move from that stage to becoming independent. And the first three of the seven habits are what move us from being dependent to independent. Habit number one is to be proactive. And to your point, these are very simple, but says easy, does hard is what I have found out. So to be proactive is all based on the principle of choice.
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Chapter 3: How can we be proactive in our responses?
I want to make sure we have a win-win relationship, so I'm going to take time to understand what's a win for you. And then you hopefully want to learn what's a win for me. And habit five, seek first to understand, then to be understood, is all based on the principle of respect. I respect you enough.
It doesn't mean that I have to agree with you on everything or whatever, but I respect you enough to really understand your point of view. And once we've done that, we have this mindset of win-win. We've taken time to understand each other. Then we can easily move to habit six, which is synergize. This is based on the principle of creative collaboration.
We may not always get to synergy, and we can talk about what synergy is, but synergize, creative collaboration.
If we have a win-win mindset, you and I, and if we take time to understand each other, we can leave our egos at the door now and start to really brainstorm and come up with third alternatives, which is what we say synergy is, an idea that's way better than yours or mine, but something we can create together.
Those three habits form what we call the public victory because we're winning with others now. We have this trust that we're building with others. And then surrounding, if just picture a circle around those six habits is habit seven. Habit seven is sharpen the saw. This is the habit based on the principle of renewal.
I liken it to the instructions we're given when the plane's taking off and the flight attendant says, if cabin pressure drops, you're to put your mask on first. And I bet when I was a little kid and I first heard that, I probably thought, well, no, my mom told me to put everybody else's mask on them first. But the principle in Habit 7 is to sharpen your own saw.
Put your mask on first, not because you're selfish, but because by doing so, you can do then so much more for everybody else to be that much more effective. So sharpening the saw is Habit 7, and it's really the gas in the engine for all the other habits.
So how does somebody develop a habit though? It's one thing I feel like to be aware that these are the right habits and it does make sense, but how do you actually rinse and repeat and do it?
That's a great, yeah, such a great question. So obviously reading the book, this book has sold over 40 million copies. It's just, it blows my mind. It's translated into, I think, 38 different languages now around the world, 40 million copies, and continues to sell thousands of copies every month. So we can read it. But to your point, okay, I can read this and say, gosh, this makes sense.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of beginning with the end in mind?
How do I become this? In the work sessions, and we update the work session, the seven habits, it's called the seven habits effect. We update that about every eight to 10 years. We just launched our newest version, seven habits 5.0. And so that's why we appreciate you inviting us on the podcast and why I'm out traveling the globe to do overviews of what we're talking about here.
But in the work sessions, we dive deep. It's two days worth of content that can be delivered, concentrated over two days back to back, spread out, virtual, on demand. And in the work sessions, we go in and study a particular habit. Let me back up here. The most significant thing about learning any habit is But particularly the seven habits is something we call the see-do-get model.
It's our paradigms. The way we see things influences everything we do. And of course, we know what we do gives us the results we get. But what is so powerful about developing any habit is backing up and saying, wait a minute, am I seeing this situation, this person, this relationship accurately? Or am I seeing it how I'm just convinced myself that it is?
For example, if I'm a micromanager, I bet people are familiar with micromanagement. If I'm a micromanager, how do I see my people? Well, I probably see them as incompetent. So I got to do everything for them or I got to criticize, hover over, triple check. And if that's what I do, what kind of results do we get? Poor, mediocre at best. And then I see those poor results.
And what do I say to myself as the micromanager? See, they are idiots. I got to micromanage even more. It becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy all driven by an inaccurate or an incomplete paradigm. So to your question, with each habit, we start out with a paradigm. Habit one, be proactive. An ineffective paradigm might be, hey, this is just the way things are. There's not much I can do about it.
And I've been there before. I think we can drift into that. But a proactive or a highly effective paradigm is I am free to choose and I'm the one responsible for my choices. And if we take that paradigm on, then in Habit 1, there are three specific practices that we dive deep into with activities and rinse and repeat, as you say. We learn ways to separate stimulus from response.
We talk about what's the last time you were reactive and what did that feel like? What would be some better ways to respond? How do we learn to pause before we respond? And it might be as simple as I count to 10 or I do box breathing or whatever.
Or it might be something that I look at my last week and I look at those times I was reactive and I write down because those things are going to repeat themselves again and I want to be prepared. So there are activities like that that we do throughout the days. And they are – and I know I sound dramatic here, but I'm telling you from my experience – they are life-changing.
They are powerful where all of a sudden – I've got a long ways to go, but I think about just in that one habit how much more proactive I am today than I was when I started with Franklin Covey 29 years ago. So – They are tried and tested and true. I mean, let's stop and think about having the right undergarments.
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Chapter 5: How do you build trust and win-win relationships?
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You are welcome. My gosh, I love that you brought up that idea of responding instead of reacting to people, because so many people in today's world with the political climates and whatnot are triggered constantly. And you see getting angry and getting upset. And actually, when you were talking about the workbook exercises that you do to help people stop reacting, I thought of my own.
I worked side by side with a woman who did not like me and would try tirelessly to trigger me. And
How could someone not like you, Heather? What are you talking about? There are a few people out there.
OK, so she would intentionally try to trigger me. And when I was younger, I would play the game. I would react and get upset. And it was exhausting and not a good look for me. Right. Of course. And I would end up being the one that looked like, oh, this lady's losing it. What's wrong with her? She's upset. She's yelling. She's you know, it wasn't working for me.
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Chapter 6: What role does AI play in today's work environment?
So, so true. So powerful and yet so incredibly simple, but most people just aren't doing it in the world. Okay. So to that topic, how does trust continue to be the most valuable currency at work and how do you build it and maintain it?
I love that because the whole thing about building effective relationships, I mean, you think about the most meaningful, impactful, effective relationships in your life. I think about it in my mind. Trust is kind of the foundation of those things. And trust doesn't mean we see everything alike. Trust doesn't mean that you always agree with me. Trust means that I hear you. I respect you.
I respect your opinion. I don't sugarcoat things. I talk directly or talk straight with you. But I balance courage and consideration. And so I think the greatest relationships, both in professional life and personal life, have this near perfect balance of courage and consideration. I can say anything to you as long as I say it with respect, true respect.
And I also can listen and ask you questions and have this considerate consideration as long as I'm doing it respectfully. So balancing courage and consideration, I think, is the key to building trust in our relationships. And there's a really cool exercise we do in 7 Habits. It's called the emotional bank account and thinking about our emotional bank account with others.
Much like a financial bank account, in our emotional bank account, we make deposits and we take withdrawals. But unlike a financial bank account, We should never be making deposits in the emotional bank account of others with the intent of taking it all.
I had this experience I wrote about in one of the books you cited where this long lost friend I hadn't talked to him for I can't remember how many years. And he called out of the blue. It was so awesome. We've been such great friends. And he was talking for like 45 minutes. And we're just connecting. We ought to go to lunch. And towards the very end of the conversation, he said.
Hey, oh, by the way, do you guys still get discount tickets to that ski thing? And it was so funny, Heather, because I thought you took 45 minutes. I would have been okay if you'd called and said, hey, Todd, I feel so bad we haven't connected for years, and I'd love to do that. I wanted to find out if you still get discount tickets, and I also want to set up lunch, but instead we did this dance.
So that would be an example of making not a very sincere deposit emotional account with the intent of taking a withdrawal. In the course, we do this activity that's really powerful.
You think about an important relationship in your life, professional or personal, and then you go through on this document and you document the last five interactions you had with that person, whatever it was, the last five interactions. You've got to really think about it, and then you've got to think about how you think that person felt. Well, for mine, I picked my spouse.
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