40 Fun Facts About The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Which US president invited Stephen Covey to Camp David to discuss The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?

Bill Clinton rang Covey over the 1994 Christmas holiday to say he had read the book twice, and Covey flew to the retreat three days later.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was the first US non-fiction title to sell a million copies in which format?

The audiobook of The 7 Habits was the first non-fiction audio title in US publishing history to pass a million sales, on top of the tens of millions of copies sold in print.

Which of Stephen Covey's seven habits comes last, the one about renewing yourself to keep up the other six?

Sharpen the Saw gets its name from the idea that dull or rusty tools work far worse than clean, sharp ones, and that people are no different.

Sean Covey, who wrote the 1998 bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, is what relation to Stephen Covey?

His son Sean simplified the seven habits for younger readers, and the teen edition has sold more than eight million copies.

The four-box priority matrix in Stephen Covey's Habit 3 is widely credited to which general who became US president?

Dwight D. Eisenhower is quoted as saying his urgent problems were not the important ones, an insight he credited to a former college president.

Habit 2 of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits asks readers to write which document, likened to a personal constitution?

A mission statement applies Covey's rule that everything is created twice, first in thought and then in fact, to a whole life.

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits, died in 2012 from injuries suffered months earlier while doing what?

Riding a bicycle downhill near his home that April, he lost control and hit his head even though he wore a helmet; he died in July, aged 79.

Stephen Covey's 1997 spin-off took his seven habits to which group, promising a beautiful culture in a turbulent world?

Families got their own edition from a father of nine, whom the National Fatherhood Initiative later honoured with its Fatherhood Award.

Stephen Covey's Habit 5 borrows three Greek modes of persuasion; which does he rank first, ahead of emotion and logic?

Ethos, meaning personal credibility, comes first because Covey holds that the order of the three shows their relative importance.

Which single-word habit, the sixth in Stephen Covey's book, is about teams reaching goals nobody could reach alone?

Synergize is Covey's verb for making the whole greater than the sum of its parts, often written as one plus one equalling three or more.

Which Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist does Stephen Covey draw on in Habit 1, Be Proactive, of The 7 Habits?

Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man's Search for Meaning after surviving the Nazi camps, gave Covey his proof that a person always keeps the power to choose.

In Habit 1, Be Proactive, Stephen Covey tells readers to focus on things they can change, an area he names what?

The Circle of Influence widens for people who work inside it, creating more choices and opportunities as the years go by.

Which word does Stephen Covey use in The 7 Habits for people who are the opposite of Habit 1's proactive ideal?

Reactive people, in Covey's telling, get stuck on things over which they have little or no control and wait for life to happen to them.

In Habit 1 of The 7 Habits, Stephen Covey says human freedom lies in the gap between which pair?

Stimulus and response leave room for a decision, Covey argues, which is why this habit comes first: the other six all depend on it.

FranklinCovey's guide to Habit 1, Be Proactive, names what as a key indicator of whether someone is living the habit?

The language they use gives it away: phrases built on can and get to signal choice, while can't and have to signal the opposite.

Stephen Covey's 7 Habits faults much modern self-help and promotes which approach, built on universal principles?

The Character Ethic is set against what Covey calls the Personality Ethic, and he treats principles as natural laws that sit outside us.

Stephen Covey's 7 Habits maps growth from dependence to which final stage, the goal of Habits 4, 5 and 6?

Interdependence outranks independence in Covey's scheme: the first three habits make a person self-reliant, and the next three teach working with others.

Stephen Covey's Habit 5, Seek First to Understand, centres on which skill that people are rarely trained in?

Listening gets almost no training, Covey notes, though people spend years learning to read, write and speak.

In which US state was Stephen Covey born, the same state where the company built on The 7 Habits is based?

Utah is where Covey was born, in Salt Lake City in 1932, and FranklinCovey, the training firm that carries his name, has its head office in nearby Draper.

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, earned his MBA at which Ivy League university?

Harvard Business School gave him his MBA, and as a student there he would sometimes preach to crowds on Boston Common.

In the Habit 3 priority matrix of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits, where does planning sit, as important but not urgent?

Quadrant II is where Covey wants most hours spent once genuine crises are dealt with, because long-term development lives there.

FranklinCovey's teaching of Habit 3, Put First Things First, gives which nickname to weekly priorities scheduled first?

Big Rocks go into the week before anything else, an image from a story told in Covey's 1994 book First Things First.

Stephen Covey's 1994 book First Things First says to plan life less by the clock than by which instrument?

A compass stands for purpose and values in the book, pointing to a personal true north, while the clock stands for mere scheduling.

Stephen Covey's Habit 4, Think Win-Win, sets out to shift which mindset, one that treats life as a zero-sum game?

Scarcity thinking says a big slice for someone else means less for me; Covey's answer is to seek outcomes that benefit everyone involved.

Stephen Covey's Habit 4, Think Win-Win, calls real maturity a balance between which two qualities?

Courage and consideration together mean arguing for your own needs while showing real investment in what the other side wants.

Stephen Covey's Habit 5 warns against filtering another person's story through our own life, a reflex he labels what?

Autobiographical habits turn someone else's story into our own; Covey's cure is empathy, hearing a person out to understand before replying.

Which banking metaphor does Stephen Covey use in The 7 Habits for the trust built up in a relationship?

The Emotional Bank Account is taught even to schoolchildren: Covey's Leader in Me programme has pupils make deposits in classmates' accounts.

Which 2011 Stephen Covey book expands Habit 6 of The 7 Habits into a method for resolving conflicts?

The 3rd Alternative argues that the best way out of a dispute is neither my way nor your way but a better one both sides create.

Habit 7 of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits renews four dimensions of a person: body, mind, spirit and which other?

Heart means relationships, and investing in them is one of the four renewals; skip renewal, FranklinCovey warns, and burnout follows.

Stephen Covey's Habit 7 pictures lasting growth as which shape, climbed by repeating three steps: learn, commit, do?

An upward spiral means meeting each habit again at a higher level, and Covey says conscience is what keeps a person climbing.

Which magazine put The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People on its 2011 list of 25 landmark business management books?

Time magazine's write-up teased that the book holds very little about business or management, calling it a tour de force of confidence building.

Clayton Christensen called Stephen Covey's 7 Habits a secular distillation of values held by which religious group?

Latter-day Saints were Covey's own community, and long before his bestseller he wrote devotional books for them, starting with Spiritual Roots of Human Relations.

Which planner company founded by Hyrum W. Smith merged with Stephen Covey's leadership firm in 1997?

Franklin Quest sold the Franklin Planner, named after Benjamin Franklin and his small private notebook, and the merged firm became FranklinCovey.

Stephen Covey's 2004 sequel, The 8th Habit, urges readers to find what, then inspire others to find theirs?

Their voice is Covey's shorthand for unique personal significance, and the book carries the subtitle From Effectiveness to Greatness.

Sean Covey's 2008 picture book The 7 Habits of Happy Kids teaches the habits through stories starring what?

Talking animals such as Goob the bear, Jumper Rabbit and Lily Skunk carry the seven stories, which were illustrated by Stacy Curtis.

Stephen Covey's 2008 book The Leader in Me features an elementary school in which North Carolina city?

Raleigh is home to A.B. Combs Elementary, which wove the seven habits into its lessons under principal Muriel Summers and was copied worldwide.

Which Austrian-born management thinker, with psychologist Carl Rogers, heavily shaped 7 Habits author Stephen Covey?

Peter Drucker's writing on management fed Covey's thinking, as did the American self-help books he studied for his doctoral dissertation.

Stephen Covey backed a planned monument meant as a western partner to the Statue of Liberty, named for which virtue?

Responsibility is the statue's theme, and sculptor Gary Lee Price designed it as two clasped hands, one lifting the other up.

A FranklinCovey legal letter made the webcomic Schlock Mercenary rename its Seven Habits of Highly Effective what?

Pirates gave way in 2011, when creator Howard Tayler retitled the handbook The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries.

As a boy, future 7 Habits author Stephen Covey placed third in a national championship in which game?

Marbles and tennis were his boyhood passions until a hip condition put him on crutches for three years and turned him toward books and debate.