Personal Leadership: Putting First Things First and Effective Listening

Personal leadership involves putting first things first and effective listening. Putting first things first is about prioritizing and managing time based on personal values and goals. Effective listening involves seeking to understand before being understood and avoiding judgment and interruption. Both habits have numerous benefits for personal and professional growth.

Personal leadership is all about starting keeping the end in mind. An Effective self-management
starts with “putting first things first”. This habit of putting first things first deals mostly with the time
and life management. A reactive person only does what is urgent (Covey, 2014). This habit is all
about life management as well-your purpose, vales, priorities, roles. It is to note that first things are
the things that an individual, personally, find of most importance. If an individual put first things first,
he is organising and managing the time and the events as per the personal priorities that he or she
established in his habit 1 and 2.
“Putting first things first” refers to doing the most important things in our life. It simply means being
very clear about one's priorities and taking actions on them. The habit of putting first thing first is
also referred to the habit of will-power. It is the strength to say YES to the most important things.
Also, at the same time, it is the habit of won’t power. This means the strength to say NO to the less
important things and the peer pressure.
It is to mention that this habit is made up of two parts. The first is that of learning to prioritise and
manage the time and the second part is to learn to overcome fear and peer pressure.
It is to note that all of the activities of an effective person can be categorised under two factors-
urgent and important. There is a significant difference in between these two factors. Urgent means
Pressing things, in the face of the individual. These are the activities that demand immediate
attention. On the other hand, important things are the ones which moves an individual closer to his
or her goals. It is their first things activities that contribute to their mission and their goals and their
most important things at the time (Northouse, 2017).
This creates a four quadrant matrix of time management with appropriate responses of any
situation.
 Quadrant one- Activities such as crisis, deadlines and pressing problems.
 Quadrant two- Not urgent, but important. Activities such as planning, networking and
building/seeking new opportunities
 Quadrant three- urgent but not important- Activities such as distractions, interruptions and
meetings
 Quadrant four- Not urgent and not important. Activities such as wasting time, max pleasure-
seeking and procrastination.
It is a very useful framework that helps a person to achieve his goal. It help them structure their daily
activities and deal with them based on priority (Moran, 2018).
The benefit of this habit is the feeling that one gain of major sense of success and accomplishment.
Communication is the most important skill in life. Man spend years learning how to read and write,
and years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What training have one had that enables
him to listen so he really, deeply understand another human being? Probably none, right? People
generally do not listen to understand, instead to reply. Hence, according to DR. Stephen R. Covey,
effective person seek first to understand, then to be understood.
Most people seek first to be understood; you want to get your point across. And in doing so, many
may ignore the other person completely, pretend that they are listening, selectively hear only
certain parts of the conversation or attentively focus on only the words being said, but miss the
meaning entirely. This happens because Most people do not listen with the intention to understand;
they listen with the intention to reply. They listen to themselves as they prepare in their mind what

they are going to say, the questions they are going to ask, etc. They filter everything they hear
through your life experiences, your frame of reference.
Covey distinguishes between five types of listening (or pretending to listen). They are:
• Ignoring: not really listening at all. • Pretending: humming along while not really following. •
Selective listening: hearing what you want to hear. • Attentive listening: paying attention to the
words. • Empathic listening: intending to understand what the other is trying to communicate.
The behaviours that are to be avoided by any effective person while listening are many. They should
not judge, interrupt and question while listening to the speaker. They should also avoid the habit of
criticising, lecturing, advising (Barnlund, 2017).
A highly effective person have different and efficient habits. He is interested in the speaker. He have
a good eye contact and body language. He tries his best to Minimize the distractions and invite the
speaker to expand on his or her thoughts, point of view and ideas. Lastly, he respond in a tone that is
appropriate for the situation.
There are several benefits of this habit. Some of them include- better learning, preventing oneself
from saying the things that he or she shall regret and also, people get improved ability to influence
other people.

References:
Barnlund, D. C. (2017). Communication: The context of change. In Communication theory (pp. 6-26).
Covey, S. R. (1991). The seven habits of highly effective people. National medical-legal journal, 2(2),
8-8.
Covey, S. R. (2014). The 7 habits of highly effective families. St. Martin's Press.
Moran, J. W. (2018). How to Lead Community Population Health Improvement Coalitions.
In Transforming Community Health through Leadership (pp. 39-49).
Northouse, P. G. (2017). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice. Sage Publications.