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Derek and Reed talk about the Stephen Covey and his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and how it was revolutionary for its time, and still relevant today. We talk about the Personality Ethic vs. the Character Ethic.
Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Hello there. I'm Reed McColm, and I hope you enjoyed my guitar licks there. I am quite proficient, even if I do say so myself. This is Essential Dynamics, and I am here with the lord of Essential Dynamics and that perspective on business and life, mister Derek Hudson. Derek, how
Derek Hudson:are you? Great. I'm doing great. Good it's good to see you. It's sunny outside.
Derek Hudson:I'm excited to talk about stuff today.
Reid McColm:Good. Good. Because I have I still have a lot of questions from our last session when we were discussing leadership and example. We were talking particularly in business. I was interested in some exploration of those things, if we could continue that conversation.
Reid McColm:What do you think?
Derek Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Let's do it. I've been actually doing some more reading and learning a lot.
Derek Hudson:I think we've all experienced different forms of leadership in our lives. And I think the way leadership gets talked about and the way it gets delivered, sometimes they're quite different.
Reid McColm:Well, I have a little story I'd like to tell as we start off, and that was in the eighties and nineties, I was part of a summer theater in Yellowstone Park or nearby, and we attracted a lot of tourists, of course, and we also attracted people who had cabins in that area. And one of the people who had a cabin, a family cabin, that they came to every summer and came to our theater every year and they were always taking about 12 to 14 middle seats, and they came late was a family named the Cubbies. And the family was terrific, but the patriarch of that family was Stephen Covey, who had at that time come out with a book well, earlier, he had just come out with a book called Seven Habits of Extremely Well, I just remembered it as Seven Habits. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I think. And it had just come out in hardcover and I was teasing him about it because we had that kind relationship.
Reid McColm:I said, You've really limited yourself now because what if there's an eighth habit? And apparently that gave him an idea for a sequel. But The Seven Habits was, of course, extremely successful for him. He gave me a copy, signed it, said I was the best actor he knew in that room at that time since we were alone. And we had a good time and I enjoyed him.
Reid McColm:But I came to very much respect his business ethic because obviously he was renowned around the world for it. Tell me, Derek, do you know who I'm talking of?
Derek Hudson:Reed, we didn't plan this, but I have my copy of the seven habits of highly effective people on my desk here anticipating the conversation we're gonna have. And I also have it signed by Stephen Covey.
Reid McColm:Oh, do you? Does it say you're the best actor he knew in that room?
Derek Hudson:No. It doesn't. In fact, he has no idea. He didn't know who who I was then. He came to Edmonton.
Derek Hudson:And I gotta tell you that it was a fantastic presentation, But I'm an accountant and so I looked in this room. It was at a hotel in Edmonton. There were six six hundred people and we each paid $400 for the day. Or there are 400 people and we paid $600. 1 1 of the two.
Derek Hudson:Anyway, that was a lot of money on the table for that one day and I thought, boy, that's an interesting business to be in. But I, I didn't ever pursue it. And here we're doing podcasts for free.
Reid McColm:Yeah. Yeah.
Derek Hudson:But we're we're quoting wise people like Stephen Covey. Now, seven habits is right up there in one of my, top five business books, top five books that's had an impact on me. And if you if you think about what we talked about last week, and I had explored some of the definitions of leadership that I'd run across and compared them to this idea of the quest that we use in essential dynamics with people, path, and purpose, so many of the definitions of leadership were really just the leader is the one who picks the purpose and gets the people to march down the path.
Reid McColm:Why do you think he was so successful at that? How do why do you think his seven habits have sustained? Mister Covey has passed on, of course, but his his book remains a bestseller, and this is this is some forty years after its publication.
Derek Hudson:Well, you know, it it kinda turned the tide in business and self help books. It was revolutionary for its time, and he called it out in the book where he said his research had indicated that for about fifty years or so before he wrote the book in the eighties, success literature had kind of turned to, what he called the personality ethic, which which was the idea that, successful leaders did stuff. They had techniques. They, for example, like, showed interest in people, so that they could get them to do what they wanted. Right.
Derek Hudson:Right. And it was all about, you know, sort of what you did and what you what you're able to accomplish from that. And he contrasted that to the previous hundred and fifty years of success literature where he termed it the character ethic, which was leadership is all about becoming, you know, a person of high character and then bringing people with you. And that that Okay. Yeah.
Derek Hudson:Resonate that resonated with a lot of people, and then he was able to describe, you know, sort of how you do that in the seven habits.
Reid McColm:Yeah. I don't know for sure because I'm not an expert on this genre. But I do think that a lot of leadership a lot of leadership books or books about leadership were really biographies of great leaders. I think of Churchill or The Art of War. But really also in that time when he wrote Seven Habits, when I'm trying to think of self help books, think of I'm okay, you're okay.
Reid McColm:That kind of but that was very personal. It's not about leadership. It's also, again, personality driven, isn't it?
Derek Hudson:Yeah. Well, the other contrasting one, which was, you know, not a bad book by any means, was Dale Carnegie.
Reid McColm:Oh, yes. Of course.
Derek Hudson:Yeah. How to how to win friends and influence people.
Reid McColm:Right. I remember that. I read that as a kid. I read I think I was 13. Yeah.
Derek Hudson:Now, I I mentioned last week a book that I found called Leadership and Self Deception.
Reid McColm:Mhmm.
Derek Hudson:And point of that book is that when we're in the box, as they call it, we're treating people like objects.
Reid McColm:And so Elaborate on that. How does he mean that?
Derek Hudson:Well, what they what they mean is you're trying to accomplish something through people. I mean, that's that's one definition of leadership. Right? Or maybe it's a definition of management, accomplishing things through other people. And so when you By manipulation?
Reid McColm:That sounds Well, sure.
Derek Hudson:You know, it's not that it's not that hard to fall into that. Mhmm. Mhmm. For for any of
Reid McColm:us, including I know. I Theatre directors do it all the time.
Derek Hudson:Including even even parents.
Reid McColm:Oh, good.
Derek Hudson:Right? Like, I want an outcome. I have to deal with people. I'm gonna figure out a way to get them to do what I want them to do because of what I want.
Reid McColm:Yeah.
Derek Hudson:And in fact, I just was flipping through looking for something but in seven habits, I don't remember the story exactly, but Stephen Covey and his wife were really upset at the performance of one of their kids, academic or athletic. I can't remember which. And and they kinda caught themselves. And they went, well, like like, why why do we care about this? It's because we're gonna look like good parents if this
Reid McColm:kid this person does well. Yeah.
Derek Hudson:This kid does well, and we're gonna look like bad parents if he doesn't. Well, that's that's being in the box as a leader.
Reid McColm:Yeah. Yeah.
Derek Hudson:It's really hard to be out of the box because out of the box, we go to our concept of people in essential dynamics, which talks about people as individuals, as, you know, sovereign sort of self regulating individual people with their own will and, you know, their own conscience and stuff like that. And then the needs of a group to get them to to line up somehow. And leadership is far more convenient.
Reid McColm:Yes. It's much easier to see people as yeah.
Derek Hudson:Much more convenient if we if we just get them to
Reid McColm:do stuff. That's right. It seems that's the Lenin sort of or Stalin sort of way of approaching people, don't you think? Where if they all believe the same thing and they will follow me unilaterally, this is more Stalin than Lenin, but nonetheless, it seems manipulative and ultimately destructive to look at people as robots or props.
Derek Hudson:You know, and we like we said before, units of production or things that reflect on us. Those people, if they do a good job, I will look like a good leader. So Covey is one of the of the things that I picked up on. There's a there's a few others. Mentioned this idea of leadership and self deception.
Derek Hudson:Then there's you know, I've quoted Jim Collins a few times.
Reid McColm:So, Derek, what makes a good leader?
Derek Hudson:Well, Rita, I think if we go back to, you know, the seven habits of highly effective people, the the point Covey was trying to make was there's lots of things you can do, lots of ways you can act to get what you want, and that's sort of embodied in what he calls the personality ethic. But he said to really be a good leader, you have to be a person of high character. You have to be a good person. And I think one of the things that we don't like about that is it's easier to learn techniques and do stuff to people than it is to work on ourselves and become a better person.
Reid McColm:Is that unique to him that we this emphasis on being a good person? Because there's a lot of leeway there, a lot of questionable not questionable, but debatable aspects to what makes a good person.
Derek Hudson:Oh, for sure. Now what Covey did in the research that ended up being captured in Seven Habits was he looked at two hundred years of success literature and his observation was for the first hundred and fifty years it was almost all about being a person of high character and being a good person. And then in the last fifty years, which is now the last eighty years Yes. It's it was more about the stuff that you do, the techniques, the perhaps even manipulation. You know, one thing I would say that that really kind of distorted the this idea of being leaders as a good person is the emphasis on stock market returns and shareholder value and things like that.
Derek Hudson:So, you know, our world right now, if you're an effective CEO, you make a lot of people a lot of money and they're willing to kinda look the other way in terms of your character. And we also have seen that in politics as well. Yes. One of the things I really like about the character ethic is it's something that you don't have to have a position to work on. And if you, as Covey says, work on yourself in the things you can control in your circle of concern or circle of control maybe, then you can have a lot of influence.
Derek Hudson:Can you can create opportunities for other people to grow because of who you are, and I think that's maybe a good way to describe really good leadership.
Reid McColm:So no matter where you are, no matter in what position you play, if you concentrate on yourself and become a better person, leadership will naturally come to you. Is that the is that a conclusion I can draw?
Derek Hudson:Yeah. Well, yes. Yes. I think that's right. I think I've mentioned the Roy Group before.
Derek Hudson:Ian Chisholm leads that and I took some a number of courses and some coaching from him and his group. And one of the things they say is that a leader, and that's like anyone in a relationship, I guess, creates an atmosphere for other people and the the people then respond to that atmosphere.
Reid McColm:I see.
Derek Hudson:So so you can create an atmosphere of, you know, growth and progress and cooperation or fear or, you know, whatever. And people have a choice, but it does influence how they how they show up and how they react. And you don't have to be the boss in the room to have an influence. In that way, we're all leaders and that, I think, supports this idea that real true leadership comes from who we are and not just sort of what we do or what techniques we try.
Reid McColm:That's so interesting. I also think that well, I'd like to get your take on it. I think there are leaders who are bad people, who have been effective in manipulating or I don't know. Manipulation may not be the proper term, but I don't think there are some people who are not as admirable in person as they may be in their leadership skills or something. I think of Bernie Madoff, who stole $65,000,000,000, embezzled them from his clients that he was investing for, and blithely lost it all.
Reid McColm:To me, he must have been an incredibly influential person to, first of all, get that kind of money or trust in investments and then perfidious in his personal life because he stole it.
Derek Hudson:So Reid, that's a really good example of, yeah, kind of the difference between what the world might define as success or effectiveness and what we're trying to get at with the essential dynamics. So the essential dynamics, you know, we've got this idea of a quest and a purpose. And in my mind, the only use of these principles is a noble purpose.
Reid McColm:I see. Uh-huh.
Derek Hudson:And, you know, we we talk about purpose x and purpose y. It might be short term, long term. But it's it's all about how it impacts the people. And so a noble purpose is one that makes people's lives better. And there's you see a lot of that in, you know, businesses.
Derek Hudson:I actually did a bit of a review of company mission statements when I was working on this. And every one of them said something about making some group of people's lives better, whether it was customers or shareholders. So, yeah, I think you can use, you know, true principles of effectiveness in, you know, bad, evil and devious ways. I'm just not interested in encouraging encouraging anyone to do that. And so one nice thing about the concept of a character ethic is that it's based on some sense of becoming a better person.
Derek Hudson:There's a couple of other concepts of leadership that are consistent with that. One of them is the idea of servant leadership. There's a guy named Robert Greenleaf who who's, you know, kind of captured that concept, although he wouldn't I'm sure he didn't invent it. It it goes back at least to the New Testament. But the idea is that I want to serve.
Derek Hudson:I want to help other people. So I'm going to try and do that however I can and that may result in taking a leadership position. And so you you start by serving and supporting the people that you work with and the the object of your organization. So not the boss of everything, but, the the servant leader is the one that that wants to help other people. All the people, you know, sort of do better.
Derek Hudson:And then another book that I really like is The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. And his concept about learning organization is the the leader is the designer of the learning organization. It creates the experience for the people so they can learn and they can be better. Mhmm. So all of those things I think are are consistent.
Derek Hudson:And with respect to essential dynamics, if if we have a a purpose that's that's gonna enhance people's lives, then the leader helps people find or discover the purpose, get aligned with the purpose, and then build systems that actually respect the individual and the individual contribution and connect the individuals with the group. So I think those are all things where the leader as a good person, the leader as a good example, that's a requirement. It only works that way. And any any accomplishment we make where the the leader is manipulative or asking people to do something and live to a standard that they wouldn't live is ultimately, that's not my mind, that's not leadership.
Reid McColm:Even regardless of its effect or immediate response. We've seen in politics some political leaders espousing nefarious terms and getting a response, an immediate response, maybe not a long term response.
Derek Hudson:Yeah. And long term, you know, ultimately if you think about it, and this is an exercise that Covey does, if we're going back to that is imagine your own funeral.
Reid McColm:I do every day.
Derek Hudson:And what people are saying about you. And, you know, it's well, I made a lot of money off that guy, but he was a crook. Is not something you necessarily want to have spoken at your funeral.
Reid McColm:Yeah. Well, know that if there isn't a lot of laughter at my funeral, I'm just not going. So that's the way I feel. Well, I have several more questions which we'll have to explore as we move on because today, I think I've got more than enough information in my head, especially about better character and its influence on leadership. Really appreciate everything you're saying.
Reid McColm:What?
Derek Hudson:Reid, if I could just kinda cap it off then. So when we think about leadership as creating opportunities for other people to grow, then, you know, we can't get off the hook. We can't say, well, I'm not the boss. And we can't shortcut it. Like, kind of concept puts responsibility on each of us to say, how can I contribute to this situation to, you know, advance our purposes and respect the people around me?
Derek Hudson:So that's a wonderful way to live. It's just hard.
Reid McColm:Yeah. I appreciate you're saying both things. One, it's a wonderful way to live, and yeah, and it's also hard. I completely admire and respect you, by the way, for that kind of choice. I, of course, have chosen the other way, which is evil and nefarious.
Reid McColm:But I'm delighted to hear how the other side lives. Well, that's another episode of the central dynamic. Derek, where can people find you?
Derek Hudson:Well, they can find me at derek hudson. Ca all over the Internet, and I'd be happy to hear what people think about what we're doing.
Reid McColm:I'd like to hear it as well. And I'm Reed McCollum. And for myself and Derek and our engineer, Bing Griffiths, I'd like to say consider your quest.