The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

IDENTIFYING ROLES AND GOALS

Of course, the logical/verbal left brain becomes important also as you attempt to capture your

right brain images, feelings, and pictures in the words of a written mission statement. Just as

breathing exercises help integrate body and mind, writing is a kind of psycho-neural muscular

activity which helps bridge and integrate the conscious and subconscious minds. Writing distills,

crystallizes, and clarifies thought and helps break the whole into parts.

We each have a number of different roles in our lives—different areas or capacities in which

we have responsibility. I may, for example, have a role as an individual, a husband, a father, a

teacher, a church member, and a businessman. And each of these roles is important.

One of the major problems that arises when people work to become more effective in life is

that they don’t think broadly enough. They lose the sense of proportion, the balance, the natural

ecology necessary to effective living. They may get consumed by work and neglect personal

health. In the name of professional success, they may neglect the most precious relationships in

their lives.

You may find that your mission statement will be much more balanced, much easier to work

with, if you break it down into the specific role areas of your life and the goals you want to

accomplish in each area. Look at your professional role. You might be a salesperson, or a

manager, or a product developer. What are you about in that area? What are the values that

should guide you? Think of your personal roles—husband, wife, father, mother, neighbor, friend.

What are you about in those roles? What’s important to you? Think of community roles—the

political area, public service, volunteer organizations.

One executive has used the idea of roles and goals to create the following mission statement:

My mission is to live with integrity and to make a difference in the lives of others.

To fulfill this mission:

I have charity: I seek out and love the one—each one—regardless of his situation.

I sacrifice: I devote my time, talents, and resources to my mission.

I inspire: I teach by example that we are all children of a loving Heavenly Father and that every Goliath can be overcome.

I am impactful: What I do makes a difference in the lives of others.

These roles take priority in achieving my mission:

Husband—my partner is the most important person in my life. Together we contribute the fruits of harmony, industry,

charity, and thrift.

Father—I help my children experience progressively greater joy in their lives.

Son/Brother—I am frequently “there” for support and love.

Christian—God can count on me to keep my covenants and to serve his other children.

Neighbor—The love of Christ is visible through my actions toward others.

Change Agent—I am a catalyst for developing high performance in large organizations.

Scholar—I learn important new things every day.

Writing your mission in terms of the important roles in your life gives you balance and

harmony. It keeps each role clearly before you. You can review your roles frequently to make

sure that you don’t get totally absorbed by one role to the exclusion of others that are equally or

even more important in your life.

After you identify your various roles, then you can think about the long-term goals you want

to accomplish in each of those roles. We’re into the right brain again, using imagination,

creativity, conscience, and inspiration. If these goals are the extension of a mission statement

based on correct principles, they will be vitally different from the goals people normally set.

They will be in harmony with correct principles, with natural laws, which gives you greater

power to achieve them. They are not someone else’s goals you have absorbed. They are your

goals. They reflect your deepest values, your unique talent, your sense of mission. And they

grow out of your chosen roles in life.

An effective goal focuses primarily on results rather than activity. It identifies where you want

to be, and, in the process, helps you determine where you are. It gives you important information

on how to get there, and it tells you when you have arrived. It unifies your efforts and energy. It

gives meaning and purpose to all you do. And it can finally translate itself into daily activities so

that you are proactive, you are in charge of your life, you are making happen each day the things

that will enable you to fulfill your personal mission statement.

Roles and goals give structure and organized direction to your personal mission. If you don’t

yet have a personal mission statement, it’s a good place to begin. Just identifying the various

areas of your life and the two or three important results you feel you should accomplish in each

area to move ahead gives you an overall perspective of your life and a sense of direction.

As we move into Habit 3, we’ll go into greater depth in the area of short-term goals. The

important application at this point is to identify roles and long-term goals as they relate to your

personal mission statement. These roles and goals will provide the foundation for effective goal

setting and achieving when we get to the Habit 3 day-to-day management of life and time.

FAMILY MISSION STATEMENTS

Because Habit 2 is based on principle, it has broad application. In addition to individuals,

families, service groups, and organizations of all kinds become significantly more effective as

they begin with the end in mind.

Many families are managed on the basis of crises, moods, quick fixes, and instant gratification

—not on sound principles. Symptoms surface whenever stress and pressure mount: people

become cynical, critical, or silent or they start yelling and overreacting. Children who observe

these kinds of behavior grow up thinking the only way to solve problems is flight or fight.

The core of any family is what is changeless, what is always going to be there—shared vision

and values. By writing a family mission statement, you give expression to its true foundation.

This mission statement becomes its constitution, the standard, the criterion for evaluation and

decision making. It gives continuity and unity to the family as well as direction. When individual

values are harmonized with those of the family, members work together for common purposes

that are deeply felt.

Again, the process is as important as the product. The very process of writing and refining a

mission statement becomes a key way to improve the family. Working together to create a

mission statement builds the PC capacity to live it.

By getting input from every family member, drafting a statement, getting feedback, revising

it, and using wording from different family members, you get the family talking, communicating,

on things that really matter deeply. The best mission statements are the result of family members

coming together in a spirit of mutual respect, expressing their different views, and working

together to create something greater than any one individual could do alone. Periodic review to

expand perspective, shift emphasis or direction, amend or give new meaning to time-worn

phrases can keep the family united in common values and purposes.

The mission statement becomes the framework for thinking, for governing the family. When

the problems and crises come, the constitution is there to remind family members of the things

that matter most and to provide direction for problem solving and decision making based on

correct principles.

In our home, we put our mission statement up on a wall in the family room so that we can

look at it and monitor ourselves daily.

When we read the phrases about the sounds of love in our home, order, responsible

independence, cooperation, helpfulness, meeting needs, developing talents, showing interest in

each other’s talents, and giving service to others it gives us some criteria to know how we’re

doing in the things that matter most to us as a family.

When we plan our family goals and activities, we say, “In light of these principles, what are

the goals we’re going to work on? What are our action plans to accomplish our goals and

actualize these values?”

We review the statement frequently and rework goals and jobs twice a year, in September and

June—the beginning of school and the end of school—to reflect the situation as it is, to improve

it, to strengthen it. It renews us, it recommits us to what we believe in, what we stand for.