Todd Davis
speaker
423 appearances
6 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Todd Davis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And to your point, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I see my team is incompetent, well, then what do I do? I do everything myself, or I hover over and criticize everything they do. And if that's what I do, what kind of results do we get? Well, we get pretty poor, mediocre results at best. And then what do I say to myself as the micromanager? See, they are incompetent.
I've got to micromanage even more. And to your point, it just becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy of what I'm seeing versus if I see people as capable and talented... Well, then what do I do?
Well, then I take time to get to know them and what's important to them and what inspires them and how do I motivate them and make sure that they connect with our larger mission and then it goes on and we get greater results. So, sorry, I'm passionate about this.
Thank you. Well, the seven habits have been around for 35 years, like we mentioned, since Stephen first wrote about them. They are all based on principles of effectiveness. For example, habit one is to be proactive. And it's based on the principle of choice. You know, and going back to your see, do, get, you're never going to forget now.
One way to see it is, hey, I can't predict how things are going to turn out, so I'm just going to kind of go with the flow. That's a common paradigm. But a more effective paradigm is, wait a minute, I can choose that I'm actually responsible for my own choices. So I can choose the life that I want. I can choose the career that I want. I can choose the outcome that I want.
And I'm responsible for those choices. Now, there are a lot of things I don't have control over, but there are things, many things I can influence. And most importantly, we learn in this habit, I can choose my response to any situation. And that, I remember when I first read The 7 Habits 30 years ago, I can still see that sentence on the page. You can choose your response to any situation.
In a world when there's so much we can't influence or control, to know that we can choose our response. So, habit one's a habit for a reason because it's up to us to decide if we want to take control of our lives or if we want the outside world or influences to control our lives. And I won't go deep into each habit, but habits two and three work together with that.
Habit two is begin with the end in mind. It's based on the principle of purpose. So if I'm going to take charge of my life, well, then what do I want to do with my life? And then habit three, put first things first, is based on the principle of focus. Okay, if I've decided what I'm going to do with my life, I've got to start prioritizing whether I've got to be first, second, and third.
And these first three habits surround what's called the private victory. It's where we become trustworthy. If you know people, and I'm sure you do, that take responsibility for their lives, they know where they're going, and they prioritize and focus on the most important things, they're pretty trustworthy people. And it helps move us to being independent.
We're independent and ready now to collaborate with others. And that's where the next three habits come in. Habit four is to think win-win. It's a mindset based on the principle of abundance. Habit five is to seek first to understand. That's based on the principle of respect. And then habit six is to synergize. based on the habit of creative collaboration.
And those are where we build trust with others. And those move us to what we call interdependence. And then the seventh habit surrounding all those habits is habit seven, sharpen the saw, based on the principle of renewal. It's where we take time to invest in ourselves.
Your listeners that are taking time out of their busy schedules to learn, because they learn from Brian all the time, they're investing in themselves, not because they're selfish, but because by doing so, they can do that much more for everybody else. So that was the Reader's Digest condensed version of the seven habits.
And each decade or so that we reimagine it, we don't change the habits or the principles, but the applications, we update them based on life's current situations. Sorry to take so much time. No, that was perfect.
Well, you know, Ryan, that's a really good point. And they are copycats, but Stephen said he was a copycat. And let me clarify, Stephen made the point all the time. He did not invent the seven habits. What he did was. And I had the great honor of working with him for many years before he passed away about 12 years ago.
But he clarified what he did was he identified those people and those teams and those organizations that seemed to continually be getting ahead in a good way, getting the results they sought to get.
And he studied what they did on a consistent basis, and then identified those principles that had always been at work, but that, you know, he just identified them, named them as habits, and put them in a construct that we could talk about them and start to implement them in our lives. So he even made the comment that he didn't invent them, he discovered them.
And so I think all of the iterations that different people use, they are just yet different ways to look at these lifelong principles that will always be in effect. Yeah.
I couldn't agree more. I will be asked often in the leadership space, we've been in for 40 years now, Frank McCovey's been around for 40 years, and I will be asked often, so what habits are most critical for a leader? Well, after saying all of them, for me, if I had to whittle it down, it would be habit one for all the reasons you just said. coupled with habit five.
Habit five is to seek first to understand, then to be understood. And it's not just about being a nice person, but it is truly, and I'm sure you've experienced this, I have so much greater influence, not power, but influence with someone if I take time to understand them first. Seek first to understand.
Going back to the earlier example, we were talking about the pendulum being swung too far sometimes. So, first of all, if I realize I have a choice, okay, I can tell myself I'm a busy CEO, I have time to meet with people, or I can say, well, wait a minute, people are my business. Our organization is made up of great people. So, all right, that's my choice.
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