Why Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits Still Matter for Healthcare Professionals and Leaders
Sonja Cronjé
July 28, 2026
In this Article:
Begin with the end in mind – decide what success means to you
Seek first to understand, then to be understood – listen before you lead
Synergise – better outcomes come from different perspectives
Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was first published in 1989.
Some of the language has dated, but the core principles continue to hold up surprisingly well. They speak to challenges that are still very familiar: feeling overwhelmed, struggling to protect time for what matters, navigating difficult relationships, and trying to build a career that does not take over your life.
I often find myself drawing on these ideas in coaching conversations, sometimes without mentioning Covey at all.
1. Be proactive – focus on where you have influence
Covey distinguished between your ‘Circle of Concern’ and your ‘Circle of Influence’.
Your Circle of Concern includes everything you care about or worry about – which may include staffing shortages, funding decisions, organisational change or a difficult colleague.
Your Circle of Influence is smaller – it includes the things you can do something about, even when you cannot control the outcome.
You may not be able to change a decision made several levels above you, but you can ask useful questions and communicate clearly with your team. You cannot control how a colleague responds to feedback, but you can prepare carefully and speak respectfully and directly.
This distinction can be particularly helpful when you find yourself going over the same problem without getting any closer to a solution. The concern may be entirely reasonable, but repeatedly focusing on something you cannot change can leave you frustrated and drained.
The aim is to direct more of your energy towards what you can influence, and decide what action is possible from where you are.
2. Begin with the end in mind – decide what success means to you
Healthcare careers often follow a clear path for many years, with another qualification, position or training requirement ahead.
Later, the next step may be less obvious. Some people keep taking on more because that is what they have always done. Others accept leadership roles without asking whether the work fits the life they want.
Beginning with the end in mind means pausing before the next achievement and deciding what success looks like for you. That may involve looking beyond titles and qualifications.
What kind of work do you find worthwhile? What do you want to contribute? What place should work have alongside your health, relationships, and life outside it?
You do not need every step mapped out – careers rarely unfold that neatly. You simply need enough direction to make choices that fit the career and life you want to build.
Without that clarity, it is easy to keep moving toward someone else’s version of success.
3. Put first things first – protect what matters most
Covey’s Time Management Matrix separates tasks according to whether they are urgent, important, both or neither.
Work that is both urgent and important is usually easy to recognise. The greater challenge is protecting important work that does not require immediate attention. Much of good leadership falls into this category – preparing for a difficult conversation, thinking through a decision, supporting someone on your team, or planning ahead. Your health, relationships, and professional development also belong here.
Because these things are not always urgent, they are easy to postpone. A conversation is delayed because there never seems to be a good time. A project is left until the deadline is close. Thinking time disappears from the calendar. Personal priorities keep moving down the list because something else always needs attention first.
The problem is that important work often becomes urgent when we neglect it for long enough.
Putting first things first means making room for what matters before something else takes over. That may involve blocking out time for work that requires proper thought, declining meetings that do not need you, or setting clearer boundaries around when you are available.
It may also mean saying no to a worthwhile opportunity – which can be difficult for people who are used to being capable, helpful, and responsive. A request may be reasonable and the work valuable, but that does not automatically mean you have the time or capacity to take it on.
Boundaries help turn priorities into decisions. Without them, it is easy for other people’s needs and expectations to fill the available space.
Putting first things first does not mean ignoring work that genuinely needs immediate attention. It is about making sure that urgency does not decide how you spend all your time.
4. Think win-win – look beyond competing positions
Leaders often work with people who see the same problem differently.
Thinking win-win does not mean keeping everyone happy or finding a compromise at any cost. It means understanding what matters to each person and looking for a workable way forward.
People may disagree about the solution while sharing many of the same concerns. Both may care about quality, fairness, or workload, but have different ideas about how those concerns should be addressed.
Once those concerns are clear, it becomes easier to look for a solution that addresses what matters most to each person.
A win-win outcome will not always be possible. Resources may be limited, and difficult decisions still need to be made. Even then, people are more likely to accept an outcome when the reasoning is clear, and they feel their concerns were taken seriously.
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood – listen before you lead
In a difficult conversation, most people are already thinking about what they want to say.
They may have rehearsed their explanation, gathered supporting information, and prepared answers to the objections they expect.
Covey suggests starting by trying to understand the other person – asking genuine questions, listening carefully, and checking that you have understood their perspective before offering your own.
Understanding does not mean agreeing. It gives you a clearer picture of what is happening and what may be driving the person’s response.
A missed deadline may look like poor organisation until you learn that the person has been covering an unfilled role. Resistance to a new process may make more sense once you understand how it affects their day-to-day work. Without that information, it is easy to respond to the behaviour you can see while missing the underlying problem.
A coaching approach can be useful here. Leaders often feel pressure to provide answers, but sometimes the better response is to ask what is making the situation difficult, what the person has already tried, or what they think would help. A useful question can help someone organise their thinking and take more responsibility for the next step.
Listening matters when receiving feedback too. The first response may be to explain or defend, particularly when the feedback feels unfair or poorly expressed. Taking time to understand what prompted it may still reveal something worth considering.
How leaders listen also affects whether people feel able to speak honestly. When concerns are interrupted, dismissed, or explained away, people become less likely to raise them again.
When people feel heard, they are more likely to contribute openly and listen in return.
Leaders still need to communicate their views and make decisions. Covey’s point is that understanding should come first.
6. Synergise – better outcomes come from different perspectives
Complex problems often look different depending on where you stand.
A doctor, nurse, allied health professional, manager, or patient may each notice something others have missed. No single person has the complete picture.
Synergising means bringing those perspectives together to reach a better outcome than one person could have produced alone.
For leaders, this means paying attention to who is contributing and whose knowledge may be overlooked. Seniority and confidence can make some voices easier to hear, but that does not make their contributions more valuable than others.
This does not mean seeking agreement from everyone or adding more people to every decision. It means gathering the knowledge available before deciding what to do.
7. Sharpen the saw – build a career you can sustain
Covey uses the image of someone sawing at a tree with a blunt blade. They are working harder and making less progress, but feel too busy to stop and sharpen it.
I often see the same pattern in my work with clients. As demands build, sleep, exercise, relationships, and time to recover are often the first things to suffer. Reflection is pushed aside, professional development is squeezed into evenings or weekends, and leave becomes a chance to catch up on everything else that has been neglected.
Sharpening the saw means looking after your capacity to keep doing good work.
Continued learning helps you build the skills and support you need – which may include supervision, coaching, or developing skills in areas such as leadership and communication.
Self-care helps protect your health, relationships and ability to recover. It may involve protecting leave, taking regular breaks, and making room for the people and interests that matter outside work.
Self-care alone cannot fix excessive workloads or poor systems – those issues still need to be addressed. But waiting for work to become less demanding before making room for recovery rarely works.
Looking after your capacity is not separate from doing good work. It is what allows you to keep doing work that matters.
Why these habits still matter
More than 35 years after the book was published, Covey’s seven habits still offer a useful compass for anyone trying to work well, lead others, and build a career they can sustain.
The value is not in doing all seven perfectly. It is in noticing where one small change could make work feel more manageable, relationships more constructive, or your career more sustainable.
Choose the habit that seems most useful right now, and take one small step to put it into practice.