Covey - The 7 habits of highly effective people

training, the communicating, the relating, the listening. It's easy to take advantage, to
manipulate, to get what you want the way you want it -- right now! You're bigger, you're
smarter, and you're right! So why not just tell them what to do? If necessary, yell at them,
intimidate them, insist on your way.
Or you can indulge them. You can go for the golden egg of popularity, of pleasing them,
giving them their way all the time. Then they grow up without a personal commitment to
being disciplined or responsible.
Either way -- authoritarian or permissive -- you have the golden egg mentality. You want
to have your way or you want to be liked. But what happens, meantime, to the goose?
What sense of responsibility, of self-discipline, of confidence in the ability to make good
choices or achieve important goals is a child going to have a few years down the road?
And what about your relationship? When he reaches those critical teenage years, the
identity crises, will he know from his experience with you that you will listen without
judging, that you really, deeply care about him as a person, that you can be trusted, no
matter what? Will the relationship be strong enough for you to reach him, to
communicate with him, to influence him?
Suppose you want your daughter to have a clean room -- that's P, production, the golden
egg. And suppose you want her to clean it -- that's PC, Production Capability. Your
daughter is the goose, the asset, that produces the golden egg.
If you have P and PC in balance, she cleans the room cheerfully, without being reminded,
because she is committed and has the discipline to stay with the commitment. She is a
valuable asset, a goose that can produce golden eggs.
But if your paradigm is focused on Production, on getting the room clean, you might find
yourself nagging her to do it. You might even escalate your efforts to threatening or
yelling, and in your desire to get the golden egg, you undermine the health and welfare
of the goose.
Let me share with you an interesting PC experience I had with one of my daughters. We
were planning a private date, which is something I enjoy regularly with each of my
children. We find that the anticipation of the date is as satisfying as the realization.
So I approached my daughter and said, "Honey, tonight's your night. What do you want
to do?"
"Oh, Dad, that's okay," she replied
"No, really," I said, "What would you like to do?"
"Well," she finally said, "what I want to do, you don't really want to do."
"Really, honey," I said earnestly, "I want to do it. No matter what, it's your choice."
"I want to go see Star Wars," she replied. "But I know you don't like Star Wars. You slept
through it before. You don't like these fantasy movies. That's okay, Dad."
"No, honey, if that's what you'd like to do, I'd like to do it."
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