A Summary of the Personal Effectiveness MasterClass Africa Course

The course is about realising that you control more than you think you do – there are five themes that permeate the entire course:

• Every day in every circumstance, you have 4 choices to make: choice of response, choice to act, choice of purpose and choice of principles
• The most important principle is that of character. Since no one is born with good or bad character, by implication this means that good character can and needs to be developed
• We need to move through the maturity continuum, from dependence on others to independent drive (proactivity) before preparing ourselves for effective interdependence in building relationships
• Everything we do is about habits – once you understand the science, you can manage these moral, personal, professional and social habits. Grit and perseverance will build will power and practiced self-discipline
• This is about you – arguably the most valuable asset in a company. This focuses on the need to have a growth mentality and ensure that you work on your own development, balance and self-renewal.

The course takes these five themes and builds a logical developmental construct, with the following chapters:

1. Environmental Challenges – how your response to environmental challenges will offer a more refreshing personal and professional perspective
2. Paradigms and Principles – ensure that your framework on life and your role in it is progressive, e.g. you are in control, you can improve and there is enough to go around. Linked to this is the principle of character and the values and traits that define us are clear in our minds and we live them with integrity
3. Proactive – we have to be proactive to better take control of our lives
4. Vision – we need to know where are going to give us a chance of getting there
5. Priorities – we must learn to prioritise those things that are important to us to be effective

These first chapters aim to provide personal breakthroughs to get us to be more independent.

The next four are all about habits:

6. Science of habits – appreciating the science of habits in identifying the cues, programming the response and monitoring the reward to ensure that good habits are repeated and bad habits are re-programmed
7. Sustaining habits – the necessary repetition of habits is based on developing a grittiness in your approach to them – deliberate practice, self-control, effort and stamina
8. Compounding habits – ensuring that targeted habit improvement is incremental and can be compounded to be most effective and lasting
9. Meditation – the habit of decluttering the brain through meditation – an appreciation of the ego, the importance of self-awareness (being) and the power of now


Once you have reached this stage, then the final steps are developing interdependent skills:

10. Win-win – that 9 times out of 10, a win-win solution is the most satisfying and effective
11. Communication – the importance of communication and the art of empathetic listening before effectively influencing others
12. Co-operation – use diversity to create effective unity and the advantages of creative co-operation
13. Balanced Self-renewal – the importance of engineering a continual personal development drive, which includes finding the elusive balance in life and the means to protect and preserve yourself.

The course is a synthesis of some of the best thinking in this field, constructed in a coherent and all-embracing structure of personal development. If this sounds interesting, I look forward to welcoming you to the full Personal Effectiveness course.