7 Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers

How would it be if you could go on a programme that helped you take control of your life, improved your relationships with friends and family, increased your confidence and ultimately enabled you to communicate and influence people more effectively? Would that be useful to you?

If the answer is, ‘Yes,’ then The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers is going to benefit you.  This programme is run as a two day event as part of the induction week.  It is a training course, not a lesson; it is interactive and thought provoking; and each student has the opportunity to teach the habits to pupils in other year groups over the course of the year.

The programme is centred around The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People which we are using to shape our culture at Finborough.  It is written specifically for teenagers and therefore has relevant examples and life experiences to make it as tailored as possible.  The seven habits are:

Habit 1 – Be proactive (The habit of personal choice)

Habit 2 – Begin with the end in mind (The habit of personal leadership)

Habit 3 – Put first things first (The habit of personal management)

Habit 4 – Think win – win (The habit of interpersonal leadership)

Habit 5 – Seek first to understand, then be understood (The habit of empathic communication).

Habit 6 – Synergise (The habit of creative cooperation)

Habit 7 – Sharpen the saw (The habit of self-renewal)

This programme forms part of our Life Skills Programme, which starts in Year 10 and is run to best prepare our pupils for life after Finborough.

So you are In Year 12…you have made the decision to study at Finborough. You have made the decision which subjects you are going to take, you will make the decision about how hard you are going to work and what sort of student you are going to be.  Those decisions will effect how successful you are.

What if you could learn about the principles of effectiveness, taught by seasoned professionals, who will help you every step of the way?

What if you could develop habits that would help you with your time management, organisation skills, leadership and communication skills, as well as how to live a balanced life?

At Finborough learning how to be highly effective as a person is as important as studying for your A Levels. To truly understand the value of the seven habits, think about how it would be to live life based on the opposites:

Habit 1 – Be reactive – Blame all your problems on your parents, teachers, friends or some other scapegoat.  Take no responsibility for yourself or your education.

Habit 2 – Begin with no end in mind – Be a victim.  Don’t plan.  Avoid setting goals – you won’t follow through anyway.  Don’t worry about tomorrow. Sign up for whatever class sounds easy.  Ignore consequences.

Habit 3 – Put first things last – procrastinate.  Put homework off until you’re through with social media – which is never.   Why study when you have more important things to do like watching TV?

Habit 4 – Think win-lose – View life as vicious competition.  If somebody else – even your best friend – succeeds at anything, it means you lose.

Habit 5 – Seek first to talk then pretend to listen – Pretend to listen in class while you text or play games.  Don’t listen to parents or anyone else.  You already have all the answers.

Habit 6 – Don’t co-operate – Assume that other people are wrong or stupid if they don’t think the same way you do

Habit 7 – Burn yourself out – Burnouts are cool.  Forget sleep.  Exercise if for sports fanatics; school is for nerds.  All you need to stay alive is pizza.

So, everyone taking their A Levels is a student, but not everyone is an EFFECTIVE student.  At Finborough we can help you become just that.

Seven Habits

All students complete their Seven Habits of Highly Effective People training as part of their induction.  This training is designed to help focus on their personal habits alongside learning about how they can improve their effectiveness working with and influencing others.

Over the programme practical examples of how the habits relate to life in the sixth form were relayed by ours student leaders.  The feedback from this year’s group was extremely positive:

“Thank you! I am so grateful to have been given this opportunity and truly am inspired by each habit!”

“I think this experience is definitely an eye opener and should be useful to everyone, as now I have goals to help improve myself”.

“Over this week I think I have thought more about myself and my life than I have done before.  It has defiantly made it clear what things come first!”

“It was fun and exciting; the skills learnt have really improved me as a person”.

“I found it fun, educational and an amazing experience to learn the skill to focus for A-Level”.