How one Massachusetts facility re-worked a popular self-help book for its COs

Bill Toller was so taken with Steven Covey's best seller “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” that he wanted to share the book's powerful message with everyone he could, especially the inmates he worked with at the Hampden County Correctional Center in Springfield,  Massachusetts.

For 12 years, he offered a training course based on Covey's ideas to inmates, teaching them how to take responsibility for themselves and how to make the positive changes necessary to live life as an ex-offender.

“I love to look at things that focus on my own personal development, and I felt I could apply what I learned to corrections and law enforcement. In our field, you're confronted with how to promote that kind of development  every day with inmates and with the peers,” says Toller. “In a county jail situation, we have a very short time to make an impact on offenders before they go back to the community. Providing this training was one way to  accomplish that.”

The inmates thought so too and kept asking Toller for more and newer training materials. He checked with FranklinCovey, the company that tailors training based on “The 7 Habits” to specific fields. They suggested Toller become a certified Covey trainer.

He did so and continued to train inmates until he retired from his assistant superintendent of correctional services position in 2004.

Before Toller left, though, Hampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe asked him to re-develop his training curriculum and offer it to his management staff.

“In the past, there was little training that went on when someone was appointed to a management or supervisory role.  Our vision was to invest in our staff, because it is so important to make sure they continue to grow and learn.  So, we created a leadership institute that provides training for supervisors, and then we added Bill's training to that,” explains Ashe, who's been Sheriff for more than 30 years.

Ashe's leadership institute, which is comprised of area supervisors and trainers, creates programs that provide employees with a minimum of 50 to 65 hours of training a year.

Toller, with the help of the FranklinCovey folks, created “The seven habits of highly effective law enforcement professionals” and has been training Ashe's people for about two years now.

“Before you can lead others, you have to be personally and interpersonally effective yourself,” says the 56-year-old Toller. “This training gives attendees the framework to look at their lives, and to learn to communicate better with others by listening and fully understanding what others are saying before they themselves respond.”

The “7 Habits” covers personal paradigm shifts that involve a “principle-centered, character-based, inside-out approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness.”1

It encourages attendees to examine how they handle situations and communicate with others both in their profession and personal lives. This includes ideas like; learning to be pro-active, differentiating between important and unimportant tasks, looking for the mutual benefit in relationships, fully understanding the needs of others, valuing different viewpoints, and improving various aspects of one's life.

“It means getting people to think ‘win-win' when they're facing a situation or problem with another,” says Toller. “It means learning to move from ‘I' to ‘We' and finding empathy for those you're working with or having a relationship with in your personal life.”

“It also means identifying how to be an effective person by developing proactive responses that help increase your circle of influence. A lot of times, we're reactive not proactive in this industry. This is a business that sometimes forces us to look at people's weaknesses. Toller's program helps  accentuate and build on people's strengths, which will only help our staff effectively deal with their subordinates,” Ashe adds. 

Toller's training addresses these topics through group discussion, problem/solution scenarios, and videos, and also allows time for personal reflection so attendees can use what they have learned to develop their own skills. 

“There's a lot of self-discovery,” says Karen Pitts, a training academy instructor in Chicopee, Massachusetts, who recently took Toller's training because of her promotion to sergeant. 

“You sometimes don't realize it, but there are always areas in your life that can be improved. One of the topics covered was time management. Now, I can apply what I learned from that topic to set aside the time I need to figure out how to incorporate the other parts of the training into my life,“ she says.

Toller encourages attendees to find better ways of facing challenges and handling situations. This helps them become the leaders Ashe wants them to be. Ashe knows that to become an effective leader one must make subordinates and peers feel that their concerns have been heard and that they are part of a team.

“No question that this new way of thinking will have great implications for individuals in their daily and professional lives, and it will reflect in our daily operations too,” Ashe says. 

After the initial two-day training is complete, Toller invites participants to five one-day follow-up sessions. They serve as additional support to incorporating Covey's basics into their lives. 

One important aspect of the training that Toller hopes attendees will learn is that Covey's advice is not a one-class, quick fix to their lives. It is a constant process that must be gradually and continually incorporated into the way they live and work. It can be frustrating at times figuring out how to make all this work, but the benefits can be well worth the struggle.

“Even Covey says that no one can get 100 percent on every habit. But you learn that this whole concept is a process, and gradually these guidelines become the positive habits of your life that they are meant to be,” he says.

Bottom Line:

Toller's training incorporates Stephen Covey's “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” to encourage supervisors to become responsible for their lives and actions. It gives them the tools to make their staff feel heard.

Covey's habits and the ideas behind them2:

Be proactive – Are actions based upon self–chosen values or my own moods, feelings and circumstances?

Begin with the end in mind – Have I written a personal mission statement that provides meaning,
purpose and direction to my life?

Put first things first – Am I able to say no the unimportant no matter how urgent, and yes to the important?

Think win-win – Do I seek mutual benefit in all interdependent relationships?

Seek first to understand, then to be understood – Do I avoid autobiographical responses and instead faithfully reflect my understanding of the other person before seeking to be understood?

Synergize – Do I value different opinions, viewpoints and perspectives of others when seeking a solution?

Sharpen the saw – Am I engaged in continuous improvement in the physical, mental, spiritual, and social-emotional dimensions of my life?

For more information on training contact Bill Toller at 413.547.8000, ext 2457.

1,2  – Covey, Stephen. “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People;” Simon & Shuster Inc, 1990.