Leadership is about controlling others, isn’t it? Nope. The 6th century BCE Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu said it best when he stated:
He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.
Lao-Tzu
One of the earliest lessons I learned as a new leader was the importance of self-awareness and self-control. Without both of these traits, it is extremely difficult to be an effective leader. How can you motivate and inspire others if you can’t even motivate yourself? In my early leadership experience, however, I thought that I could change or control others through my words or actions. But that’s not really how it works.
Understanding this concept first occurred to me when I read about the circle of concern and circle of influence in Stephen Covey’s book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” While this idea made sense to me, I have found it even more helpful to add the circle of control to this concept. Here’s how it works.
First, draw a circle with a second circle around that and then a third circle around those two. It should look something like this:
The first circle, the one in the middle, is the Circle of Control. This is the stuff that you have control over. Things like what time you choose to get up, where you go to eat lunch, or how you present yourself to others.
The second circle is the Circle of Influence. The items in this circle are things that you don’t actually control, but can influence. One example of this is how you raise your children. As a parent, you try to instill a certain set of values in your children and hope that they stick. In reality, when they turn 18 they can legally be on their own and do whatever they want. At this point, you’ve tried to influence them to be a certain way but by no means are able to control them.
The outermost circle is the Circle of Concern. Before I learned about this concept, I spent a lot of time in this circle. These are the things that you can do absolutely nothing about. You can’t even influence them. These are things like weather, the economy, or all of the terrible things that you see on the news every night.
OK, so what, you can divide everything in your life into these three circles. How is that life changing? For me, this concept allowed me to evaluate every single worry that came into my life and put it into one of the circles. If it was in the Circle of Control, I could focus on controlling it. If it was in the Circle of Influence, I could work on influencing it. If it was in the Circle of Concern, I could let it go and stop worrying about it.
This concept showed me the importance of spending my energy only on the things that I can control or influence. The things in that third circle, the Circle of Concern, aren’t going to change no matter how much you think or worry about them. Categorizing things into one of these circles was the first step for me to manage myself before I could successfully manage others.
So the next time you find yourself worrying about something, step back for a moment to think about which circle it belongs in. If it’s not in one of the first two . . . forget about it!
