What is Your Power of Influence?
Influence is the power to change or affect someone or something in an indirect but usually important way. When you think about who has influenced you throughout your lifetime, chances are you list parents, friends, a mentor, or a leader.
Of course you don’t need a title to influence someone, but you do need intentional focus if you want to grow yourself and how you influence others in a positive way.
Stephen Covey says influence starts with understanding that the problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas:
- Circle of Concern – all the things you care about but have little or no control over. Examples: Other people’s behavior, the weather, the economy, time
- Circle of Influence – the things you can directly impact that you can control. Examples: My attitude, my effort, my health, time management
Simply put, everyday life happens and the ONLY thing we can control is how we react.
Think of how you react to positive and negative things, are you proactive or reactive? If we live in the Circle of Concern (all the things we cannot control) we are reactive, those concerns start to pull us down, giving us less time and energy to focus on the things we can influence.
Guess what? That causes our circle of influence to shrink. To be the best version of yourself – be proactive, that’s how we grow our Circle of Influence.
Focusing our time and energy in the Circle of Influence means we focus on the things we CAN control/influence and we expand our knowledge, experience and business trustworthiness.
Let’s face it, we all spend some time worrying about the things we cannot control, there’s a lot in the universe to be concerned about, the problem is, that worry weighs us down.
Often, we don’t realize the potentially negative influence we can have on those around us. Because it is important to be aware of where your focus is, we want to challenge you this month to grow your Circle of Influence:
Once you complete your list, we’d love to hear from you, including what else you are doing to enhance your Circle of Influence! Email us at hello@LeadtoInspire.net
Just in case you need a few ideas, here are other ways to grow your influence, get involved by joining a group of interest (online or in person), put a sticky note of encouragement in your coworkers work space or share your time, ideas or other resources to help others develop and grow.
In this day and age of, “I’m too busy” it’s easy to lose sight of the benefits of growing new relationships as well as our Circle of Influence, but the return on our investment of time not only helps us focus on the right things, it helps us grow both personally and professionally – and who doesn’t have room to grow?