Circle of Concern & Circle of Influence

Now that you have an understanding of proactive v. reactive and you have a sense of where you are on the spectrum, it’s now time to bring a little context to the learning. Stephen Covey created a framework he calls “The Circle of Concern and Influence.” The “Circle of Concern” includes everything in our world that we’re concerned about. The things we can address like what we’re having for dinner or losing weight, along with those things that we have less or no control over such as climate change or who will be elected president.

The Circle of Concern and Influence helps us identify all the issues that are drawing our attention while also helping us parse out those that we have control over and those that we do not.

An important part of the Circle of Concern and Influence is the purple ring, The Proactive Circle of Influence. What Covey means by “Proactive Circle” is that our influence on the world can grow or shrink in direct relationship to our proactivity.

Reactive people tend to depend on the unfolding of the world to guide their way. They forfeit their responsibility and rely on fate and circumstance to lead them. The more they do so, the more their circle of influence shrinks. The opposite is true for proactive people. The more proactive people can take responsibility (literally their ability to respond to the world), the greater their scope of influence and the greater their ability becomes to be the primary captains of their life.

Take for example, Dr. Martin Luther King. Racial discrimination on a national scale is something that many of us feel is outside our ability to affect regardless of how proactive we are. However, Dr. King continued believing in himself and his cause with unwavering fortitude and thus, made proactive decisions toward realizing equality on a national scale. His “Proactive Circle of Influence” grew hugely throughout his lifetime.

Certainly, not all of us will have the scope of vision and capacity to persevere like Dr. King, but we all have the opportunity to expand our “Proactive Circle of Influence” in areas of life and work that are important to us. Take a minute here to reflect and think about one area in your life that you have 1) Already expanded your “Proactive Circle of Influence” and 2) Determine an area that you could grow your circle moving forward.