The easy thing to do is get angry, upset, frustrated and anxious. Our circle of concern seems to grow by the day.
It’s on the news every night (or all day, if you find yourself stuck to the unreal all-too-real events of the past week / month / years).
And there’s a healthy market in discussion groups and New York Times bestsellers to make the most of it.
At the same time, our ability to influence the huge issues of our day seems to shrink with every moment.
I don’t think that perception needs to be true.
I went back to an old, battered copy of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits this weekend, to remind myself of this:
If we invest more in our circle of concern than in our circle of influence, we let the former grow at the expense of the other.
That's right.
If we plough energy into things we care about, but over which we have little or no influence, we don’t gain any more influence over them. But worse than that, we also reduce our influence in the other areas where we could have made a difference.
Worse still, we also reduce our influence with the people close to home with whom we could make change happen.
If we want to change the system, we can start by changing something in our small corner of the world, with the people who are with us in that small corner. By focussing on where we can make a change, we grow our influence to the point the circle of concern barely matters any more.
This isn’t about lowering ambitions or playing down the magnitude of the problems we might face. But we’re not going to solve the biggest problems by worrying about them or tinkering at the edges.
Instead, it is through relational leadership that you can increase your influence in whichever domain you work. It is relational leadership that makes the biggest difference in the world around us.