If you are in sales or you lead a team, if you are in a relationship with a significant other or you have kids, if you serve customers or communicate with others in any way — basically, if you live on this planet (and you are not the caveman in the Geico commercial who lives under a rock) — then you probably appreciate your ability to influence others.
Whether I am in a sales meeting with a prospective client, helping a team leader grow their impact, or just trying to herd my family to the car to get somewhere on time, I count on my capacity for influence to get things done.
But here’s the problem: the more I focus on trying to actively influence the other person by convincing, persuading, threatening or pleading, the less influence I actually have.
This is due to a little thing called free will. Human beings are free. Thus, no matter what kind of external pressure we put on people to push them to behave in a certain way, they eventually find ways to evade, passively sabotage, side step or outright revolt against it.
Here is where the paradox of leadership comes in. If you want more influence over others, then you have to focus on the only thing you can directly control: yourself.
If I decide I want my kids to eat healthy, I could go on a scorched earth rampage to hunt down and destroy every ounce of carbs or fat in my house. I could police the grocery list and make sure we only order healthy meals at restaurants. This will work, for a time…
But eventually my kids will grow up or go out with friends or go away to college and they will be faced with making their own choices. How likely do you think it is that they will make healthy decisions when I’m not there to “big brother” or control them?
Then there’s the other way: instead of focusing on what my kids eat, I could start focusing on what I eat. I could make healthy choices when they are looking and when they are not. I could show them by my example what a healthy, active life looks like and how fun, happy and attractive it can be.
Then something magical will happen. They will begin to imitate me, on their own, without any prompting, cajoling, policing or big brothering. Why? Because they will decide that living a healthy lifestyle says something about who they themselves are.
If you focus on what you can directly control (yourself), your circle of influence grows. If you focus on trying to influence others, your circle of influence shrinks.
What can you do today to grow your circle of influence?
