This model helps you generate a useful perspective on how to address the challenges of creating a better future and where to put your energy to achieve better results. You can create this perspective by defining three areas of life – what you can control, can influence and what concerns that at you are ignorant of.

FIELD OF CONTROL – There are things you know that you have some control over.

FIELD OF INFLUENCE – There are things you think you know that other people don’t. 

FIELD OF CONCERN – There are things that you don’t know that concern you.

As you can see from the diagram, the ‘Circle of Concern’ represents everything that could matter to you but you are ignorant of Things that others know and control beyond your influence.

For example, employees may have concerns about a colleague or their manager, but don’t know what is causing it and can do little to influence it.

But you can change the things you control, which is how talk and listen to your colleagues and respond to your boss. You have control of what you choose to do to make something happen as a result of your concerns regardless of any agreement you have with others.

You have a choice to be curious and find out from others what you don’t know to become more aware of what’s happening to relieve your concerns. Ask:

• What do you know as a fact that can be verified or seen from a different perspective?

• What do you sense is true but not supported by the data?

• What do you wonder about that you don’t know?

• What is unknowable but being inferred?

• What can you do to test your assumptions and reasoning that connect the data you had that lead to your conclusions?

It’s not just about what you do, but what you notice and how you interpret what you see, hear and feel.  It follows that the greater your capacity for self-awareness the greater will be your capacity to have control over your Way of Being.

You are blind to what you don’t know. This ignorance generates concerns when you become aware that you must explore possibility to expand your circle of ignorance.  Removing your blind spots gives you more influence if not control. 

It is important to notice, that to fall into your ‘Circle of Control’ your moment-to-moment choices have to be aligned with  the bigger declarations you are are  making to influence others with requests and offers  to reshape a shared vision of the future, 

We are social beings, making it possible to impact on other people’s ‘Field of Concern’ through the observations of others. This expands your ‘Field of Influence’ and is related to the quality of relationships and the quality of the conversations that happen within your relationships. It shapes your capacity to have authority over others and gain substantive promises from them. The bigger the promises we can gain from them, the bigger then can be you impact on your ‘Field of Concerns’.