Encyclopedia of Leadership

9.4

INCREASING YOURIMPACT: UNDERSTANDING

CONTROL, INFLUENCE, AND INTEREST

Inspired by Stephen Covey.

This tool will help leaders make choices about how to focus their time and energy.

➠ Some leaders lose focus by dabbling in or dwelling on interests over which they have

no significant influence, or choose not to have an influence.

➠ Some leaders confuse influence with control, and thus don’t do either as well as they

could.

➠ Most leaders have the ability to expand their influence, but have gotten into habits or

practices that have caused them to accept limitations as real and unassailable, rather

than as imagined or self-imposed.

Interest:You can’t act on every interestor concern you have in life. First, there simply isn’t

time; second, few leaders have the resources this would require. In the two diagrams here, the

circles on the right show less time and energy being invested in the area of interest. This is a

choice leaders make to free up resources and to improve their focus on the more leveraged

areas of influence in business and in life.

Control:When it comes to managing and leading knowledge workers—and up to 80 per-

cent of the North American workforce is made up of knowledge workers—at best leaders have

the illusion of control. You simply cannot commandcommitment from highly skilled employ-

ees in a complex working environment. Most knowledge workers possess unique information

about their profession and area of business that can be put to use only with their active coop-

eration and commitment. They reserve the right to make their own decisions about what they

emphasize and where they provide their discretionary effort. As a result, leaders have lost

much of their ability to fully control individual employee performance. Note in the diagrams

that the area of control remains static and relatively small.

We’re capable of influencing a great deal more in this world than we are comfortable admitting to ourselves.

Influence:Defined in the dictionary as “producing effects without exercising authority or

control,” leaders do have tremendous capacity to influence. There’s not much that can’t be influ-

enced, if and when a capable person commits to making something happen. By strategically

274 SECTION 9 TOOLS FORLEADING ANDINFLUENCINGOTHERS

Area of Control

Area of Interest

Area of Influence