Why being a control freak is a good thing!
I was put on the spot recently. Mid-session, co-facilitating a leadership programme with a room full of senior leaders, my co-facilitator turned to me and said, in front of everyone, ‘Johanna, have you got a story that speaks to circles of concern, influence and control?’
I did, as it happens but it was probably not the one she was expecting. I told them about the sea.
The cruel mistress in your circle of concern
In the Navy, we had a saying about the sea. We called her a cruel mistress. She was always in charge. If she decided to throw a tidal wave at us, she was going to throw a tidal wave. There was not a single thing we could do about that. So she lived firmly in our circle of concern. We were aware of her, we respected her, we talked about her constantly, but we couldn’t control her. Spending energy trying to would be a fast route to exhaustion and bad decisions.
The sea is going to do what the sea does. The question is whether you’re spending your time worrying about it, or directing your attention to what you can actually influence and control.
The bit we could influence was the ship’s movements. How we positioned, how we navigated, the decisions we made in response to conditions. That was our circle of influence.
And the bit we could control was us. The sailors on board. What we did, how disciplined we were and how we showed up under pressure.
So what’s your sea?
Right now, for most leaders I work with, the sea looks a lot like market uncertainty, economic pressure, a restructure they didn’t choose, a team they inherited, a competitor doing something they can’t predict, a culture that feels resistant to change. During this session, we talked about VUCA and BANI and how they are omnipresent and omnipotent.
All of it is real and all of it is genuinely hard. All of it sitting squarely in the circle of concern.
It’s not wrong to notice it. Awareness of what’s out there is part of good leadership, but I see leaders getting stuck in it. Running leadership team sessions that turn into extended venting about conditions they can’t change. Teams that spend more time talking about what they can’t do than what they can.
When that happens, the energy in the room changes, motivation drops and people disengage. If you’re not careful, the whole team gets pulled into the circle of concern with you, which means nobody is doing the thinking that actually moves things forward. That’s often when leaders come to me for a Team Diagnostic. It’s not because the team is broken, but because the lens has fogged up and it’s hard to see clearly from the inside.
The shift that changes everything
The three circles, concern, influence, control, build on an idea most leaders have come across somewhere along the way. The concern and influence parts come from Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The control layer has been added by coaches and leadership writers since, but the core insight is Covey's. Knowing the model and using it under pressure, though, are two very different things.
What I’ve found, working with leadership teams across professional services, technology, and financial services, is that the shift from concern to control is rarely just a logical exercise. It’s about state; specifically, stress.
When a team is stressed, the circle of concern expands and the circle of control shrinks. The facts haven’t changed but stress narrows the focus, clouds judgement, and makes everything feel more urgent and less manageable than it actually is.
Which means helping a team refocus their energy isn’t only a strategic conversation. It also requires addressing what’s driving the reactive state in the first place.
This is exactly why the S.T.R.E.S.S.™ Framework exists. It's not a wellbeing tick-box. It's a practical diagnostic tool. A team operating from a place of chronic stress won’t be effective, no matter how good the strategy is. You can run all the away-days you like. If the underlying stress isn’t being addressed, you’re painting over damp.
What good leadership looks like in the middle of it
Back to the Navy. What made the difference when conditions were rough wasn’t the leader who was most worried about the sea. It was the leader who stayed focused on what they could do.
That discipline, of consciously redirecting attention back to influence and control, again and again, even when the ship is being tossed about, is a hugely underrated leadership skill.
The good news is that it’s learnable, but it usually needs to be practised deliberately, not hoped for. The leaders I see do it well have almost always done some kind of structured work on how they show up under pressure, both individually and as a team.
If you want to work on this with your team, whether that’s a single-day reset with a Team Tune-Up or a more structured Team Effectiveness Programme, the starting point is always the same. Figure out what’s actually going on before deciding what to do about it.
Want to figure out what’s really going on?
That’s what I do. Whether your team is stuck in the circle of concern, operating under sustained pressure, or just not firing the way you know it can, I can help you get under the bonnet and work out where to focus.
Book a free discovery conversation and we’ll start there.
