Those of you who are familiar with Steven Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (a book I read back in the early 1990’s and have revisited a number of times since) may recall his concentric circle model of the Circle of Influence and the Circle of Concern.  His theory is that proactive people focus on their circle of influence, which sits inside their circle of concern.  It’s a notion that I have often considered, along with the fact that worrying about things in your circle of concern but over which you have no influence is wasted energy (like getting frustrated when you’re stuck in traffic!).

This proactive focus can also be applied to the process of finding board roles. However, I have come to the realisation that the process also has two other circles in play: the circle of action and the circle of confirmation.  Regular readers of this blog may recall that it is called “1000 coffees” because someone told me that it would take 1000 coffee meetings to achieve the board portfolio I was after.  This resonated with many others and it seems to have some truth.  While one has to have coffees with people both within the circle of action and the circle of confirmation, a board role is much more likely to come from the inner circle: the circle of action.  Let me explain from my own perspective.

The circle of action consists of people with whom I have worked.  It may be people who I have reported to, clients, people I worked alongside or who were part of the same team.  They may be people who worked in the same organisation at the same time and while not working directly with me, were aware of the work I was doing. The things these people all have in common is that they have seen me in action: have seen how I work and the product of my work. They can speak first hand of how I operate, how I deal with people and issues.  That gives others a degree of comfort if they haven’t worked with me themselves.

The circle of confirmation is a much wider circle.  It consists of people whom I have met (and often had coffee with).  They may be people who have talked with me at length, interviewed me (in the case of headhunters particularly) but not actually worked with me.  They are the people who can confirm that I might be a good sort, don’t seem to have two heads and seem to be able to string some sentences together to make sense.

Until I have enough board roles so that my experience speaks for itself, I believe potential board roles will largely come from the circle of action.  They will come from people I have worked with previously taking action, suggesting me to a chairman, a headhunter or a member of a nomination committee as someone who might be able to meet the requirements of the role they are seeking to fill.  Their personal experience of me will carry the weight of a recommendation.  And when my name comes up on a list, it will help if there are a number of other people who can confirm (and thus are in the circle of confirmation) that they have met me or heard of me and believe I might be able to do the role.

One needs both circles. Understanding the potential role of the people within each circle and to which circle a person belongs helps to bring focus to the process and the outcomes that might be able to be achieved from each of the coffees.

As with all things, there will be exceptions to the rule, but I thought this theory has enough legs to make it worth including in this blog.

Coffee count: 192