Who is in Your Inner Circle?

Investing in the Right Relationships

Imagine you are a world class athlete and are giving your winners speech at a competition you have just won. Who would you thank?

Most athletes would thank their coach, peers, family and fans.

The best athletes surround themselves with positive influences. Someone who pushes them to be the best they can be. Someone who holds them accountable; motivates them; energizes and encourages them. It can be anyone, it can be multiple people but most importantly they need to be someone who pushes them to be their best and helps them in their goals towards success.

The best athletes invest in coaches and strong support networks. The core of any support network is the inner circle- those who are closest to you, hold you accountable, you challenge and inspire each other and ultimately “suffer together, succeed together”.

Within our networks-professional, social, & family- we have those who are close to us (inner circle) and those further away (outer circles).

We need to consciously surround ourselves with positive people in our inner circle who support and inspire us in our aspirations. These include coaches, mentors, close friends and some family members.

In a previous article (Show me the Time!) I introduced the concept of investing time on Focused Action in Relationships, Opportunities, Innovation and Capacity.

Below is an illustration of a relationship matrix adapted from Stephen Covey’s Time matrix.

The key is to invest your time in relationships in quadrants 1 & 2 (Positive Influences) while managing your time in quadrant 3 (social contacts) and avoid wasting your time on quadrant 4 (Negative Influences).

In Quadrant 1, where you have your inner circle you need to consciously identify and surround yourself with positive influences who encourage, support and hold you accountable. In Quadrant 2 you have positive influences who you engage periodically and make up your larger professional network (e.g. Linkedin). A good way to develop these relationships is through professional associations such as Toastmasters and Rotary.

In Quadrant 3 (Social Contacts), these would include your social network who you engage with socially e.g. on Facebook. It is important to maintain and manage the social contacts as they are often the basis of introductions or referrals to new contacts.

In the 4th Quadrant (Negative Influences) the key is to avoid or cut-off these types of relationships as they typically tend to discourage and distract you from your goals. They are often the “doubting Thomas” who want to keep you at the same level as they are and they don’t challenge and inspire you to excel.

Applying the 80/20 principle – you will find that approximately 20% of your relationships will be in quadrants 1 and 2 (Positive Influences) and 80% of the relationships will be in quadrants 3 and 4. The goal is to focus your time investment in the first 2 quadrants which effectively will drive you towards higher levels of success and growth.

In a previous article (Show Me The Time) I shared the goal of targeting to invest 20% of productive time in a week in the Creative (Self Leadership) quadrant. This is equivalent to a minimum investment of 20 hours per week invested in Relationships, Opportunities, Innovation and Capacity. Considering that Relationships are critical and positively impact all areas of our lives, the weighting for the 4 areas would be approximately as follows: Relationships (40%); Opportunities (20%), Innovation (20%) and Capacity (20%). Therefore the target should be to spend 40% of the allocated productive time equivalent to 8 hours each week invested in your most important relationships (quadrant 1 & 2).

Are you investing your time in the right relationships?

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What other tips can you share? I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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