How Circles of Control, Influence, and Concern Protect Your Team’s Energy

There is more noise in work than ever: shifting priorities, reorganizations, new tools, AI, changing customer expectations. Leaders are expected to “keep everyone calm” while having less and less direct control over the system.​

The Circles of Concern, Influence, and Control give teams a shared language for distinguishing between what they care about, what they can affect, and what is fully within their power day to day. Used well, this framework reduces burnout and creates clearer, more focused action.​

Let’s discuss the three circles.

• Circle of Concern: Everything the team cares or worries about—market conditions, company strategy, leadership decisions, budget constraints, platform choices. Much of this sits outside their direct reach.​

• Circle of Influence: Areas the team can affect over time—relationships with stakeholders, quality of feedback to leadership, how they collaborate across functions, reputation for delivery, how they communicate risk.​

• Circle of Control: What is squarely in the team’s hands—how they run their ceremonies, their working agreements, how they handle conflicts, how they refine work, their standards of quality, and how they respond to change.​

The leadership move is to help people name these three levels explicitly, so they stop treating every frustration as a personal failure and start seeing where they actually have leverage.​

Why teams get stuck in the Circle of Concern

Teams often spend disproportionate time talking about things “above their pay grade” while feeling powerless in their day‑to‑day reality.​

Common patterns include:

• Rehashing every rumor about reorgs or strategy changes.

• Complaining about “the business” or “leadership” without translating those complaints into clear requests or feedback.

• Feeling resentful about priorities but never clarifying trade‑offs or capacity.​

When this happens, energy drains, psychological safety drops, and experimentation stalls. The circles create a structure to acknowledge those concerns without letting them take over every meeting.​

A team exercise you can run in an hour

You can turn the circles into a team workshop or retro with a simple, repeatable activity.​

Step 1 – Surface what’s on people’s minds
Ask: “When you think about the next quarter, what’s on your mind?”
Have people write one item per sticky (physical or digital).​

Step 2 – Sort into the three circles
Draw three concentric circles labeled Concern, Influence, Control.
Invite the team to place each sticky where they think it belongs.
Expect disagreement; that conversation is part of the value.​

Step 3 – Cluster and reframe
Validate the Concern items first; this shows you see the system they are in.​
Then move attention deliberately to Influence and Control: cluster similar items and ask,
“What’s one experiment we could run here in the next 2–4 weeks?”​

Step 4 – Turn insight into commitments
End with a short list of concrete, owner‑named actions from the Influence and Control circles and a check‑in date. This step is where the team’s sense of agency grows.​

Using the circles as a leadership habit

Leaders can model the circles in everyday conversations, not just workshops.​

• In a status meeting, try: “Here’s what’s in our Circle of Concern this quarter. Here’s where we have Influence. Here’s what we directly Control and will focus on.”​

• In 1:1s, ask team members: “Is this frustration sitting more in Concern, Influence, or Control? What feels like a realistic move for you this week?”​

Over time, the circles become part of how your team naturally filters stress and ideas. Instead of spiraling about everything, they’ll ask, “Where do we place this?” and “So, what do we want to do with it?”​

Ready for What’s Next?

If this sparked new thinking, you can find more of my reflections on Agile adoption, team health, and productivity on Substack and LinkedIn.

If you’re looking for something more hands-on, explore my current downloads and tools designed to help teams reset and realign.

And if your organization is entering a new quarter, navigating a reorg, or forming a new team charter, this is work I support often. I facilitate focused sessions that create clarity, alignment, and momentum, not just another meeting.

If you’re ready to set the tone for what’s next, let’s talk.