Diversify Your Influence
What you see is all there is.
If you want a Big Bold Mindset, deliberately, specifically and consciously curate your influences.Chapter 5, The Big Bold Mindset
A new crewmate every leg.
In 2000 I was one of 18 crew racing around the world. Twelve of us sailed every leg. The other six places changed at each of the seven stages.
Every crew change shifted the boat. Driven people brought focus on results. Kind people brought a gentler touch. Comedians brought humour. Living at the extremes, you notice it straight away.
Years later I binge-watched all five seasons of Breaking Bad in about two weeks, and felt dark and angry for the fortnight after. At the extremes, the influence was obvious. How many influences sit just below your awareness?
Who and what is shaping you?
Who are the ten people you see most? Does each one lift you up, leave you the same, or leave you worse off?
Who and what fills your social feeds? What's on the walls in front of you every day?
How much of what you hear comes from people who think differently to you?
We become like the people around us.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman called it "what you see is all there is". We make decisions on what's in front of us, and rarely look for what isn't. So it pays to choose what's in front of you.
What the research points to
Peer groups
Leaders in peer and mastermind groups report more support, learning and growth.
Colleagues count
Better relationships at work go with higher satisfaction, engagement and performance.
Not an echo chamber
Curate for challenge as well as support. Different views sharpen your thinking.
Make sure you're nowhere near the smartest person in the room.
Melanie Perkins: getting into the right rooms
Early on, Perkins put herself among people further down the road. She famously learnt to kitesurf to join an investor's events and meet the founders and backers who went there.
Steel sharpens steel. Exposure to curious, bright minds grappling with hard problems is one of the fastest ways to grow your own thinking.
Steel sharpens steel.Choose who you spend time with
The influence audit
Three columns on a sheet of paper: positive, neutral, negative. Audit everything that can influence you, then run experiments to dial the good up and the bad down.
Do more of it
Can you spend more time with these people, or add more of this?
Swap and experiment
Try swapping one thing for something that might lift you.
Cull the crosses
Can you remove all, or nearly all, of these?
Your ten
The people you see most, at work and at home.
What you scroll
Who you follow, what you read, watch and listen to.
What you see first
Put images and words in view that create the feeling you want.
Remove one cross, add one positive
List the ten people who influence you most, then your feeds and what's in your line of sight. Mark each positive, neutral or negative. This week, remove one cross and add one positive.
Curate the team's influences
Teams have influences too: the voices in meetings, the data on the screen, the stories they tell.
Want Caspar to take your team through this? casparcraven.com