Drum-roll, please!  As promised, this week concludes our three-part series on the 3 C’s.  If you’re just now tuning in, we covered how genuine Curiosity and Connections can move mountains in your work life.  And now some Juicy tips – a Plan of Action, in fact – on growing your Circle of Influence.

In the early 90’s Steven Covey presented some work on Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.  He identified that everything we think about and are concerned with (represented by the red circle): our health, children, work and, would you have guessed, world peace.  Our Circle of Influence, the green circle, encompasses those concerns we can do something about, those things we have control over. 

Covey suggests we need to be proactive!  It IS a matter of choice.  Proactive people focus on issues within their circle of influence, working on things they can do something about and that tends to lend more energy and enthusiasm to the task at hand.  And enthusiasm sure helps produce lasting change!

In my work, I help clients grow their circle of influence.  Together we strategically connect them with people inside and outside of their company in areas they have control.  These clients employ the tools of Curiosity, and the concepts around creating Connections using a Personal Branding Connection Campaign (more on that in Part 2).  Your curiosity and Campaign will allow you to practice different influence behaviors and identify what gets the results you want.

So I invite you to consider what is your goal for your circle of influence?  Over the past weeks, I invited you to look at who you are expected to know and need to know and to think of creating a campaign to get there.

• Will taking these small, steady steps grow your Circle of Influence to where you want it to be?

• Are you comfortable being uncomfortable occasionally?

• Are you willing to use the discipline of planning connection time on your calendar for 2013 and beyond?

• And most importantly, are you committed to this process?

I came across the fact that the radius of a circular ripple on water increases at the astonishing rate of four feet per second.  That is incredibly fast!  I couldn’t resist associating this to growing your circle of influence.  Like the physics of a ripple moving at that speed, colliding and interacting with other waves, there is a factor of not knowing what you don’t know until you get into action.  And that getting into action using curiosity, connection and growing your circle of influence is going to shift you in subtler and bigger ways than you expect – to connect you to valuable opportunities at work!  Never before anticipated doors open with new ideas.

Yes, some of this can feel uncomfortable.  I once read that Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook, had installed on the walls of the lobby of Facebook: “What would you do if you were not afraid?”  When we believe in ourselves we accomplish things that we set out to do!  So, Yes, change can feel scary and uncomfortable and in order to THRIVE, we need to accept that trying new behaviors and setting accountability for ourselves around these behaviors is key.

The Action Plan: Take yourself out for coffee in the next week.  Bring a notebook and spend some time determining:

1. What are you curious about at work?

2. Who do you want to get to know?  Who do you need to know?

3. Then, map out your campaign to start connecting with those people to grow your Circle of Influence!  Time block it on your calendar and think about all the ways you can reach out to strategically and genuinely connect with these colleagues.

Visualize how this will change your work when, later this year, you have strengthened your Curiosity muscle, made Connections and have grown your Circle of Influence.

I invite you to take action using this plan.  Stretch.  Take a leap of faith, and like a new habit, give yourself 30 days to try out the Three Cs and have fun with it in the process.  Your circle of influence will grow and the ripples it produces will lead you places you have not imagined.

In the first of this three-part series, I discussed how Curiosity helped me engage others and build strong relationships.  As I mentioned, moving from Montreal to the US got me out of my comfort zone, making me realize I had to focus my curiosity to effectively make connections that would be mutually satisfying and beneficial at work.  Once curiosity opened the door genuine Connections followed!

Several years ago, I flew on Jet Blue for the first time.  It was a great experience – from the booking to the interaction at the airport, and blue chips you were given on board – it was fun.  My curiosity got me to talk to the flight attendant.  I asked him if I were interested in doing some work for Jet Blue would he have any ideas or connections for me.  He handed me his card and suggested I call his assistant.  (Hugh?!,)  Low and behold, in that moment I was connected with the CEO and founder David Neeleman, who took a monthly tour as a flight attendant to check out his company!

What I learned from this experience was that I had to initiate conversations – it might feel uncomfortable, even silly – but it was so clear that taking that first powerful step of being the one to initiate connecting had given me a powerful contact.

For my clients who say,  “Yes, but I am not as outgoing as you, Karen”, we talk about how they can use their natural curiosity to ask others questions and not feel like they have to sell themselves.  They might instead have asked the question of David, ”What is it like to work for Jet Blue?  Everyone looks so happy, how did that happen?”  Really focus on the other person. 

When you are in a more connected relationship with folks you work with, you have faster access to a broader range of information and so do they.  And that can have a lot of value for both of you, your team, and the organization over all.

SO, in thinking about who you are connected to consider:

• Who you are expected to know in your job…and beyond that?
• Who do you think you need to know to enjoy your job and be most successful?

From here, come up with a list.  If the lists look similar at first, don’t fret!  Take the two lists and create a summary list of people that you choose to become better connected with.  Look at your list and establish a clear, powerful goal of five or six people you want to build better connections with in 2013.  It is that simple!

It is a common statistic in sales that 80% of sales are made between the 6^th and 12^th (non-pushy!) interaction.   This applies in building strong connections, as you have to stay in touch to build a strong working relationship.  People relate to those they know and trust.

To put some structure and accountability behind growing these connections I invite you to build what I call a “Personal Brand Connection Campaign”.  Making a true connection with a colleague can be easy and involves simple, even intuitive steps: invite them to coffee or to lunch; find common interest in sports, travel or books and talk about that; arrange an informational meeting to get to know more about what they are doing.  Or on the professional end, do some research and share that with a colleague working in the same area.

Using these concepts, be conscious of your 6-12 touches.  Map them out on your calendar.  Yes, actually book time to take these actions for each of these 5-6 people you want to connect with in 2013.   Be curious about which part of your campaign works better and identify what really gets you results.  Consciously growing these connections takes time.  Clients though, often share they are both surprised and delighted that the people they reach out to are receptive, in fact, appreciative that they have taken the time to connect!

Next we’ll dive into how these two points of Curiosity and Connections help you build a juicy Circle of Influence.  Yes, juicy!

Many of my clients come to me feeling stuck in a corporate rut.  One of the first things they ask me is HOW to become even more successful at work, better understood, lead more collaboratively, and ultimately, become the employee every manager wants to promote!   In creating a system to help them move forward (and upward!) I came up with The Three C’s. 

In this 3-part Blog series, I will give some juicy insight on just how Curiosity, Connections, and Circle of Influence have a dramatic impact on professional growth.  With these 3 C’s, my clients have experienced increased work satisfaction and a significant blossoming of influential relationships.

First, I would like to share how I got interested in combining the 3 C’s to build my own influential relationships.  I am from Montreal, Canada.  I’ve moved a dozen times in the last 25 years.  Around move six I thought there had to be an easier way to get reconnected in a new work situation.  Of course when we moved to the US the extensive network that I had developed between my family circle, work and University connections in Canada were not as available to me.

This made me aware that in order to connectin business I had to get into action!  I got curious about different business networking meetings and just started attending.  Although I was exercising Curiosity, having fun and success connecting, I wasn’t being strategic enough in making the connections I needed.  I realized that to grow my circle of influence, I had to get very clear on who I needed to have in this circle and how to take practical, specific steps to create it.

When I thought about curiosity on a personal level, I remembered summer vacations as a kid- our annual trip from Montreal to Old Orchard Beach, tent trailer in tow.  Mom and Dad would pack us up and point the car south to meet up with all our cousins and friends.  For me this meant one thing: the possibility to build extraordinary, complex sandcastles every day!

My sandcastle dream was insatiable and I learned much about negotiation at the tender age of 5 as I recruited siblings and cousins to help me build.  Soliciting extra hands to work with me was the key to my dreams!  Unknowingly, I was learning the fundamentals of Negotiations 101: I used my curiosity to increase the satisfaction level of the sandcastle support team.

Since then in my study of negotiations, I’ve learned that increasing other’s satisfaction level means fundamentally making people feel good.  Others avoid things that feel too risky, they want to learn, meet their needs without compromising values, be listened to, and be treated nicely. This happened at the beach.

I realized curiosity matters.  When I’m curious and ask really neat questions, from sandcastles to helping leaders build effective strategies, others get excited and engaged.  They not only answer my questions but ask me questions too.  Together we are able to create bigger, better sandcastles!

We all had this curiosity skill in childhood and it sparked our first massive learning curve, then one day we heard it…“Curiosity killed the cat.”   We perhaps stopped being quite as curious in situations and worried about what others thought of us.

Curiosity is a “use it or lose it” muscle.  It needs development or we miss the moments of excitement and discovery that it brings.

And remember the satisfaction level?  I invite you to revive your natural sense of curiosity from your favorite childhood activity to find out more.  Ask questions of others – they will enjoy the experience (so will you!) and it will start flexing their curiosity muscle as well.  Great sandcastles will result for both of you.

How do you know when your curiosity engages others?  The best indicator is body language!  Ernest Hemingway said, “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never really listen.”   Really listen.  Look for smiles, body language of engagement, people connecting and interacting with you.  Then you will know your curiosity is heading you in the right direction.

Coming next: Connections.  Until then, take action, stretch, and make a leap of faith in powering up your curiosity.

From Keith Cunningham advisor to Tony Robbins, “Success Lies Outside Your Comfort Zone”, or from Oprah, “If you want something different, you have to do what you have never done”.

This is reminded to me, in Montreal where when downtown, the language of greeting, is most often Fench. My ego and rusty cogs remind me my fluidity is not as it once was, but so joyful to simply be present in the moment and re-experience the joy of this second language.

This week, I connect with family and am present for a complex training, confident that this discomfort, outside my comfort zone, will provide jewels for clients and myself, I am present to receive them.

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same. - Carlos Casteneda