Captainship circles

What if I told you that the only difference between you, me, and Martin Luther King is the size of our captainship circle?

I know what you are thinking…

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ 

Hear me out!

In a previous post, we gave the following definition of captainship.

This might seem like a trivial and reductive definition but it is the common trait of all captains. The only difference between two captains is how many people’s behavior they can change with their words and actions. The amount of people we can help with our captainship is what I call our captainship circle.

The smallest-size circle is the circle of 0, a.k.a. ourselves. Captainship always starts with ourselves. How can we convince someone to change their behavior if we can’t change our own? How can we help people get sh*t done if we can’t get sh*t done ourselves? How are people going to trust us if we are not willing to practice what we preach?

Then there is the circle of 1. Can our actions and words help one single person other than ourselves to achieve their goals? Can we keep making people's lives better, one after another? Can we change the world one person at a time?

The next level in the captainship game is what I call the circle of few, where a few is a small group of people (typically less than 10). For those of us in a corporate setting, our circle of few might be the people we are giving technical direction to. Or the team of individual contributors reporting to us.

The last circle is the circle of many. This circle is the purview of captains who have learned how to help a large number of people around them. There is no limit to how many people we can impact. Our captainship circle can grow all the way to the size of the earth’s population. 😁 

The reason why I like this framework is because it offers a natural progression to grow our captainship. We need to learn how to be a captain of 0 before we can be a captain of 1, few, and many. As one might expect, the game becomes more complex (and more fun!) the more people enter our captainship circle.

How can you use this framework? Think about how many people you are currently influencing. Which circle(s) are you in right now? If you are interested in playing the next level of the captainship game, think about what you can do to help more people. What actions can you take to help more people achieve their goals?

Wanna know one way how NOT to use this framework? Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post!

-Ale

P.S. What did you think about this post? Reply to let me know! You can also leave me anonymous feedback.