Circle of Control
Dimension: Mindset · Type: Foundation
A three-ring exercise for redirecting energy from concerns you cannot affect to actions you fully control. Use when you feel overwhelmed, stuck, or stretched across too many things at once. Thriving professionals allocate roughly 80% of their energy to the inner ring.
Introduced by Dawn Straiton Mullin (Chief, UN Secretariat Staff Counsellors Office) at the Career Development as a Psychosocial Hazard session of the UN Inter-Agency Career Week 2026, on 6 May 2026, with cross-session reinforcement from Susanne Baberg (OSCE) at the Activating Inner Resources in Uncertain Times session and from Liz Oseland (10Eighty) at the Own Your Future, Make Your Role Matter session. The underlying construct draws on Stephen Covey’s circle-of-influence/circle-of-concern model and Stoic agency exercises.
The framework
The exercise places concerns into rings according to your actual ability to affect them, then redirects energy from the outer ring into the inner ring. Three formulations appeared across the week. They are the same exercise at different resolutions. The choice between them is about cognitive load, not about which one is correct.
When to use it
- When most of your mental energy is going to things outside your control (organisational restructuring, donor decisions, who else got promoted, whether a post will be cut).
- Before a difficult career conversation, to clarify what you can actually ask for.
- As a weekly check-in during high-uncertainty periods.
What you need
A piece of paper or a digital canvas. Three to five things currently absorbing your career-related attention. Ten quiet minutes.
Steps (three-ring version)
- Draw three concentric circles. Inner: full control. Middle: influence but not control. Outer: concern only, no influence.
- List three to five things you are spending career-related energy on. Be specific. Not “the future of the organisation” but “whether my unit’s funding will be renewed in Q3”.
- Plot each concern in the ring where it actually belongs. Be honest. The default mistake is overestimating your influence.
- Notice the distribution. If most of your concerns landed in the outer ring, that explains the overwhelmed feeling.
- Redirect. For each outer-ring concern, ask: “Is there anything in the inner or middle ring connected to this that I can act on?” “My funding will be cut” (outer) connects to “keep my CV updated and my peer network warm” (inner).
- Set the budget. Aim for roughly 80% of your energy in the inner ring, 15% in the middle, 5% in the outer.
- Re-run weekly during turbulent periods. Concerns shift.
Template
| Concern | Ring (inner / middle / outer) | If outer or middle: what is the inner-ring action connected to this? |
|---|---|---|
Worked example
A mid-career UNESCO programme officer is overwhelmed during a budget-cycle uncertainty. She lists five concerns:
- Will my post survive the next budget round? Outer. The decision is the donor’s and the senior management’s. Inner-ring connection: keep my CV updated, maintain my peer network across other agencies, identify two roles I would credibly apply for if needed.
- My manager has not given me feedback in six months. Middle. I cannot force feedback, but I can request a structured career conversation. Inner-ring connection: prepare a Career Conversation Playbook ask within two weeks.
- I want to develop my data-skills toolkit. Inner. Fully my responsibility. Inner-ring action: enrol in the LinkedIn Learning track this month.
- My team’s morale is dropping. Middle. I do not own team morale, but I can lead one specific micro-intervention. Inner-ring connection: propose a 30-minute team retro at the next meeting.
- Whether my organisation merges with another agency. Outer. Inner-ring connection: stay informed without obsessing; redirect rumination to the inner-ring tasks above.
Before the exercise, four of five concerns were absorbing equal mental airtime. After, three of five had a concrete next step inside the inner ring. The overwhelmed feeling did not vanish, but the sense of agency returned.
The two-circle Inner Circle variant (Day 5 S5)
Susanne Baberg (OSCE) presented a simpler two-circle version of the same exercise:
- Inner circle: what you can directly control. Your behaviour, your choices, what you wear, who you contact, how you respond, what you say in the next conversation.
- Outer circle: what you cannot control. The weather, others’ reactions, organisational decisions, restructuring announcements, funding cuts.
The two-circle version skips the middle “influence” ring. It is faster, easier under stress, and useful as a same-day tool when you do not have the cognitive capacity to assess influence. It pairs well with the body-based regulation tools in the same session (Body Scan and Progressive Muscle Relaxation).
When to choose the two-circle version: in acute moments, when you need a fast agency reset. The instruction is to do it old-school with paper and pencil, identify one inner-circle action, and act on it.
When to choose the three-ring version: in deliberate weekly check-ins, when you have time to assess the difference between influence and concern, and when there are several concerns to triage.
The Covey-attributed three-circle form (Day 5 S8)
Liz Oseland (10Eighty) framed the exercise as the central self-agency move for owning your career: draw the circles, list what you think you control, then re-sort honestly. Her crisp version of the operational rule: “the only thing we have control of is our behaviours, our actions, and our responses.” Everything else, including other people’s thoughts and decisions, sits in the no-control ring and is influenced rather than controlled.
The session also picked up the exercise live in the Q&A to address a particularly difficult case (a staff member working under a manager who does not respect organisational values), reinforcing that the Circle of Control is especially useful precisely when the situation around you cannot be moved and the lever is how you show up.
Pitfalls
- Over-estimating influence. A concern that feels like influence is often actually concern. If you cannot name a specific action you would take, it is in the outer ring.
- Treating the exercise as a one-off. Concerns shift weekly during turbulent periods.
- Using the exercise to suppress emotion. The point is to redirect energy, not to deny that the outer ring exists. Allow yourself thirty seconds of acknowledgement, then redirect.
- Confusing “inner ring” with “easy”. Inner-ring actions are often hard (initiating a difficult conversation, applying to a role you might not get). They are inner-ring because they are fully yours, not because they are comfortable.
- Skipping the redirection. Plotting the concerns is half the value; the active move is naming the inner-ring connection. Do not stop at the diagram.
When not to use it
When you are processing acute distress (a sudden non-renewal, a bereavement, a serious health diagnosis). The redirection exercise can feel dismissive in those moments. Use it after the acute phase has settled, with proper support in place.
How I use it
Personal note pending. Davide to fill.
Related frameworks
- Notice, Pause, Shift, Act, the in-the-moment routine that this exercise complements at a longer timescale.
- Hazard, Coping, Thriving Modes, the frame in which the redirection sits.
- Accurate Thinking, the cognitive interrupt for the catastrophic thoughts that often drive outer-ring rumination.
- William Bridges Transitional Model, the curve that explains why outer-ring rumination intensifies at certain stages.
Notes compiled by Davide Piga. Last updated 2026-05-09.