Hi, I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins a professional psychologist. I'm here to give you
a simple shift in focus that gives you powerful influence.
You've probably already noticed that you don't have a lot of control in every situation or
interaction but there's a powerful alternative. I'm going to share with you a model that I've
created to help you understand how to get into the influence quadrant. Let's start with a concept
that I call metacognition. Metacognition is just a fancy psychological term that when you break
it down, cognition means thinking, metacognition is a higher level. It's thinking about thinking.
Do you notice that you can do this and be careful with it because you can kind of hurt yourself if
you're not careful. The ability to think about our own thinking is something that sets us apart from
all other species and it puts us in a powerful position to understand the model that I'm about
to share with you. As you think about your thinking notice that your focus is in a particular
place and that matters because what we focus on we feel. What we think about comes about. So, notice
that your focus is in a particular place. Let's talk about some of the options. So, for example,
how I feel versus how you feel. I've put this in first person so that you can own it, alright.
So, when you see me in the visuals that I'm sharing here it's you
okay and the you that you see is the person that you're interacting with.
First person own it. Is my focus on how I feel or is my focus on how
you feel? Now, set aside the feelings for just a minute. Let's look at the content of our focus.
Is it about me or is it about you? That's pretty simple. Am I personalizing this is this all about
me or am I able to get outside of that and put my focus on you. This is about you in this moment.
When we overlay these two dimensions we get this nice quadrant system and you'll notice that the
colors are blending very conveniently. That will give us a way to talk about
these four quadrants and because the visuals at least to me are so important,
I'm a very visual learner. I've put together a
visual for you to keep so that you can print out and have a reference for it.
Just go to the URL that's on the screen right now drpauljenkins.com/influence.
I'll send you a color pdf version of this with a little summary on it so that you can remember what
we talked about here today and you can refer back to it. Let's look at these four quadrants and what
we've just set up and we'll take these one at a time so that we can put a little bit of emphasis
into what the impact is in each of these quadrants. In this first quadrant the red quadrant
my focus is on how I feel about me. This is not about a healthy sense of awareness or mindfulness.
This is more of a, "Am I good enough? Do I know what I'm doing here? Have I got this all together?
Am I good enough, strong enough,
cute enough? This is the red quadrant. The pitfall of the red quadrant
is self-consciousness and I'm talking that anxious am I good enough kind of self-consciousness.
So, I invite you to just consider think about your thinking, okay. metacognition. Keep that turned on
and just consider where am I in this interaction or in this communication. Where is my focus
and if it's in the red you're probably going to experience some self-consciousness. Now,
let's move over to the orange. In the orange quadrant my focus is on how you feel about
me. Do you think I'm good enough, cute enough, smart enough? Do you think I know what I'm doing?
Do you feel good about me? Do you accept me?
Do you approve of me? Welcome back to junior high folks.
That's kind of how it feels, right? The pitfall of the orange quadrant is insecurity.
When we depend on the opinions of other people or external factors how other people feel about us
that's the orange quadrant and it usually results in some form of insecurity. Whether it's red
or orange we run into the same problem, anxiety. In fact, as a clinical psychologist,
I can tell you very definitively that anxiety is typically driven by self-focus.
This is even true incidentally if it's positive. Now, the reason for that is because of the focus.
It's not necessarily the content of the focus. If my focus is about me I am very susceptible
to anxiety and you'll probably see this as well. It's either that red anxious, "Oh, am I
good enough?", kind of self-consciousness or it's the orange, "Oh, do other people approve of me?",
kind of the externalized validation which causes the insecurity. Either way it's anxiety. I
remember several years ago when my daughter was doing some volunteer missionary service
and she was experiencing some anxiety. She was living out of state at the time and
getting involved in things that she wasn't used to doing but that was stretching her a little bit
and this anxiety was kind of kicking her trash a little bit. She figured this out
and I still remember when she wrote home and said, "Dad, I've figured it out", "Tell me,
I would love to know", she said, "Every time I feel anxiety it's because I'm focused on me.
When I forget about myself and just go to
work serving these people I don't feel anxious anymore".
Wow, I thought that was brilliant and it's spot on with everything that I know about psychology.
So, let's just not have it be about us for a minute. Let's go to that purple quadrant next.
Now, my focus is on how I feel about you. Do I like you? Do I approve of you? Do I think you
know what you're doing? Do I like your choices? Parents get into this quadrant all the time
because our focus as parents is often about how we feel about our children and their choices. That's
how I feel about you. Do you see that? That's the purple. Now, the pitfall of the purple quadrant
is criticism even if it's positive. Check that out for a minute. What if I pat you on
the head and I'm like, "Oh, I approve of you", what gives me the authority to approve of you?
Do you see how that puts me here and you here
and it still feels critical, it still feels judgmental.
It's even more obvious when it's negative. I don't think you know what you're doing.
See, that's purple too. Whether it's red or purple we have the same problem, judgment.
Either that anxious self-judgment of the red quadrant or we're getting into that critical
judging others that's characteristic of the purple. Either way we got a problem. So, how
do you like your choices so far? Red, orange, purple,
they all have some really predictable pitfalls but we've got one more option. Let's go green. Now,
in the green quadrant, my focus is no longer about me.
How I feel is only secondary. My focus is on how
you feel about you. Now, connect with that for a minute just energetically, how does that feel?
We get away from the anxiety of the red and the orange and from the judgment of the red and the
purple into a place where it's not about me. How I feel that can be set aside for just
a minute. My interest is in how you feel about yourself.
Now, I have titled this the influence quadrant. Looking at all of these together
notice that we've got a choice in where our focus is. Is this about me or is it about you?
Is this how I feel or is this how you feel? And when we can combine those in
that green quadrant that's when we have influence. Don't worry about trying to jot all this down
and remember it just go get the model, okay. drpauljenkins.com/influence and
I'll send you a copy. I'm not going to charge you anything for that. That's a service for you
as you're engaging with this idea. Now, I have to tell you something about the influence quadrant.
Two things start to happen when you go green. When you get into the influence quadrant two
things happen, people will love you. When you go green people will be naturally drawn
to you. They'll want to be around you and hang out with you. But if
you do it for that purpose it's not green, it's orange.
Think about it, if my focus is on how you feel about me. If it's important for me that you
like me, that you approve of me, that you want to be around me, that's orange, that's not green.
When you are truly in green and your focus is on how others feel about themselves they will
be drawn to you. They will like you. They will want to hang around with you. You just can't
do it for that purpose or it's not green.
The other thing that happens is the promise of this video.
You can have powerful influence when you're in that green quadrant. You will be able to
affect and influence and encourage the thinking of other people. You become a leader for them.
But if you're doing it for that purpose it's not green, it's purple. Think about it,
if I'm in this because of how I feel about you needing my influence well, that's purple.
You will have influence when your focus is truly on how others feel about themselves.
That's the paradox of the influence quadrant. It is powerful and this simple shift in focus
can help you to have a powerful influence. I hope you got something from this that you
can immediately apply. Remember, I've got a free copy of the influence quadrant for you
with a quick little summary about what that's all about drpauljenkins.com/influence
I'll send it right over to you.