Being a Person of Impact at Any Age
How to begin with what you already have and create a life of impact that makes a difference that matters?
After re-listening to my conversation with Trevor Waldock on Eldership, I realized that there was more to say about how a person of any age can be a person of impact. What I am presenting here is based on my book Circle of Impact: Taking Personal Initiative To Ignite Change.
The First Thing You Need To Know:
You have everything you need to start.
You begin where you are.
No pretense.
No overly inflated expectations.
No sense of inadequacy.
No sense of unworthiness.
Just the recognition that, “Okay. I need to start somewhere. Why not here?”
Don’t look at someone else and think, “I’ll do what they are doing.”
Instead, think,
“What do I already know, even if I don’t know why I know it.”
“What do I know how to do, even if I don’t know how I learned it?”
“What have I done in the past that I now see as having had an impact?”
Now ask yourself,
“Where can I do that again? “
What is a Person of Impact?
A person of impact takes initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters. Impact is a change that makes a difference that matters.
This means that a person of impact is creating change in some way through their decisions followed by their actions.
The key to creating impact is in aligning purpose (values), intention (plans), and actions (initiative) so that the desired change (impact) takes place.
A Person of Impact is an Impact Leader
I have intentionally not created a hierarchy of impact. The reason is that every moment of impact is measured, not in comparison to others, but by the context of the impact. This change is directed at a specific purpose or need. It isn’t doing something just to look busy. It is not an action taken for the sake of action.
When you do something that makes a difference, you are functioning as a leader of impact.
A person of impact can be anyone in any situation. This leadership is not an organizational role. Instead, as a human being, we are fulfilling the promise that comes with our human agency to be people who make a difference in the world.
This may initially be difficult to grasp because the structure of organizations has so programmed and conditioned us to view the world through the lens of structural hierarchies.
In this simple image of an organization, the person at the top is viewed as the leader of the company. The persons in the middle are viewed as managers. And the people at the bottom are viewed as workers. As a structured hierarchy, authority resides at the top of the hierarchy, and responsibility is delegated down through the organization. In its pure form, a structural hierarchy functions like a machine, rather than as a network of relationships.
From the perspective of the Circle of Impact model, leadership is conducted in relationship with people. We act, take initiative with people, and do so having a shared sense of purpose based on a definitive understanding of what our values are.
Values are typically treated as abstractions. From the perspective of the Circle of Impact, values form the basis for our shared purpose for impact.
Ask: Why does our purpose make a measurable difference that matters?
They measure the quality of our relationships.
Ask: Are our relationships based in respect?
Do we trust one another?
Our values provide an important guide to making decisions.
Ask: How does this decision fulfill our purpose for impact?
Our values provide a way to understand why the mechanism of the structure seems to be not working well. Our values provide us the perspective needed to understand change.
Ask: Is my unease a signal that the place where I am can no longer provide me the right context for fulfilling my purpose for impact?
At the end of the day, the four connecting ideas of values, purpose, vision, and impact, guide us toward the establishment of our lives as persons of impact.
Three Contexts of Impact
We measure impact by the difference that we make in specific contexts. I see impact as a direct effect, more than influence, clearly more than an appearance of some benefit.
Proximity
Where you live and work is a place to start creating impact. Of course, just because we live in a community doesn’t mean that we are in touch with the needs of our neighbors. So, the place to begin is to look for opportunities to make a difference as close as you can to where you live.
Relationships
Many of our relationships are not direct but virtual. So it is difficult to have a direct impact on them. This is one of the deficiencies of social media. We meet people, but we don’t develop actual relationships. To have a direct relationships, we have to go out of our way to know each other. We need to establish those things that we share in common.
Just because someone wants to connect on LinkedIn or Facebook doesn’t mean that they are interested in having an authentic relationship with us. Focus, therefore, on developing direct relationships of respect, trust, and mutuality. Opportunities for having a direct impact on them will quickly reveal themselves.
Age
As Trevor Waldock and I discussed on my podcast, people who are older, like both of us, have something to offer the world. Trevor calls this eldership. We have experience and hard-earned wisdom. It doesn’t mean that we know everything. It may mean that we more easily see what we don’t know.
To be a person of impact, we have to cross the boundaries of age, culture, place, and purpose. We need to learn how to begin and then grow a relationship. For many people, this is quite difficult. They are waiting for others to initiative toward them.
Age matters, but not in the manner that we typically think. For example, I have a number of relationships with Millennials and GenZers. I really like these two generations. They understand things about the world that many of my peers do not. So, we mutually mentor each other. As a result, we create a network of relationships of shared impact. This is the goal.
Call To Action
I am issuing a call to action. Over the next week, do something new that represents to you an action of impact. As you take initiative, try to understand what difference you made. Then, go do it again.
I’m opening up a chat for this post where we can share moments of impact. For every share, I’ll do something for you in return. As my gratitude to you.
Remember, there is no hierarchy of impact. There is only doing or not doing.
Let’s go do it.
Thank you for the promise of impact that each of you represent.