When navigating the inevitable challenges of leading change, where you place your attention can be the difference between empowerment and hopelessness. This is the core concept behind understanding and focusing on your locus of control.
It’s easy to get caught up in things outside of our direct influence—the economic climate, government mandates, or decisions made by others. Leadership, especially in collaborative environments, requires a shift in focus, concentrating energy on the actions and processes within your team's power.
What Is the Locus of Control?
Think about a professional sports coach. When a reporter asks them about an opposing team's strategy, the great coaches almost always bring the focus back to their own locker room: "We're focusing on what we can control—our process, our game, and our effort." They avoid dwelling on what the other team is doing or the perceived unfairness of the referees.
A locus of control describes where you believe the control over events in your life resides.
- External Locus of Control: Blaming outside factors (the government, the economy, a lack of resources, a student's home life) for negative outcomes. This mindset often leads to venting, anger, and a sense of overwhelm. As well, it limits the possibilities of what we can do as in many of these circumstances we have no ability to impact these circumstances.
- Internal Locus of Control: Focusing on your own actions, habits, and responses as the primary drivers of success. This is an empowering mindset that directs attention toward action and solutions.
When we focus on what we can do, we move from the paralyzing "there's not much we can do" to the impactful "what can we do?" This shift is fundamental to leading successful change and making a difference to students and their success.
For organizations, this focus is not just about individual stress management; it has a profound effect on collective efficacy.
Collective efficacy is the shared belief among a team that they can make a difference and have a positive impact. When a team operates with a strong internal locus of control:
- It creates a healthier work environment. The conversation shifts from blaming external factors to strategizing internal solutions.
- It boosts student achievement. Research shows a strong link between high collective efficacy and positive outcomes. When a team believes they can overcome challenges, they find ways to do so.
When your team can say, "Yes, this is challenging, but what could we do?" you are cultivating a much more powerful and successful culture than a team stuck saying, "This is challenging, and unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do."
Strategies for Shifting the Mindset
Shifting an entire organization’s mindset is not easy, but the following strategies can create the awareness and structure needed for success.
1. Map Your Factors: The Target Activity
Make the locus of control explicit within your organization. A great activity is to have your team list all the factors getting in the way of student or organizational success on sticky notes, and then sort them into three categories:
- Outside of Our Control: Things we cannot change (e.g., student's family circumstances, overall funding levels). These sticky notes are placed on the outer edge.
- Within Our Influence: Things we don't directly control but can influence through advocacy or communication (e.g., working with community partners). These sticky notes are placed in the outer circle as things we can influence.
- Directly Within Our Control: Things we can immediately change (e.g., meeting structures, instructional strategies, resource allocation). These sticky notes are placed in the inner circle as things we can control.
The visual below clarifies that while the external factors are real and important, the internal ones are where your action and energy must be focused. Having a shared language allows team members to gently check each other—"I think we're living outside our locus of control right now. Let's come back to brainstorming what we can do."
Many schools engage in this activity and then place the poster in their meeting room as a reminder of what we have identified as what they can influence and control and can be a powerful motivator in team meetings.
2. Address the Immediate Problem: The Hunger Example
Consider the scenario of a student coming to school hungry.
- External Locus: Focusing on the fact that "It's the parents' fault." This leads to frustration and anger.
- Internal Locus: Focusing on the fact that "We have the student in our environment from 8:30 to 3:00. What can we do during that time to prepare them for learning?"
The internal response leads directly to actions such as exploring a breakfast program, securing snacks through fundraising, or allocating resources to a lunch program. While the external factors haven't changed, the team has taken powerful, practical steps to mitigate the impact on the student.
3. Formalize the Focus with Team Norms
When developing team norms encourage the inclusion of a norm that explicitly attends to the locus on control:
"We will primarily focus on solutions and actions within our locus of control."
This provides a clear boundary for discussion, preventing meetings from becoming "venting loops" and ensuring that every conversation leads to tangible next steps for students and the organization.
The internal locus of control is not about ignoring reality; it’s about choosing where to invest your most precious resource: your collective energy. When you clearly identify what you can control, you empower your team to move beyond blame and create meaningful, positive change.
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So What Can We Control? Articulating our Locus of Control
