Is It Time to Elevate the People in Your Circle?

One of the most uncomfortable truths in leadership and entrepreneurship is this: your results are rarely limited by your effort or intelligence. They are far more often limited by the people you consistently allow influence over your thinking, decisions, and standards.

Most people sense this long before they act on it. They feel stalled. Frustrated. Slightly misaligned. Yet when they look for solutions, they focus on tactics—new strategies, new goals, new tools—while ignoring the environment that quietly shapes every one of those choices.

After more than 25 years advising service-based entrepreneurs, leadership teams, and founders across growth stages, I’ve seen a consistent pattern. When progress slows without an obvious operational reason, the constraint is often relational, not technical. And because relationships feel personal, familiar, or emotionally complex, they are the last place people are willing to look.

This isn’t theory. It’s pattern recognition. The people in your immediate circles are either expanding what you believe is possible—or quietly enforcing the ceiling you’ve already hit.

The Core Insight: Your Circles Either Multiply You or Contain You

Every person operates inside multiple circles: friends, family, professional peers, leadership teams, advisors. Each circle sends signals—about what’s normal, what’s risky, what’s acceptable, and what’s “too much.”

Those signals compound.

If the dominant voices around you normalize comfort, caution, or complaint, you will unconsciously calibrate your behavior to match. Not because you’re weak—but because humans adapt to their environment. If the dominant voices challenge you, stretch your thinking, and raise standards, the opposite happens.

This is why the people in your circle are never neutral. They are either a tailwind or a drag.

The hardest part isn’t understanding this. It’s acting on it—especially in small, repeated moments where you choose who gets your time, your energy, and your attention.

Why This Is So Commonly Misdiagnosed

Most people frame this as a loyalty issue instead of a leadership issue.

They tell themselves:

• “I’ve known them forever.”

• “They mean well.”

• “That’s just how they are.”

• “I can’t just walk away.”

And to be clear, this is not about becoming cold, arrogant, or dismissive. It’s about recognizing that proximity equals influence—and influence shapes outcomes.

When leaders refuse to evaluate their circles honestly, they are not choosing loyalty. They are choosing limitation.

A Useful Principle: Oxygen vs. Starvation

One framework I often use with leaders is the concept ofoxygen vs. starvation.

Whatever you give oxygen to grows.
Whatever you starve eventually weakens.

This applies directly to people.

When you consistently invest time and emotional energy in relationships that reinforce negativity, distrust, or small thinking, you are feeding those patterns. When you deliberately increase exposure to people who operate at a higher standard—strategically, emotionally, and professionally—you are changing the environment that shapes you.

This is not dramatic. It’s incremental. And it happens through micro decisions:

• Who you call when you’re thinking through a problem

• Who you spend unstructured time with

• Whose advice you default to

• Who has permission to influence your thinking

Over time, those micro decisions create macro results.

How This Shows Up in Real Life

Let’s start outside of work.

Sometimes the people who have been part of your life the longest are not equipped to be part of your next chapter. That doesn’t automatically make them bad people. It means the relationship may need new boundaries.

For some, this looks like limiting exposure to constant negativity or unhealthy habits. For others, it may require a harder decision—stepping back from relationships that consistently pull them away from who they’re trying to become.

This doesn’t mean cutting everyone off. It means being intentional about proximity.

Now, inside the business.

This is where the impact is often more immediate—and more costly.

I see leaders working daily with people they don’t fully trust. On paper, the person looks strong. Good resume. Technical skill. Experience. But trust is missing.

When trust is absent, everything changes:

• Leaders withhold information

• Decisions slow down

• Effort becomes guarded

• Candor disappears

A leader cannot fully elevate while running alongside someone they don’t trust. They will unconsciously limit themselves to manage risk—and that self-limiting behavior becomes the ceiling.

This is why circle decisions inside a business can be more surgical. Roles can change. Responsibilities can narrow. Partnerships can be redefined. And when those decisions are avoided, growth is quietly taxed every single day.

Think of Your Circles Like a Business Plan

Most entrepreneurs are comfortable building a business plan around:

• Revenue

• Overhead

• Staffing

• Marketing

• Operations

But few ever create a deliberate plan for the circles they operate within.

Yet the logic is the same.

Some circles propel your future.
Others anchor you to your past.

A real leadership plan includes evaluating:

• Which relationships stretch you

• Which ones drain you

• Which ones reinforce the standards you want to live by

This isn’t emotional. It’s strategic.

Who This Is For

This insight applies to:

• Entrepreneurs who feel stalled despite effort

• Business owners sensing misalignment but unable to name it

• Leaders who feel guarded, constrained, or under-supported

• Managers and partners navigating trust and influence issues

If you’re serious about elevating your results, you must be equally serious about elevating your environment.

Final Thought

Your future is not shaped by one bold decision. It’s shaped by hundreds of quiet ones—especially the choices you make about who you allow close enough to influence you.

You don’t have to burn bridges.
But you do have to stop pretending every bridge leads forward.

If you’re questioning whether your current circles are aligned with where you want to go, that question alone is worth paying attention to.

If you want clarity on how to evaluate those relationships and make decisions that serve your future instead of protecting your comfort, let’s talk.

Let’s talk.

Written by Kevin Johnson, CEO and Founder of Leverage Consulting.