The Influence Paradox: Why Peak Performers Stop Trying to Convince People

It's Kelly Clarkson here to talk all things Wayfair: the best place to buy furniture, decor, and anything else you can think of to create a home you absolutely love.

I know when I shop with Wayfair, I find options for every style, whether I'm filling boho or farmhouse, modern, traditional, French country.

I can find exactly what I need for my home and more.

No matter your space, style, or budget, shopwayfair.com to make your home way more you.

Wayfair, every style, every home.

I spent 45 minutes giving the perfect presentation.

Had all the data, all the logic, slides that would make consultants weep.

Room full of nodding heads, zero questions, thought I nailed it.

Three months later, nothing had changed and I was pissed.

But that failure taught me the most counterintuitive lesson about influence I've ever learned.

And by the end of this video, you'll understand why the harder you try to convince people, the more they resist.

Plus, I'm going to share the three-word phrase that completely changed how my team responds to my ideas.

But first, let me tell you about the great CRM disaster of 2019.

I'm Ryan Hanley, and while everyone else is telling you to find balance, I'm here to tell you that's bullshit.

Three years ago, I was the poster child for entrepreneurial chaos.

Great ideas, terrible execution, chasing every opportunity like a squirrel on Red Bull.

Then I stopped fighting my ADHD and started weaponizing it.

I built and sold a seven-figure company, hit number two on Apple Podcasts in the business category, spoke more than 400 times over the last decade.

Here's what productivity gurus won't tell you.

Your brain is not broken.

The system is.

Your overwhelm is actually your edge.

You just need to stop apologizing for it and start leveraging it.

That's finding finding peak.

And if that's you, then you're in the right place.

Picture this.

I'm convinced our team needs a new customer relationship management system or CRM.

The old one is clunky, outdated, and frankly embarrassing when we show it to new employees.

So I spend weeks building the perfect case.

ROI calculations, feature comparisons, implementation timelines.

I wanted my team to buy in.

I'm ready to drop the mic on this new CRM presentation.

And when the day comes, the presentation goes flawlessly.

My team is sitting there, nodding at all the right moments.

And when I finish, I ask if there's any questions.

And there's silence.

I shouldn't have done this, but I took that as agreement.

I mean, you know, who could argue with that logic in the moment, right?

But I know this is wrong.

And here's what I didn't understand at the time, but I'm going to tell you about it in in these next three minutes.

While I was focused on features and benefits, my team was worried about something completely different.

Something I never even considered.

But first, you need to understand why this happens to all of us.

Every single leader experiences this particular issue.

See, most of us think influence works like this.

You have a good idea, you present logical arguments, people see the wisdom, and they follow along.

And while that sounds amazing and would be nice, that's not how humans work.

When someone presents you with a change, your brain immediately starts calculating the risk.

And there are three specific fears that kick in every single time.

I'll tell you what they are in just a minute, but here's the thing.

These aren't rational fears.

They're survival instincts operating at a subconscious level, which means all the logic in the world won't overcome these fears.

I learned this the hard way during my CRM presentation debacle.

While I was speaking to the rational minds, their emotional minds were running the show and I had absolutely no idea because they were silent and I didn't press them.

What were my team members actually worried about?

And more importantly, how do we as leaders address?

the fears that we can't see.

That's where the influence paradox comes in.

Okay, the title of this video was the influence paradox, and here's the paradox.

The less you try to convince people, the more convincing you become.

Sounds crazy, right?

And it sounds backwards, but stick with me here for just a minute.

I promise we're going to get there.

Peak performers understand something that most leaders miss entirely, and it has to do with those three fears I mentioned earlier.

But before I tell you what they are, let me show you what this looks like in practice.

So I go back to my team team about the CRM system.

But this time, instead of representing my case and trying to be even more logical, I start with three words that changed everything.

Help me understand.

Help me understand what's working about our current system that you don't want to lose.

Help me understand what parts of the system we currently have don't.

work for you.

Help me understand our three little words that will change your influence.

and that's when the floodgates opened for me they weren't worried about features or roi they were worried about losing the workarounds they developed the shortcuts they'd mastered the sense of expertise that they had built up over years of using this particular crm now here are those three fears that i promised you earlier in the video fear number one what if this doesn't work and i look stupid fear number two what if i lose something i value in the current system?

Fear number three, what if this change makes me less valuable to the organization?

These fears are operating below conscious awareness.

Your team members most likely can't even articulate them, but they're driving every bit of the resistance that you're going to encounter anytime you want to make a change, whether it's a tool like a CRM or cultural changes or really any kind of change inside your organization.

And here's what's crazy.

There's a simple way to address all three fears at once.

It's what I call the validation bridge, and I'll show you exactly how to use it.

But first, you need to understand the psychology behind why this works.

When people feel heard and understood, something magical happens in their brain.

The amygdala, that fear center, it starts to calm down, it releases, it relaxes, the prefrontal cortex, that's where rational thinking happens.

That comes back online.

You can literally change their brain state from defensive to collaborative, and that's when the real influence becomes possible.

So here are my three pillars of peak influence.

Pillar number one, curiosity over certainty.

The moment you walk into a room convinced you have all the answers, you've already lost the battle.

And that's cliche advice, but it's incredibly true.

People can smell certainty from a mile away, and it makes them defensive.

Instead, lead with genuine curiosity.

There's a specific type of question that works better than any other.

I'll give you the exact formula in just a minute.

Before vision.

If you know me, you know I'm prone to shiny object syndrome.

And to be honest with you, I was drowning in marketing tools.

ConvertKit for emails, HubSpot for CRM, landing page software, automation, webinar software.

I was paying over $500 a month and spending half my day just switching between these different platforms.

Then I discovered go high level.

One platform, one login, everything I need to run Finding Peak.

The podcast, the newsletter, speaking business, coaching business, all of it.

Over a million and a half businesses have already made the switch and now I know why.

If you're tired of juggling tools, I got a special 14-day free trial deal for listeners.

No questions asked, no contracts, cancel anytime you want.

Simplicity scales.

Go high level is the answer.

To get the deal, click the link in the description, whether you're listening on Apple or Spotify or even watching on YouTube.

Pillar number two, validation.

This is where most leaders get it backwards.

We're so excited about our vision of the future that we skip right past acknowledging the present reality.

Like what's working today?

People need to feel heard before they're willing to listen.

It's not enough to understand their concerns.

You have to reflect them back in a way that shows you really get it.

Paraphrasing and confirming is a wonderful way of doing that.

And here's a little example.

So what I'm hearing is that you're not opposed to improving our CRM, but you're worried that any change will disrupt the efficiency you've built in the current system, meaning their workarounds and their hacks.

Is this right?

Get them to confirm.

Or if that's not what it is, they're going to tell you what the problem most likely is.

And the simple act of validating with your team, suddenly you're not adversaries.

You're not debating competing ideas.

You're collaborators working on the same problem.

Pillar number three.

co-creation over persuasion.

There's a little bit of leadership secret sauce in here, but people support what they help create.

It's very simple.

And this can be used as a persuasion tactic as much as it's not, right?

Instead of trying to convince people to buy into your solution, invite them to help build it.

Ask them what the ideal system would look like.

Get them to identify the problems within the status quo.

Let them discover the need for change themselves.

Get them solutioning their own problems.

When my team started describing their ideal CRM system, they basically described the new system that I had been trying to sell them.

So it ended up working out.

But now it wasn't my idea.

It was their idea.

They were bought in.

They were solutioning.

And that made all the difference.

So here's what I want you to understand out of this.

This shift requires a fundamental change in how you view your role as a leader.

Instead of being the person with all the solutions, you become the person who helps others discover solutions.

Instead of being the smartest person in the room, which everyone usually hates that guy or gal anyways, you become the person who makes everyone feel smarter.

Everyone loves that person.

And everyone usually listens to that person, even though they know they're not the smartest person in the room.

It's harder than it sounds.

I get it.

And your ego is gonna fight it every step of the way, even if you're 100% sure of what the solution is.

There's something deeply satisfying about being an expert.

I get it as much as anybody.

I get it.

But the one with the answers, the person everyone turns to for direction, they still need to feel like they're part of the solution.

But that satisfaction comes at a cost.

It makes you the bottleneck in every decision, the single point of failure in every initiative that you're trying to get done.

And that just slows things down, especially if you're between launch and escape velocity as a startup founder.

This is a particularly dire time to be the bottleneck.

Peak performers understand that true influence multiplies through others.

It's the difference between being a chess master moving pieces around the board and being being a conductor helping an orchestra create something beautiful together.

So let's finish our conversation on the influence paradox.

The less you try to convince people, the more convincing you become.

The more you listen, the more they'll hear you.

The more you validate their concerns, the more they'll trust your solutions.

This is a leadership unlock.

This is finding peak.

But here's the thing, my friends.

This isn't a technique technique you can fake.

People can sense authenticity from a mile away or the lack thereof.

The only way this works is if you genuinely believe that your people, the people you lead, have valuable insights, legitimate concerns, and creative solutions.

Here's my question I would love for you to answer in the comments below this video.

What's your experience with influence versus authority?

Have you been that authoritative leader in the conference room?

Have you found yourself pushing that boulder of influence uphill?

Drop a comment below.

Let me know.

I read every single one.

I love to hear your stories, the good, the bad, the ugly.

And if they're interesting and you are interested, I love to share those stories here on the channel because I love you guys for being subscribers and being part of this community.

And if you want more insights like this on peak performance and leadership, make sure that you're subscribed, hit the notification bell.

We dive deep into the psychology of high performance every single week.

And as another kind of carrot to get you to subscribe, next week I'm breaking down the three questions that will completely change how your team responds to your feedback.

You don't want to miss that.

Until then, remember, my friends, peak performance isn't about having all the answers, it's about asking the right questions.

It's not about being right, it's about getting it right.

This is the way.

This, my friends, is the way.

JP Morgan Payments helps you drive efficiency with automated payments and intelligent algorithms across 200 countries and territories.

That's automation-driven finance.

That's JPMorgan Payments.

JP Morgan, Internal Data 2024, Copyright 2025, JP Morgan Chase Company, All Rights Reserve, JP Morgan Chase Bank, and a member, FDIC.

Deposits held in non-U.S.

branches are not FDIC insured.

Non-deposit products are not FDIC insured.

This is not a legal commitment for credit or services.

Availability varies.

Eligibility determined by JPMorgan Chase.

Visit jpmorgan.com/slash payments disclosure for details.

Ready to supercharge your small business?

Xero, that's X-E-R-O, helps you take control of your finances with easy-to-use accounting software.

With automation and reporting features in Xero, you can spend less time crunching the numbers and more time understanding how your business is doing.

So if you're ready to join the 4.2 million subscribers globally, search Xero with an X or visit zero.com/slash SiriusXM.

Terms apply.

For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac extra-value meal for $8.

That means two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun, and medium fries, and a drink.

We may need to change that jingle.

Prices and participation may vary.