One of the lessons life has handed me over the years is that disagreement isn’t nearly as dangerous as the way we handle it.
For a long time, I thought the greatest communicators were the people who always seemed to have the perfect answer. The more I’ve led, the more I’ve realized that’s rarely true. The people who create the greatest impact aren’t necessarily the ones with the quickest response or the strongest opinion. More often than not, they’re the ones who know how to protect something far more valuable than winning an argument. They protect their influence.
I don’t think most people wake up in the morning intending to damage a relationship, lose a client, create conflict, or weaken their reputation. In fact, I believe most people have good intentions. The problem is that good intentions often disappear the moment emotions take over. We’ve all experienced it. Someone says something that catches us off guard. An email arrives that feels unfair. A meeting doesn’t go the way we expected. A client questions our work. A teammate disagrees with an idea we believe in. In a matter of seconds, we’re no longer thinking about the outcome we want to create. We’re thinking about how we feel.
That’s when I’ve learned to become very careful.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that every disagreement offers us two opportunities. We can influence the conversation, or we can become the conversation. Our reaction determines which one happens.
I’ve watched this play out countless times. Someone raises a legitimate concern. They have a point worth hearing. Then frustration creeps into their voice. Their emotions become louder than their message. Before long, no one is discussing the issue anymore. They’re discussing the person’s reaction. The original concern, regardless of how valid it may have been, quietly disappears into the background.
The moment people begin talking about your reaction instead of your message, you’ve surrendered your influence.
I’ve come to think about the difference between reaction and influence in a very simple way. A reaction is primarily driven by what just happened to you. Influence is driven by what you want to happen next. One looks backward at the event that triggered the emotion. The other looks forward toward the outcome you’re trying to create.
Imagine you’re presenting an idea in a meeting and a teammate says, “I don’t think that’s going to work. I think we’re making this way too complicated.” Your immediate reaction might be to defend the idea. You might say, “Well, you obviously don’t understand what we’re trying to accomplish. We’ve already thought through all of that.” Maybe you’re right. Maybe they don’t understand it. But something has changed. The room is no longer completely focused on the idea. Now there’s tension between two people. The other person becomes defensive. You become defensive. Instead of influencing the conversation, you’ve started becoming the conversation.
Now imagine responding differently. “Okay. Tell me what part feels too complicated to you.” Those few words completely change what happens next. You haven’t surrendered your position. You haven’t agreed that your idea is wrong. You’ve simply chosen curiosity over defensiveness. Maybe your teammate identifies something you overlooked and the idea gets better. Maybe they’re misunderstanding something and their question gives you the opportunity to explain it more clearly. You may ultimately still say, “I understand your concern, but I disagree, and here’s why I think this is the right direction.” That’s still influence. Influence doesn’t require agreement. It requires intention.
The same thing happens when someone criticizes our work. Imagine spending days developing something only to hear, “I don’t think this is very good. This isn’t what I expected.” The natural reaction is to defend the work. “I completely disagree. We spent a tremendous amount of time on this, and everyone else who’s seen it thinks it’s really strong.” Again, everything you said may be true. But think about the outcome you just created. You’ve now given the other person a reason to defend their criticism. Instead of helping them explain what isn’t working, you’ve unintentionally invited them to build a stronger case against your work.
An influencing response sounds very different. “Okay. Help me understand what’s missing for you. What were you hoping to see that you’re not seeing here?” Now you’re gathering information. You may discover that one small change solves the entire problem. You may discover they misunderstood the objective. You may even conclude after hearing them that their criticism is wrong. But now you can explain your thinking from a position of understanding rather than defensiveness.
That’s an important distinction because influence doesn’t mean being passive. It doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone. And it certainly doesn’t mean allowing someone to treat you poorly. Sometimes influence requires being extremely direct. Sometimes you need to say no. Sometimes you need to hold someone accountable. Sometimes you need to defend an idea passionately or tell someone something they don’t want to hear.
Influence isn’t about being nice. It’s about being intentional.
I think client relationships provide some of the clearest examples. Imagine an angry client saying, “I’m really disappointed. This should never have happened.” Most people’s instinct is to immediately explain what happened. We want the client to understand that there was a reason. We want to defend ourselves because we don’t want them thinking we’re incompetent. But in that moment, an explanation may not be what the client needs first. They may simply need to know that we understand why they’re upset.
“I understand why you’re frustrated. I’d be frustrated too. Let’s figure out exactly what happened and, more importantly, how we’re going to fix it.”
You haven’t admitted something that isn’t true. You haven’t surrendered your position. You’ve simply chosen your response based on the outcome you want instead of the emotion you’re feeling.
That’s where this principle connects to something else I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: outcome thinking. When I find myself in a difficult conversation, I try to ask myself one question before I respond: What outcome am I trying to create? If the outcome is understanding, trust, collaboration, progress, or preserving a relationship, then my response needs to increase the probability of creating that outcome. Otherwise, I’m allowing my reaction to work directly against what I actually want.
Reaction asks, “How do I feel about what just happened?” Influence asks, “What outcome do I want to create from what happens next?” That may be one of the most useful distinctions I’ve learned.
It also reminds me that emotional discipline isn’t about eliminating emotion. Emotions are real. They’re important. They’re part of being human. The goal isn’t to stop feeling frustrated, disappointed, angry, or hurt. The goal is to create enough space between the emotion and the response to decide what happens next.
Something happens. Emotion appears. We pause. We identify the outcome we want. Then we choose the response most likely to create it.
That pause may only last a few seconds, but I’ve come to believe some of the most important decisions we make in life happen inside those few seconds.
I’ve also learned that influence has very little to do with authority. Some of the most influential people I’ve ever known never held impressive titles. They influenced people because they remained thoughtful when others became emotional. They listened before speaking. They stayed curious instead of becoming defensive. They understood that self-control isn’t weakness. It’s one of the highest forms of strength.
That’s especially true in leadership. Teams are always watching their leaders. They’re watching how we respond when things go well, but they’re paying even closer attention when things don’t. They notice whether we remain calm under pressure. They notice whether we listen before reacting. They notice whether we protect relationships while solving problems. And they notice whether the person we ask them to be is the same person we demonstrate when we’re challenged.
The same is true for all of us, regardless of title. Every conversation is shaping our reputation. Every email is teaching people what they can expect from us. Every disagreement is either strengthening trust or quietly eroding it. We often think our reputation is built through the big moments in our careers, but I don’t believe that’s true. I think it’s built through hundreds of ordinary moments when we have every reason to react and choose instead to respond with intention.
Influence is one of the few things that can take years to earn and only moments to diminish.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve become less interested in winning arguments and much more interested in creating outcomes. Winning an argument may feel satisfying for a moment. Protecting your influence has the power to change relationships, careers, companies, and lives.
I’ve come to believe that the strongest person in the room isn’t necessarily the person who has the last word, raises their voice the highest, or proves everyone else wrong. It’s the person who can feel every bit of the emotion everyone else is feeling and still remain thoughtful enough to choose what happens next.
Life has handed me many lessons, but this is one I continue to use almost every day. Disagreement will find all of us. Criticism will find us. Frustration will find us. There will always be someone who challenges an idea, questions a decision, sends an email that gets under our skin, or says something we wish they hadn’t.
We don’t always get to choose what happens to us. But we do get to choose what happens next. And in those moments, we always have two opportunities.
We can influence the conversation, or we can become the conversation.
Our reaction determines which one happens.
