When you've got the best advice but nobody is listening.

The problem isn't your advice — it's how you're giving it.

We tend to think of influence as a kind of force: know what you think, say it with confidence, hold your ground until the other person comes round. It’s the person who wins the argument. The person who doesn't budge. Certain and loud.

But the most influential people I know do the opposite. They stay curious. They resist the urge to jump to a decision, a diagnosis, or a recommendation, before they've properly understood what's actually in front of them. In a world that rewards certainty, that's a genuinely radical thing to do.

I recently reflected on this whilst buying a pair of running shoes.

For the last 18 months I've been training for triathlons. Swimming has come naturally, and cycling has gone well, but running has been a different story. My husband is an excellent runner — he runs marathons for fun and, unsurprisingly, has plenty of opinions about running shoes. I've half-listened over the years, bought Hokas, then Asics, and every run ends the same way: aching feet, tight hamstrings, going for my next run feeling like I’ve never quite recovered. I assumed this was just what running felt like.

After my latest triathlon, despite running my fastest ever 10K, I spent two weeks trying to undo the damage — an ice bath, yoga, sports massage, infrared sauna. Nothing seemed to explain why running always felt so much harder than it should.

Then a sports therapist looked at my feet.

"You've got high arches," she said, and explained that although my feet look quite narrow, they need to spread when they land. She showed me how I was loading my feet, where the tension was travelling through my body, and why certain shoes were making everything worse. It was one of those moments where you think: how on earth do you know all that just from looking at my feet?

She recommended Brooks. Naturally, I ignored her. I went home, searched online, and ordered a different brand instead — because I'd heard good things, and because, to be honest, AI seemed to agree.

When they arrived, they didn't feel quite right. Not obviously wrong, just not right. Normally I'd have accepted that; I'd always assumed running shoes were supposed to feel a bit tight. But this time something had changed. Someone I trusted had helped me question what I'd previously accepted as normal.

So I went to a proper running shop — Run North West, in Wilmslow.

The assistant didn't launch into a pitch. She watched me try on pair after pair, quietly noticing things I hadn't. "That one's a bit tight across your forefoot," she said. I looked down, expecting to see something obvious but I couldn’t see it. I could only feel it.

I had exactly the same thought as before: how do you know that just by looking?

Eventually, she handed me a pair of Brooks. The difference was immediate — the support under my arch, the space across the front of my foot, the relief across the top where I'd been carrying months of tension without realising it. I practically skipped out of the shop looking for an excuse to go for a run. On that first run, it genuinely felt as though pain was leaving my feet with every stride.

It wasn't magic, and it wasn't really the shoes. It was the expertise behind the recommendation and, just as importantly, how that expertise was offered.

Neither the sports therapist nor the shop assistant forced their idea on me or told me what to do. Neither tried to win me over. They watched, they asked questions, and they stayed curious about my specific feet, my specific gait, before they said anything at all. My husband gave me advice. The internet gave me advice. AI gave me advice. None of it changed what I did, because none of it was actually built around me. What changed me was someone taking the time to understand my problem specifically.

That's what I think we get wrong about influence. We've started confusing confidence with competence, as though the person who speaks first, and loudest, must know best. But people rarely change because they've been talked at more forcefully. They change when someone has understood their specific situation well enough that the advice feels like it was made for them.

If there's a practical version of this, it isn't complicated, though it does run against instinct. Know your expertise, and let it show — but don't lead with it. Listen first, closely enough to understand what the other person actually needs, not what you assume they need. When what you know and what they need line up, and they can feel that you got there by paying attention rather than by performing confidence, that's what earns their trust. And trust is what brings people back for more advice next time.

That, in the end, is what influence actually is.