#59: From Performance To Presence: How Real Influence Works

In this episode, we explore the truth about real influence and why it has nothing to do with status, performance, or visibility. True influence comes from alignment—when your life, values, and words match. This episode breaks down how parents, leaders, and teens can embody integrity and create meaningful impact through presence, honesty, and self-trust.

Key Takeaways:

• Influence is created through alignment, not performance
• Children learn more from who you are than what you say
• Leadership authority is built through integrity, not titles
• Teens build influence through self-trust, not popularity
• Real authority is developed privately before it’s visible publicly

JOURNAL PROMPTS

1. Where in my life am I performing instead of living honestly?
2. What values matter most to me—and am I living them daily?
3. Where am I seeking validation instead of trusting myself?
4. What would alignment look like in my parenting, leadership, or personal life?
5. What small action today would bring my life and my values closer together?

Thank you for joining me!

If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today!

Transcript

Welcome And Purpose

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Welcome to Just Count Me In, a podcast designed to help you break free from your limitations and step into the life that you actually were meant to live. I'm Sari Stone and I'm a holistic coach with a background in education. For the past six years, I've been guiding people to transform their lives from the inside out. My journey, to be honest with you, was not always clear. For years, I actually felt like I was living someone else's life, checking all the right boxes, but never feeling quite truly fulfilled. That all changed when I experienced a few miracles, met some incredible teachers, and had a major wake-up call that forced me to shift my entire perspective. Wayne Dyer once said, When you change the way you look at things, the things that you look at change, and that is exactly what this podcast is about. Helping you see your life in a new way so that you can start living with authenticity, purpose, and passion. Each week, I'm going to bring you 30-minute episodes filled with insights, practical strategies, and inspiring interviews to help you uncover what truly lights you up and identify what's been holding you back. Eventually, this is going to ignite your motivation and create real change. Are you ready to step into the life you were meant to live? Then just count me in. Hit subscribe and join me on this journey. If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today. Let's do this together. Welcome back to Just Count Me In. Today we're going to take a look at influence. Because that kind of influence is not really loud. It's actually anchored. We've been taught that influence looks like visibility, that it's visibility, it's wealth, it's volume, it's performance. What I'm seeing and what many of you are feeling, and what people that I've been asking to describe to me who are the most influential people in the room, something very different is coming up. The people who truly shape others right now are not the loudest. They are the most aligned. When you look at the research across neuroscience, leadership studies, and psychology, something really different shows up. They're not actually performing for approval. They are living in integrity with themselves. And whether you're a parent, a leader, a teenager, or trying to just find your place in the world, this matters because influence is not something reserved for certain people. Real influence begins internally with your own alignment. Influence is something you carry when your life and your words match. Your behavior matches what you say. Today we're talking about what real influence is and demystifying it a little bit and how you begin living it. So let's dive in. So we've been sold a lot about influence. We were kind of misled. There's a lot of misunderstanding. And one of the most well-known researchers in influence is Robert Cialdini. And in his book, The Psychology of Persuasion, he talks about several principles of persuasion, and one of them is consistency. People are more likely to trust and follow individuals whose behavior is consistent and it aligns with their values. It isn't primarily about clever communication or winning arguments. It's more about credibility over time. People watch what we do, they notice our patterns. Over time, they make a decision: do I trust this person or not? The people who have truly influenced your life have what in common? Just think, who were the greatest influences in your life? They maybe weren't the loudest people or the flashiest people. Maybe it was a teacher who really looked into your eyes and saw you. Maybe it was somebody in your family who stayed steady. Maybe you had a coach who really believed in you. Their power wasn't in their performance when you think about it. It was in their presence. Because real influence is not created through pressure. That's effect. There's a big difference between affecting somebody and influencing somebody. Influence is created through consistency. People trust what feels real. People trust what feels safe, especially now. We're living in a time when people can feel the difference between performance and embodiment right away. You can feel it in your body. It's actually neurological before it's verbal. And this is where the neuroscience gets kind of interesting. So I'm not sure how to say this person's name, so I'm going to apologize in advance. It's Gacomo Rezzolati and did research about influence and a lot of mirror neuron research, the way humans automatically mirror the emotional states of others. So that's the old be careful of the company you keep, and you pick up on the five people that are closest to you that you're in, not your closest to emotionally, but you're in proximity of the most time. So we are wired to pick up on the internal state of people around us, whether we want to or not. This means influence happens before anybody even says anything. We can feel it in our bodies. If a leader enters a room anxious, everybody gets uptight, everybody tightens up. If a parent walks in and they're feeling, you can tell when they're frustrated, you can tell when they're angry. The children are going to become defensive. If a teacher comes in and communicates just calm confidence and nice grounded demeanor, students are going to relax and be able to learn better. So influence spreads through your nervous system before any words are even said. Your emotional state is constantly shaping the environment around you. It's not control, it's coherence. When your internal world and your external life match, it's when your values aren't just something that you talk about. There's something that you live. There's a quiet kind of authority that comes from this, not because you are trying to lead, not because you are trying to gain followers or likes, but because people can feel that you are anchored. You're not constantly adjusting yourself to earn approval or changing like a chameleon. You're not abandoning yourself just to belong. You are who you are no matter where you are, because you're rooted. And rooted people actually create safety. Safety then creates trust. Trust creates influence, not forced influence, natural influence, the kind that does not need to ever announce itself. So for parents, your children are watching you. If you're a parent, this is where this becomes very real. Your children are not shaped by what you say, they're shaped by what you live. And they are watching. They're watching how you handle stress. They're watching how you talk about yourself. They're watching what happens when you make a mistake. Because they don't need perfect parents. They need aligned parents. Your alignment gives them permission to trust themselves. Your steadiness becomes their nervous system's reference point. Influence as a parent is not about controlling your child. It doesn't mean you have the best behaved children. It's about regulating yourself. Because regulated parents raise regulated children, and regulated children become grounded adults. A leader, your greatest influence is not your authority, it's your integrity. People don't follow titles, they actually follow their trust. Your team, whether you realize it or not, is constantly and consciously and unconsciously evaluating the situation. They're evaluating you. Is this person steady? Are they honest? Are they congruent? I know when I first got my yoga teacher certificate, my trainer said, you know, they're going to make up their mind in the first 10 minutes of class whether they like you or not. They're going to feel it. And it really scared me, but it made me very cognizant of where I was when I walked out into that room and started teaching. When leaders are performative, teams become anxious. When leaders are aligned, teams stabilize. You can watch it. Alignment creates psychological safety. And we know from the past few weeks that psychological safety unlocks creativity and ownership and growth. Leadership is not about being impressive, it's about being trustworthy. Trust is built through alignment and congruence, not performance. If you are a teen listening, influence is not popularity. Oh my gosh, and social media has not helped with this at all. If you're a teenager listening to this, this part is especially important. You, my friends, are growing up in a world that constantly tells you to perform and rates it. You're constantly encouraged to be liked, to get likes, to get followers, to be approved of, to go viral, to fit in. But real influence is honestly not popularity because that can be gone in a minute. Real influence is self-trust. It's knowing who you are without needing constant confirmation. It's about making decisions that you yourself respect and being honest even when things are uncomfortable. The people who are truly influential are not the ones that always need to be seen. They are the ones that are fully themselves. And the earlier you learn this, the freer you're going to be for the rest of your life. Most real influence is actually built when no one sees you, in your private decisions, in quiet discipline, when you're honestly self-reflecting, in choosing alignment when it actually would be easier to perform. This is where your personal integrity is built. And your integrity creates authority, not authority over others, authority within yourself. And when you have authority within yourself, people feel it. And you don't need to convince them. This is the ironic thing. You don't need to prove anything. Your life speaks for you. So a simple practice that you can try this week is a little influence audit. You can ask yourself three questions. Do people feel heard after conversations with me? And do I respond with curiosity or defensiveness? Do people bring problems to me early or do they hide them? These questions are going to tell you something important about you because influence is not necessarily defined by your role. It's more about how safe people feel being honest with you. They look and they see: is this person calm? Is this person stable? Is this person reactive? Does this person feel safe? Emotional regulation isn't just a personal skill, it's actually a leadership skill. Step three is psychological safety, and that's that third piece. Research led by Amy Edmondson, we've talked about the past few weeks, and we know that the most influential people and their teams, the highest performing teams, all shared something, and it wasn't intelligence, it wasn't resources, and it wasn't looks or a talent. It was actually psychological safety. And we know that when people feel safe, they can share their ideas. They're okay to ask questions, they'll take educated risks and admit when they make a mistake, and most importantly, they'll challenge assumptions, which really helps clean out stale thinking and old patterns. We know that Project Aristotle, an internal study by Google years ago, talked about psychological safety as being the most important factor in high-performing teams, which means influence grows where people feel safe to think and speak honestly. So I thought safety also comes from, there's another piece, consistency, and that's the final piece. Influence is not built in a single moment, it's built through repeated behavior over time. Small actions repeated daily shape how people experience us. Consistency turns our alignment into our reputation, and our reputation eventually contributes to our influence. So let's apply this to a few areas. Leaders often assume it comes from authority, but the real question is: do people bring problems to you early or do they wait until things are really wrong? That answer is going to tell you a lot. For parenting, parents often try to influence behavior through instruction or stricter rules. But research by psychologist Albert Bandura on social learning theory shows that people learn more through observation. Children absorb what we model calm, curiosity, and accountability. So the people who are truly influential aren't the ones trying to be seen. They're the ones that are themselves. And most influence is built where nobody sees you. We're moving out of an error that rewarded performance and into an error that rewards embodiment. People are no longer looking for perfect leaders. They're looking for real ones. People who live what they say, people who are willing to grow, people who are anchored in something deeper than approval. Influencers are uniters. Influence was never meant to make people dependent on you. It was meant to remind them of their own strength, their own clarity, their own authority. And when your life and your message match, influence stops being something you chase. It becomes something you carry quietly, honestly, and fully. If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe and share it with somebody who cares about leadership or parenting or education or personal growth. You've got to know somebody there. And please download. It really helps to support the podcast. And we, as always, keep asking the deeper questions. And this is not about just how do I influence others. I've been thinking lately, what environment does my presence create? How do I show up in this world? I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen. Until then, just count me in. Thank you so much for joining me today. If this episode spoke to you, I'd really love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram or on my Facebook page, just count me in. And if someone came to mind while you were listening, please share this episode with them. Sometimes one conversation can change everything. Thank you for being here, for choosing growth, and for doing the inner work. I look forward to being with you again next time. Remember, we're all in this together. Hit that subscribe button. Just count me in the world.