A field guide for people who actually want to influence the unreachable

Let me tell you about my Tuesday.

I'm sitting at a restaurant in Ecuador, one of those expat-friendly spots where the menu comes in three languages and the WiFi password is taped to the wall, and within forty minutes I've encountered a man who is absolutely certain that immigrants are destroying America (while he himself is, I will note, an immigrant living in South America), and two women who have concluded, with the calm certainty of people who've done extensive research on their own feelings, that the world would run considerably better if most men were simply... removed from leadership. Or, depending on how generous your interpretation was, just removed.

I am also a man. Who has spent four decades in leadership development. So this was a rich Tuesday.

Here's what I wanted to do: finish my coffee, nod politely, and never speak to any of these humans again. Which, if you know anything about expat life, is achievable. The world is large. Ecuador is large. There are other restaurants.

But I didn't do that. And that restraint, that deliberate, grinding, occasionally teeth-clenching decision to stay engaged, is what my book Coach Them Out is fundamentally about.

The Easy Button Few Talk About

 We talk a lot about how hard it is to change minds. What we talk about less is how seductive it is to just... not try.

Writing someone off is fast, clean, and emotionally efficient. You label them (conspiracy theorist, extremist, lost cause), you file them, and you move on with your day. Your worldview remains intact. Your blood pressure thanks you. Done.

The problem? You've just traded influence for comfort.

And influence, the slow, patient, question-by-question kind, is the only thing that moves people. Not lectures. Not Facebook arguments. Not forwarded articles. Influence. The kind that requires you to be present in the room, genuinely curious, and willing to have your own mind temporarily blown while you figure out what's actually going on inside someone else's.

Questions Are Not Surrender

 When the MAGA gentleman launched into his theory about immigrants ruining America, again, from his home in Ecuador, I did not correct him. I did not cite statistics. I did not explain the delicious irony of his geographic situation.

I asked: What led you to that conclusion?

Simple. Quiet. Genuinely curious.

Not as a trap. Not as a gotcha. As an actual question. Because the truth is, I don't know exactly what he's experienced, what news ecosystem formed his thinking, or what fear lives underneath the certainty. And I can't influence what I don't understand.

With the two women who had arrived at their "men are the problem, remove them from the equation" conclusion, I asked whether they'd looked at recent research on gender and leadership effectiveness. Not to dismiss their frustration (which, let's be honest, has a legitimate foundation...gender inequality in leadership is real and documented). But because their solution had jumped from valid grievance to scorched earth policy without stopping at evidence along the way. And I was curious about that gap.

Neither conversation ended with anyone changing their mind on the spot. That's not how it works. But both conversations ended with something still open. A question sitting there. A small crack in the certainty.

That's the work.

Don't accept disrespect. The MAGA dude said I wouldn't understand reality if it hit me in the face. I set a boundary that the conversation wouldn't continue if he continued to insult me with "I wouldn't understand." Educate me, don't insult me. And when he felt cornered by simple questions, he repeated his insult and the conversation ended.

Why This Is Hard (And Why That's the Point)

Here's what the personal development world doesn't say loudly enough: Growth is mostly about tolerating people you find exhausting. Read that again.

Not mountain climbs. Not journaling. Not cold plunges (though fine, those too). It's sitting across from someone whose worldview makes you want to vibrate out of your chair, and choosing curiosity over conclusion.

That's the muscle Coach Them Out is trying to build.

The book isn't about fixing people. It's about positioning yourself to influence them, which requires, first, that you don't disqualify them. The moment you write someone off, you've ended the game. You've protected your peace and surrendered your leverage in the same move.

People who operate in high-demand belief systems, whether that's a political cult, a corporate echo chamber, a toxic relationship dynamic, or a radical ideological framework, don't respond to confrontation. They respond (slowly, imperfectly, over time) to relationship. To someone who didn't leave. To questions that didn't shame them. To a different kind of conversation than they've been having.

You can't have that conversation from the other restaurant.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Influence

If you want to help someone think differently, you have to be willing to think differently yourself first. You have to genuinely consider: what would make this person's worldview make sense? Not agree with it. Not validate it. But understand the architecture of it.

That requires humility. It requires patience. It requires sitting with cognitive dissonance long enough to ask a good question instead of deliver a verdict.

It is, in a word, work. Uncomfortable, exhausting, but rewarding...work.

The alternative, a world where everyone with an extreme view is simply avoided, unfriended, and left alone with their certainty, isn't working out great for anybody. We can see that clearly enough.

So I stayed at the table on Tuesday. I asked my questions. I finished my coffee. I didn't enjoy the conversations but did enjoy the growth.

And somewhere out there, a man who lives as an immigrant in Ecuador is  maybe... just maybe... sitting with a question he didn't have before.

That's enough for a Tuesday.

Quinn Price is an organizational effectiveness consultant, leadership development veteran, and the author of Coach Them Out, a practical guide for people willing to do the slow, uncomfortable work of influencing the people everyone else has given up on. Available on Amazon.