The Good Advice I Didn't Like

The current CEO of Zillow was once my boss, and he said something that irritated me at the time but I now completely understand.

On an annual review, he told me: "Scott, you're very good at being the person in the room. But you need to learn how to influence without authority."

At the time, I bristled at it. I thought, I've been influencing this whole time. I get things done. People follow my lead. What are you talking about?

But the more I sat with it, the more I understood what he was actually saying. There's a version of influence that's loud — that relies on title, on positional power, on being the loudest voice in the room. And then there's a deeper version of influence that doesn't require any of that. It works through trust. Through credibility. Through the quality of your thinking and the consistency of your behavior.

The advice I didn't like was pointing me toward the version of influence that actually scales. The kind that works even when you're not the most senior person in the room. The kind that works when your title changes, when you move to a new organization, or when you're trying to drive change through people who don't report to you.

The best leaders I know are masters of this. They don't need to pull rank. They don't need to be the loudest voice. They make other people better, they build alignment through conversation, and they create momentum without mandating it.

Think about the advice you've received that you didn't like in the moment. Sometimes the most uncomfortable feedback is the most important. Not because it was right about everything — but because it was pointing at something real that you weren't ready to see yet.

The good advice we resist is usually the advice we need most.