There’s a strange thing I’ve noticed after a few decades as a marcom expert and years of teaching persuasion and communication to thousands of students and professionals: people can be easily persuaded and the people who believe they’re the hardest to influence… are usually the easiest.

Not because they’re gullible.
But because they don’t notice the small nudges that shape their decisions.

Influence today isn’t a dramatic moment. It’s not a charismatic speech or a big reveal. It’s subtle — almost quiet — woven into the tiny ways we frame choices, interpret tone, and make meaning out of nothing more than a line of text and a gut feeling.

And the perfect illustration of this isn’t a psychology experiment.
It’s a checkout button.

I often share persuasion and psychological trigger stories to students and consultant clients that illustrate framing. Here's one of my favorites: There’s a well-known story in the UX world from about 2001 about a major online retailer that struggled to get users past the "Register" or "Sign Up" button. The process wasn’t broken. The design wasn’t broken. Nothing was technically wrong.

The only friction point was one button that said:
“Register” or "Sign Up."

It was factual and a needed step in order to purchase, in order to continue the process. Because of course you need an account to buy things online… right?

But customers were hesitating. Abandoning carts. Sort of "complaining" in subtle ways, not about price or shipping or product quality, but about something that didn’t even seem like a decision.

One UX researcher made a tiny change that, at first glance, felt almost meaningless. He replaced “Register” with “Continue.”
Same steps. Same checkout. Same path. Nothing actually changed in reality.

But everything changed in perception.

Within a month, the retailer made $15 million more.
Within a year? $300 million.

Simply because one word carried less psychological weight than another.

That’s influence.
Not flashy. Not obvious.
Just a tiny reframing that shifts human behavior by miles.

And if one word can do that to millions of strangers online, imagine what happens inside a workplace — where the stakes are higher, the relationships deeper, and the interpretations messier.

If a single word can change the behavior of millions of strangers, you can imagine what a single sentence, a small phrase, or even the feeling of a message can do inside a workplace.

Because inside organizations, people aren’t reacting to facts, they’re reacting to emotions and those emotions need to be properly framed. They respond to the meaning they think is attached to your words, not the meaning you intended when you typed them.

This is the uncomfortable part leaders rarely admit out loud:

That interpretation might be generous.
But it might also be anxious, self-protective, insecure, overly optimistic, overly pessimistic, or shaped by a dozen experiences they’ve had before you even entered the room.

A one-sentence project update can feel like momentum to you…
and discouragement to someone else.

A casual “Let’s rethink this” can feel like strategic thinking to you…
and a setback to the person who worked all weekend.

A small tweak in your language might feel insignificant…
and land like a massive directional shift to your team.

The mechanics haven’t changed.
The project hasn’t changed.
Nothing about reality has changed.

But the frame changed.
And when the frame changes, behavior follows.

The $300 million button is a reminder that people rarely resist the actual steps.
They resist the story those steps imply.

Inside companies, that story gets written in an instant, usually in the split second someone reads your message, fills in the emotional blanks, and decides what it “really means.”

Even the best leaders forget this:
People don’t react to what you ask them to do.
They react to how it feels to do it.

And that’s where influence actually lives.

Once leaders understand this, not as a theory, but as a lived reality , things get clearer:

Stop assuming people need more information.
Start giving them better framing.

Stop thinking resistance is about the work.
Start seeing it as the emotional cost attached to the work.

Stop repeating yourself louder.
Start shaping the perception that makes your message easier to carry.

The best leaders aren’t the ones who talk more or push harder, they’re the ones who shape the frame just enough that people willingly step into the behavior the leader intended all along.

And the difference between “Register” and “Continue” is small… but everything humans do is decided in small moments like that.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “This is exactly what’s happening on my team, and I didn’t realize it had a name,”
that’s the point.

I teach leaders and organizations how to use framing intentionally, not manipulatively, not aggressively, but skillfully, so your decisions land with clarity, your team moves without hesitation, and the emotional friction finally drops out of the system.

Most communication “problems” aren’t problems at all. They’re just moments where the frame was heavier than the message. If you want to explore how to shift that, for yourself, your team, or your entire organization, reach out.