Earn Your Influence

Stop Expecting Respect—Start Proving Your Value

I know what it feels like to have no influence — it’s frustrating. But over the years, I’ve learned a crucial truth: influence is earned, not demanded.

Nobody owes you respect in a company. Nobody owes you a voice. You have to prove your value.

Yet, UX designers often complain about being ignored:

• “Leadership doesn’t listen to us.”
• “Engineers override our designs.”
• “PMs don’t respect research.”
• “Product disagrees with my direction.”
• “People don’t like my designs.”
• “They want me to redo things.”

Sound familiar? Every UX designer has been there. But here’s the hard truth: a UX title doesn’t guarantee influence. Results do.

Want influence? Earn it.

The Seat at the Table Myth

A common misconception in UX is that getting a “seat at the table” automatically means decision-making power. It doesn’t. A seat is just that — a chair in the room. Influence comes from demonstrating value over time, not from demanding it.

Yet, many designers expect respect simply because they know about usability heuristics and user-centered design. They act as if being a UX designer entitles them to automatic buy-in. It doesn’t. The business doesn’t care about your design principles; it cares about results.

What Actually Earns Influence in UX?

If you want to be heard, you need to prove that listening to you leads to better outcomes. Here’s how:

1. Deliver Value Repeatedly

The loudest designers in the room aren’t the most influential ones — the most reliable ones are. Influence comes from repeated success:

• Did your work improve a key metric?
• Did a product team succeed because of your contributions?
• Do your designs make life easier for developers?

If the answer is yes, you’re on your way to influence. If not, you need more proof before expecting people to take your word for it.

2. Speak in Outcomes, Not Process

Most stakeholders don’t care about your research methods, the hours spent wireframing, or your philosophical debates about skeuomorphism. They care about results.

Bad UX pitch: “Users find this interface confusing, so we need to redesign it.”

Good UX pitch: “We’ve seen a 20% drop in conversions because of friction at this step. Simplifying the flow could recover that lost revenue.”

See the difference? One sounds like a UX complaint. The other sounds like a business case.

3. Learn the Language of Business

UX designers love to talk about user needs. Executives love to talk about growth, retention, efficiency, and revenue. If you can’t connect UX to business outcomes, you’ll always be fighting for scraps.

Instead of: “Users are struggling with this feature.”

Try: “This friction point is costing us X dollars per month in churn.”

When you align UX wins with business priorities, you stop being an afterthought and start being an essential voice.

4. Make Allies, Not Enemies

Too many UX designers treat product managers, engineers, and executives like the opposition. They see every disagreement as a battle, every change request as an attack on UX.

But here’s the truth: You’re all on the same team.

• PMs aren’t blocking you — they have business goals to hit.
• Engineers aren’t ruining your designs — they have technical realities to work with.
• Leadership isn’t ignoring UX — they just need to see the impact in their terms.

The best UX designers don’t fight their way to influence — they collaborate their way there. Build trust. Align UX with business priorities. Make it clear that working with you leads to better results.

Collaboration earns influence. Complaining burns bridges.

5. Understand That Feedback is Not a Personal Attack

Another hard truth: if product disagrees with you or if people don’t like your designs, that doesn’t mean they don’t value UX — it means they have concerns. Your job is to address those concerns, not to assume you’re always right.

• If your designs keep getting rejected, ask why. Are they missing key business objectives? Do they create unintended complexity?
• If product keeps overriding your decisions, have you considered their perspective? Maybe they have insights about technical feasibility or business priorities that you overlooked.
• If you keep getting asked to redo things, it might not be because they don’t respect UX — it might be because your solutions aren’t solving the problem as effectively as you think.

Great designers iterate. They listen. They adapt. They don’t take every disagreement as a personal insult.

Quit Demanding Respect. Start Earning It.

Influence in UX isn’t about knowing the right frameworks or having strong opinions. It’s about proving, over time, that your contributions lead to success.

If you feel ignored, ask yourself:

• Have I consistently delivered work that impacts business goals?
• Do I speak in terms of outcomes, not just UX principles?
• Have I built trust with cross-functional teams?
• Am I truly collaborating, or am I just defending my own ideas?

If not, the problem isn’t that your company “doesn’t value UX.” The problem is that you haven’t yet made UX invaluable to them.

UX Needs Less Entitlement, More Results

You don’t earn influence by shouting louder, pushing UX jargon, or demanding respect. You earn it by making UX undeniably valuable.

So stop expecting influence. Stop complaining that nobody listens.

Do great work. Make an impact. Earn your influence.