“Manipulation” is one of those words that sounds automatically bad.
You’ll never see the below on someone’s LinkedIn
Skills: Excel, PowerPoint, manipulation.
But if you’ve worked in a large company for more than about 15 minutes, you’ve been manipulated. You’ve probably manipulated somebody else too.
A boss schedules a meeting instead of sending an email because he knows the meeting will create urgency.
Someone copies a senior executive on an email because they know it changes how quickly you’ll respond.
A salesperson takes you to dinner before asking for something.
A manager gives you three choices, all of which lead roughly where she wants you to go.
That’s manipulation.
The interesting question isn’t whether people do it.
It’s whether they’re good at it.
Bad manipulation is easy to spot. You can feel someone steering you. They flatter too hard. They suddenly become your best friend when they need something. They make their agenda so obvious that your natural reaction is to push back.
Really good manipulators are different.
They understand what the other person wants and create a path where helping them also helps you.
That was what I eventually understood about Frances.
She wanted to be valuable to the boss. She wanted to know what was happening before everyone else. She wanted to be the conduit.
So giving her good information wasn’t tricking her into doing something against her interests.
It was giving her exactly what she wanted, while also getting information where I wanted it to go.
She benefited. I benefited. The boss benefited.
Was I manipulating her?
Absolutely.
Was she manipulating me?
Also absolutely.
And somehow we became friends.
That might be the best version of corporate manipulation. Both people know there’s a game being played, but neither feels like they’re losing.
The people who become really effective inside organizations tend to be good at this. They understand incentives. They understand ego. They understand who needs credit, who needs reassurance, who needs to feel consulted, and who simply wants to be left alone.
They don’t necessarily lie.
They just understand which button to push.
There’s also a big difference between manipulating somebody and screwing somebody.
If your manipulation requires the other person to lose, eventually they figure it out. Then you have a short-term victory and a long-term enemy.
The better game is finding the outcome where the person you’re influencing walks away happy too.
Which brings me back to the fart sniffer.
The great mistake is assuming the fart sniffer is pathetic because they’re always hanging around the boss.
Maybe.
Or maybe they’ve figured out that proximity creates information, information creates influence, and influence creates power.
You can laugh at the fart sniffing.
I certainly did.
Just be careful.
While you’re laughing, they may be the person deciding which way the wind blows.