The Tactics Are Not the Problem

Everyone trying to influence you knows the playbook.

Reciprocity. Scarcity. Social proof. Consistency. Body language. Sharp framing at the right moment. These aren’t secrets. They’re taught in every sales and leadership course written in the last thirty years. By now, most experienced executives have either been trained in them or have absorbed them through enough exposure to know what they look like.

Knowing the tactics exist isn’t the problem. Using them isn’t even the problem.

The problem is when they become a substitute for something else.

What they’re substituting for

When someone is genuinely trying to serve your mission — your organisation, your program, your outcome — the tactics aren’t tactics. They’re just how competent people communicate. They frame things clearly. They know when to create urgency and when to wait. They read the room. It works because the intent underneath it is real.

The moment that intent shifts — from serving your purpose to serving theirs — the mechanics stay identical. The words are still correct. The framing is still sharp. The energy is different.

Most people feel this before they can name it. A vendor answer that covers the question without quite resolving it. A project update that hits every metric and explains nothing about what’s actually happening. A consultant who always seems to be managing your perception of the program rather than helping you see it clearly.

The tactics didn’t change. The purpose underneath them did.

What this means on the delivery side

If you lead, advise, sell, or influence — the discipline here is uncomfortable but simple.

Nothing you know about communication will save you once your purpose has drifted. You can be technically proficient in every influence technique ever documented and still lose the room, lose the relationship, lose the engagement — because people are not just processing your words. They’re processing the whole signal. Body, language, energy, intent. When those are in sync, you operate at a different level. When they aren’t, the gap is felt even when it can’t be named.

The most common drift I see is subtle. It doesn’t start with dishonesty. It starts with someone who was once genuinely trying to help the client beginning — slowly, almost imperceptibly — to protect their own position instead. To manage the narrative rather than report it. To keep the engagement alive rather than say the hard thing that might end it.

By the time it becomes visible, the tactics have been covering it for months.

What this means on the receiving end

For executives on the receiving end — being briefed, being advised, being sold to — the discipline is different but equally important.

You don’t need to become a student of influence psychology to protect yourself. You need one thing: to trust the signal when something feels off.

Not because you can always articulate what’s wrong. But because the dissonance usually precedes the evidence. The advisor who always has a reassuring answer. The vendor whose updates are comprehensive and somehow uninformative. The steering committee presentation that leaves you less clear than when you walked in, not more.

Your job isn’t to run counter-tactics. Your job is to ask the question that cuts through the framing: what is this person’s interest in the answer they’re giving me?

That single question — asked honestly — will tell you more than any amount of training in persuasion techniques.

The thing underneath the thing

Knowing the tactics is useful. Understanding their limits is more useful.

They work when the purpose is genuine. They fail — slowly, then suddenly — when the purpose has shifted from service to self-interest. No amount of sharp language covers that gap permanently. Not in a relationship, not in a program, not in an organisation.

The body knows. The room knows. Eventually, the outcomes confirm it.

The discipline — whether you’re the one influencing or the one being influenced — is to stay honest about which side of that line you’re on.

SP Singh writes daily about drift, discipline, and the cost of holding standards. He provides independent ERP oversight and advisory to WA local government and Aboriginal corporations.