I sell things for a living. I only tell the truth, and I make sure to give all information that is relevant to health and safety, and I try to avoid any situation where someone could say after the fact that they didn’t realize there would be an additional charge. After that, it’s all fair game.

Body mirroring, nodding slightly when asking questions you want them to agree to, code-switching, listing my preferred choice last in a list of three things, these are the basic techniques.

Next level up is the perception-altering stuff: “we” have a problem but “I” have a solution; if I know they’re happy, saying “I’m so glad you liked my recommendation”; instead of “how is it?” asking “how are you enjoying it?”; taking personal credit for all good feelings they have during our interaction (gotta be subtle about this, but it’s very effective); acting like they’re doing me a favor (people like those they’ve done favors for more than those who do favors for them… it’s monkey-brain social status thing).

For me, this is just Tuesday.

The double-extra stuff comes out for job interviews. I will alter my speech patterns and hairstyle to give the impression that I’m a decade younger. I will tailor my anecdotes to sound like I’m either single or newly attached, with no kids, and vaguely imply that I’m homosexual if the vibe isn’t too conservative.

Not the most manipulative but

Keep a log of the birthdays, hobbies and names of spouses and children of colleagues, managers, team members and customers.

I learnt this from a guy who did executive search. People remember you, when you remember what is important to them.

When I’ve lead teams it’s one of the first things I find out - note down when someone says “yeah Gary that’s my hubby, he’s super into gaming”

• Gary (husband.)
• likes gaming

When you’re a manager, your teams families, partners and friends know your name. Reciprocating that - learning who is important to them - is really important.

Not the most that I did, but I needed to help out a friend in college.

A friend wanted to get out of a group for a class because he was doing a lot of the work. I helped him come up with a strategy.

He was able to pull together a group of friends in non-responsive or disintegrated groups into his. He could then sell to the professor that he was being proactive in getting this group made as it would be easier for the professor than handling the fallout of these people not having groups. He could then leave his group while focusing on pulling together this group; that other group totally did enough work that they could go off by themselves.

He was able to get the professor to approve the change a day before a major due date.

Apparently, one of his group mates was able to figure out that I had to be involved because of how slick this went off.

I work in web dev and one of my jobs is to get you to engage more.

Maybe it’s buy more products.

Maybe it’s read more content.

Maybe it’s click on the button.

Maybe it’s like and subscribe.

Sometimes I do it with good UI. Sometimes I do it with dark patterns. Sometimes I do it by not allowing you to opt out.

I also get data to increase that number based on human behavior.

The worst part – im one of millions of people and companies who are doing this. We are all wanting your attention.

I have and will continue to make a small number of obvious omissions or minor misspellings in my work when I submit it to my bosses for review. Not in the majority of my work, but mostly when they may have some resistance or hesitation on a course of action or a part of the project.

If I can trick them into contributing to the project by fixing or improving it, they end up feeling ownership of it in a way they wouldn’t have otherwise. I do this on purpose, and turn a hesitater into a champion of the work. It’s our project now!