Influence that reaches the goal state of the other person and leaves them with more agency than before, tested by three questions: surplus, reversibility and durability.
Influence has two faces, just like increasing returns. One face reaches only the selector or the output of the other person and siphons attention, consent and action without touching the goal state, which makes it manipulation even when it looks positive-sum on paper. The other face reaches the goal state and leaves something behind that lives on without the influencer, so it compounds the other person’s capacity instead of their dependence.
Three tests separate the two in practice. The surplus test asks whether the other person has more agency after the moment than before. The reversibility test asks whether they could have said no without paying a price (reactance is the symptom that they could not). The durability test asks whether the change survives the room.
It is the counterpart of fairness by design at the scale of a single conversation, and the reason why the influence loop is a practice and not a technique. See Software as organisational Change (F-002).