Influence is seasoning, not sauce
Salt was never meant to be the meal. Nobody sits down to a bowl of it. Its whole job is to be present in a small amount, early, and to change everything it touches without ever being the thing you taste first.
Influence works the same way, and most leaders get the proportions wrong. They wait until the decision is on the table and then try to pour themselves over it, a whole speech, a hard push, a late and heavy hand. The room tastes the effort. What it doesn't taste is trust, because trust was supposed to be added earlier, in smaller amounts, when nobody was watching.
The room tastes your salt long before it reads your slides.
The leaders who move things rarely move them in the moment. They seasoned the relationship weeks ago, a kept promise here, a quiet credit given away there, a hard truth told gently when it would have been easier to stay silent. By the time the decision arrives, they don't need to convince anyone. The dish already tastes like them.
A little, early
This week, resist the big push. Find the small, early thing instead: the introduction you can make, the credit you can hand to someone else, the honest sentence you've been rounding off. Add it before you need anything. That's not a tactic. It's just what salt does.
