Nine problem-centric skills from Sonnenfeld & Tian

The Defender's Playbook

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld & Steven Tian · Trump's Ten Commandments (2025)Buy the Book ↗

Identification + counter-moves. The book's thesis: the tactics of dominance-seeking leaders are not random chaos but a limited, repeated playbook. These nine skills are organized by defender situation rather than attacker tactic — each pairs identification (what it is, how to recognize it) with counter-moves (what to do).

⬇Install as Agent Skill

Power Structure

Reading an org built around one hub person, predicting who gets kept or dropped, and seeing through grandiose armor.

🎯

Dealing with a Centralizing Boss

Ch. 1 · Hub-and-Spokes · 8 ops

You work for, advise, or evaluate an org where one person is the hub, lieutenants are interchangeable, and no real authority lives elsewhere.

⚖️

Predicting Who the Leader Keeps, Drops, and Attacks

Ch. 7 · Winners & Losers · 8 ops

You're trying to predict who the leader will keep, rehabilitate, discard, or attack — his logic isn't loyalty, it's constituency.

👑

Seeing Through a Leader's Grandiose Armor

Ch. 10 · Donald the Great · 8 ops

The leader's self-presentation feels like armor over insecurity — everything biggest/greatest, name plastered everywhere, 'I alone can fix it'. You need to tell which criticism lands vs. hardens.

Negotiations & Deals

First move is shock-and-awe, the deal is engineered to leave you the bag-holder, or the coalition is being picked off one by one.

🥊

When a Negotiation Opens with a Punch

Ch. 2 · The Real Art of Trump's Deal · 8 ops

The counterparty's first move is shock-and-awe — a maximalist demand, a public ultimatum, a surprise threat, or a legal/media ambush — rather than the trust-building opening most negotiation training assumes.

💰

Spotting Deals Where You're the Bag-Holder

Ch. 4 · The Art of Stealing the Deal · 6 ops

You're evaluating a deal structure and suspect it's engineered so the other side keeps the upside while someone else inherits the downside.

🧱

Standing Together Against Divide and Conquer

Ch. 3 · Divide and Conquer · 6 ops

You're part of a group — firms, universities, allies, institutions, peers, a coalition, a family — that is being picked off one at a time, with rewards for early defectors and punishment for hold-outs.

Narrative Warfare

A lie is being repeated into truth, the opponent is flooding the zone to exhaust you, or strategic insult is being used as a political weapon.

📢

Fighting a Lie That Gets Repeated Into Truth

Ch. 8 · Sleeper Effect · 8 ops

A confidently-stated falsehood is on track to become conventional wisdom through sheer repetition — in politics, a market, a company, a relationship.

🌊

Staying Focused When They Flood the Zone

Ch. 6 · Wall of Sound · 7 ops

An opponent is generating a constant stream of distractions, outrages, provocations, and news-cycle-dominating announcements — overwhelming your attention and your coalition's capacity to respond — clearly designed to exhaust you rather than convey information.

🎭

Handling Strategic Insults and Mockery

Ch. 9 · Sultan of Insult · 7 ops

You, your group, or someone you advise is being attacked with calculated personal insult, mockery, nickname-branding, or ridicule — not as a loss of temper, but as a calibrated political or media tactic.

Independent operational notes inspired by the book. Not affiliated with, authorized, or endorsed by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Steven Tian, or their publisher. If this material is useful, please buy the book.