Within Greene's court-dynamics framework (Court Dynamics as a Human Universal (The Five-Person Threshold)), he distinguishes overt manipulators from a second, subtler type: passive-aggressors who appear uninterested in power, presenting as "spiritual and nice," while being among the worst manipulators in the group. Opting out of visible competition is not treated as exemption from the game — it's folded into the game itself, just played through a different mask.
This reframes humility or apparent disinterest in status as a possible strategy rather than a guarantee of good faith — recognizing the type requires watching for the gap between a person's stated indifference to power and their actual behavior when access or control is at stake. Compare Dead Eyes as a Narcissist Tell and Body Language Reveals What Words Conceal for other frameworks aimed at detecting the gap between self-presentation and underlying motive.
Greene frames the value of naming these types (overt manipulator vs. passive-aggressive "spiritual" manipulator) as replacing naive belief in workplace fairness with the ability to actually see the political games occurring in any group of three, four, or five people.