Communication strategy is important. Who is the audience. When to speak vs. not. How much detail to use. Which points to make. What kind of perspective to speak from. 

It's a set of skills many of us attracted to this community don't instinctively lean towards, but yeah, it's really valuable.

Nothing Machiavellian needed. Mostly, the same skills are what you need even when everyone involved is well aware of who is trying to communicate about what to whom, and why.

we irrationally expect everyone else to be rational..

I am not sure that we do? I think we are not immune to the typical mind fallacy. But there is plenty of talk around these parts about optimal strategies when confronted with irrational opponents [LW · GW] - the correct decision is not always throwing away your own rationality. Communicating with emotional people with the languages they can resonate with seems like a fine practice of rationality.

Now, that is strawmanning a little bit. Perhaps this is talking about a maximum exploitative strategy against irrational/imperfect agents? 

Does this some right to you as a toy model?:
You are a chess grandmaster. One day, you are challenged by a youth of hubris - the youth is clearly going to benefit from been taking down a peg or two for his development. 

If you play as if you are facing a near-peer opponent, you will likely win but that is not optimizing enough for humiliation (and you knew humiliation is good for his devlopment). Been the chess grandmaster you are and the fact that you had been a callous youth in your haydays, you know you can easily model your opponent's next moves; they will likely make more inaccuracies than you and you are loathed to not take advantage of the situation. So you do, and you make somewhat inaccurate moves in anticipation of them playing badly and thus, maximizing the humiliation potential.

Woud the chess example be a case where a rational agent is rationally expecting the opponents to be irrational?