- Posted by: Sanjeev
- 14 Sep, 2019
How to Spot a Liar at Work
Most workplace lies are discovered after the faulty person has been hired. One the deed is done, it is no good crying over spilled milk.
If only, you could tell it then and there in the interview process.
Do not fret because, in the art of lying, there are shortcuts that can help you spot lies from truth.
To lie, the liar first tightens the noose over truth and then, crafts an idea that sounds true to another party. For the liar, to process this - especially when caught off guard, what follows before is an unusual response time, an air of guilt and anxiety.
You can observe these patterns to make sure if someone at work is lying to you on a daily basis. Here is the guide by our detectives at DDS Detectives Agency to spot a liar at work.
1. Initiate by understanding the baseline behaviour
Before you judge anything, the first and foremost step to the procedure is deception detection. It is the act of observing a person’s baseline behavior when they are perfectly breezy by asking them a set of general questions.
Make a note in your mind of the following: What is their normal amount of eye contact and blink rate? What kind of gestures do they use most frequently? What postures do they assume when comfortable? What is their pace of speech and tone of voice?
When this is done, you might ask them the tougher questions when they are most likely to lie to your face. Now, spot the exact differences in the behaviour of the person being interviewed by comparing it how they were acting before. If this person is a liar, you will see signs of stress and possible deception.
This is one of the strategies that our experienced detectives at DDS Detectives use. They begin with the stroke of small talk and harmless questions to observe how the person of interest behaves normally. Later, they put up questions that are difficult in nature to note the changes in non-verbal behavior that indicate deception around key points.
While there are many ways to get under someone's skin. In order to do it in the most accurate way, the key is to observe his/her over an extended period of time. Note his/her speech tone, gestures and blinking patterns. Once you have assessed what is “normal”, you will be able to detect shifts, when his/her body language is “out of character.” The atypical signals you detect may be signs of lying or a state of heightened anxiety caused by many other factors.
If they are any abnormalities, do not let it slide. These are the signs of lying and anxiety in an individual.
Also, often people spread myths about how liars react. You must have heard that liars avoid making eye-contact. But this is not true. Many habitual liars sometimes overindulge in eye contact to prove that they are not the liar in the room.
Verbal cues are easier to detect if the liar did not get any time to prepare. A good lie requires rehearsal and memorization. If you suspect deception, it can be helpful to relax people first, to get them to lower their guard, and then encourage them to talk as much as possible. The more they talk, the greater the chance that they’ll say something revealing.
2. Lie detection is mostly stress detection.
You cannot just find out within seconds that the person is lying. Soap operas about detectives tend to mislead us into believing it works that way. To know someone is lying, we have to look for their stressors. Much of lie detection is done through stress detection.
As we mentioned, the brain undergoes a long process to create a lie and a deceptive atmosphere. The task is to first resist oneself from giving the honest feedback that comes naturally. After that, to tell a lie, it is very tough to generate a lie without looking suspicious. This requires the person to fabricate the air around them as well. This does not just mean a play on the words, but also emotions. Even if they are successful with this on the surface, you can notice how their blood pressure, heart rate and breathing rate is fluctuating.
To relieve this nervous tension, liars may use pacifying gestures (rubbing their necks, bouncing their heels, fidgeting with jewelry, etc.) Their feet may even point to the door in a nonverbal signal that they would like to “escape.” But our first response to stress (before we ready ourselves to fight or flee) is to freeze. So also pay attention if your usually animated colleague suddenly stops gesturing, has a forced or frozen smile, holds her breath, or tightly locks her ankles.
3. Listen carefully to what people are telling you and what they are not telling you
No matter how good a liar that person is. Sometimes, something as commonplace as the usage of words can lift the veil on someone. When describing a situation, transparent and honest people tend to use clear-cut and unmixed words such as “steal,” “cheat,” “forge.” Liars, however, use obscured words like “borrow,” “mistake,” “omit” to unconsciously erase the guilt that might be lingering in his/her mind.
It is natural for a liar to become rather closed and formal in their behaviour and in their regular vocabulary. The liar does not use the regular terminology that one might use otherwise.
It goes without saying that lying is no cakewalk. Yes, we all lie. But hardcore liars have to alter their word-stock to adopt it in their personality. What this does is makes them avoidant in nature. They sound like they are answering your question but they take it to another tangent.
Each year in corporate sectors, the recruitment process is expanding across the board. Yet applicants do not budge and find new ways to lie. Even if it is not punishable, it is frowned upon. This is a flaw in the character that is questionable by the whole society, not just the workplace. With the breakthrough of background checks during recruitment, these internal problems are relatively less.
Regardless, it's not about being able to tell the truth. In today's world, what is rare is an honest person. When that person will talk, you will just know how genuine s/he is. Untouched by white lies, exaggeration or omission, his/her story will have a proper outline and emotional sentiment attached to what they express.
It is arguable if lying professionally is a punishable offence. But deep within as an individual, one needs to follow certain ethics and guidelines when associated with other people. Making mistakes is not punishable and so isn't hiding your slip-ups, but by doing the latter you already admit you are guilty.
4. “Emotional Faking at Workplace" is a real thing
An emotion psychologist Paul Ekman and his colleagues theorised that there are seven basic emotions that are universally felt, expressed and also repressed. These expressions are of joy, surprise, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and contempt.
Haven't you been there? When you try to avoid displaying your true emotions. But when you do that, you give away awkwardly some dry vibes that can be felt by others around you. For example, if someone’s smile does not smile with their eyes, it is not a felt smile. Genuine smiles crinkle the corners of your eyes and change your entire face. Faked smiles involve the mouth only and are often asymmetrical.
While regulating sentiments, we also have a category of emotions where we fake it to buy people into falsely believing us. Interestingly, it is a known fact that any expression you see displayed for more than five to ten seconds is definitely not true to its bones.
BBC reported that emotional labour is a feature of nearly all occupations in which we interact with people, whether we work in a customer-facing role or not. The chances are, wherever you work, you spend a fair portion of your working day doing it.
Remaining true to your feelings appears to be key. Numerous studies show those who report regularly having to display emotions at work that conflict with their own feelings is more likely to experience emotional exhaustion. This phenomenon is also known as burnout in behavioural science.
5. Incongruence and dissonance
When thoughts and words go parallel with each other, the features of the body and body language match the verbal messages.
It is when they are completely lying, incongruence occurs. Sometimes, people are genuinely confused too. But often, it is a sign of two-facedness. Anyone who recurrently does that to you is a dishonest person who cannot be trusted.
When a person is genuinely confused, they will say so. If there is a wall between what the person is thinking and what the person is saying, they will make it clear to you that they feel it. Do not mistake lying with confusion.
6. Watch out for the “telltale four”
Nonverbal cues often occur in what is called a “gesture cluster” – a group of movements, postures, and actions that reinforce a common point. Clusters play a key role in your growing ability to spot lies. A single nonverbal cue can have several meanings or mean nothing at all, but when it is reinforced by at least two other nonverbal signals, the meaning becomes crystal-clear.
There is one specific cluster of nonverbal cues that proved statistically to be a highly accurate indicator of deception. The “telltale four” body language signals that are associated with duplicity are hand rubbing, face touching, crossing arms, and leaning away.
A gesture cluster consists of wordless prompts that people give off subconsciously. These include a group of movements, postures and actions that function in harmony with each other. These gestures are noticeable enough to spot lies in one’s speech and one’s silence. One nonverbal cue alone can have a few implications. But when strengthened by more than two, the truth becomes perfectly clear to the observer.
There is one explicit group of nonverbal signs that is demonstrated statistically to indicate the skill of deception. The "telltale four" non-verbal communication flag that is related to fraudulent behaviour is hand rubbing, face touching, crossing arms, and leaning away.
7. Find the roots and know your biases
However, once in a while our own predispositions blur our understanding. Research says that factors like where we meet somebody, what they wear, what their voices sound like, regardless of whether they mirror us, on the off chance that they share the same interests as us, on the off chance that they compliment us or they are appealing to us, or if they help us to remember ourselves – can modify our own perception for them.
When we put our trust in a colleague or sign a contract with somebody we have not accurately examined, the suspicion may arise but it exists because of one’s own fears and not the applicant’s shortcomings.
Lies and liars damage the company’s name, they hinder almost everything the team has worked towards — and sometimes even destroy reputations and careers. Sharpening your deception detection skills, while recognizing your own biases, is a need of the hour.
Be that as it may, an excellent liar is well-versed with the physiological effects of lying. They know how to misdirect you. As they say, a great liar will have you think that he is an awful liar.
Without a shadow of a doubt, we all lie sometimes. Regardless of whether we are lying compelled by a specific circumstance, whether we lie to get hold of a few advantages, or we lie to feel better about ourselves, we do lie.
We also lie for goodwill or materialistic reasons, basic or minor. A well-put lie at the right time can enable us to improve ourselves or others, paving ways towards the goal we long for. Regardless of whether we lie to ourselves, whether we lie to other people, with shame, lament, apathy, we lie.
The reasons can be endless and none of us can put a finger on it. However, there are a few of us who can be denoted as habitual liars.
But to know a liar means to know their reason for lying to you. Not all people display the same degree of emotion. Not all liars show any signs of stress or guilt. Not all lies trigger a stress reaction. Social lies, for example, are so much a part of daily life that they hardly ever distress the sender. In fact, not all stress signals indicate a lie.
Truthful people may exhibit anxiety for a variety of perfectly innocent reasons — including the fear of not being believed or discomfort speaking about embarrassing or emotionally arousing topics.
When you feel you are in such a grey area where you just cannot tell, observe the cues mentioned below:
20 Verbal Cues of a Liar:
Pointless elaboration: The more somebody weaves a story, including pointless subtleties and insignificant data, the more it is prominent s/he is lying.
Change of subject: When you ask your colleague how his event went. He answers, "Great," and, at that point suddenly changes the subject to get some information about your most recent activity.
Repetition: Repeating the question, asking to repeat the question—both offer the liar additional opportunity to elicit a new response.
"For what reason did you leave your last work?"
"For what reason did I leave my last employment?" or "For what reason do you feel that is significant?"
Particular words: Liars abstain from responding to the question exactly how it was asked.
Quasidenials: Liars may state something that seems like refusal yet isn't: "Do I appear as though somebody who might do that?" rather than "No, I didn't do it." They may even go into assault mode and attempt to reprimand you, "For what reason would you say you are taking up my time with this stuff?" or "Since when have you been in this job?"
Reiteration: Stammering, faltering, slurring words, false starts, and as often as possible rehashing similar words and expressions—all are indications of deception and stress that follows.
Mixing tense: We all make grammatical errors, however, liars regularly change pronouns and tenses mid-sentence. Here's a case of both: "I leave for the workplace around 8 a.m., and after that we stopped for espresso."
Qualifiers: "As far as I could possibly know," "I could be wrong," "You may not accept this, yet," and "Apparently."
Disclaimers: "You will have a hard time believing this, yet" and "I know this sounds bizarre, yet."
Modifiers: "Not really," "More often than not," "Barely ever," and "It depends upon what you look like at it."
Overformality: A liar's language will generally become unadroitly formal and uptight, particularly by intellectualising their entire dialogue.
Credibility builders: "To come clean," "To be completely straightforward with you," "Honestly," "In all openness," "Genuinely," "Evidently," "I swear on my mom's grave," and "I promise to God." Whenever you hear these words or expressions, do not trust the person saying them.
Avoidant: A liar may state, “There were problems with that project,” rather than, “We had problems analyzing the results of the employee engagement survey.”
Depersonalizing language: Backstabbers utilize fewer self-references ("I," "me") and more speculations ("everybody," "they," "them"). For instance, a liar may state, "The office probably made a mistake," as opposed to, "It was my duty."
Waverings: "Uh," "er," "um," "ah."
Shielding: Liars make a demonstration of disapproving with the expectation that you'll desert the inquiry while shielding yourself. For instance, a female liar may state, "I can bet you aren't dogging any of the men about this. Can anyone explain why you assume just a lady would be blamed?"
Persuasive: Liars will divert the question by attempting to persuade you that nothing in their past would demonstrate cheating.
Accidental truth: Once in a while, a liar makes a slip-up. Something like, “I promise you that this restructure will result—I mean, will not result—in massive layoffs.”
Being able to tell the truth is not a piece of cake. Seeking help from professionals and private investigators have now become a common practice. Backgrounds checks are prevalent but not every private investigation company can deliver as we do. Get in touch with a private investigator at DDS Detectives today.
