big whoppers will always catch up with you. Deception is not only inevitable in business, but sometimes necessary or strategic. If you track “deception” or “lying” on my blog’s Google search, you’ll find a number of blogs dealing with the issue. See, for example, my blog, Powerful people are better liars.
Clearly, I seriously question the notions of authenticity and truthfulness for all situations. My mind always dredges up an interaction with a very close friend, an ordained minister who was also an astute psychologist. As a professor, he had taught students to be open and authentic. But he told me years afterward that he had changed his mind. Those behaviors, he said, assume an inherently fair and just world—a naïve perspective that could sometimes lead to career destruction. It was a decision I had made long before him, but never shared. Indeed, there are plenty of reasons for deception. But before you engage in the behavior think seriously about the issue and its implications.
On the one hand humans don’t naturally seek the truth, but tend to avoid it. Sure, people instinctively accept information they’re exposed to, and sure, they have to work hard to resist falsehoods. And yeah, they cherry-pick data to support their own perspective, and certainly, as the Nobelist Daniel Kahneman has pointed out, they’ll steer clear of facts that might force them to think and work harder. Some of us were even taught to lie. It was often the only resource for avoiding undeserved punishment. All that just might suggest a role for some deception in business—and in life.
Negative personal impact
But unless you’re very careful about deception, you’ll negatively impact your personal reputation. Liar or deceiver is not a tag that you’d want to be labeled with. There’s extensive research demonstrating that most people respond best to people whom they both like and respect. Respect, built on expertise and trust, goes a long way in careers. It makes managing and leading simpler. It can provide you with better opportunities, better salaries and faster promotions. And it also can make it easy to access information and resources from others, needed commodities in today’s business world. So, you want to keep a positive reputation relatively intact.
But surprisingly, a positive reputation also makes deception more palatable when the truth comes out. The same people you’ve deceived will often rise to your defense or even explain why deception was really necessary at the time. The Mark Zuckerbergs and Jeff Bezos can only get away with their greedy shit for so long. Most employees and managers are on a far, far shorter leash.
How do you limit your deception? That’s a tough question. I’d like to give you a scale or a percentage, but that’s not possible. You’ll have to figure out when it’s wise and when not—and only deceive when you must deceive. That might be for the greater good, for the sake of a few individuals, for the sake of strategy, the company—or even for personal survival. But limit your deception.
Deception takes a lot of energy. It’s not as easy as many think. And you have to keep all your lies straight. I decided—in a very happy marriage—that I didn’t have to protect myself with deception. It was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.
In business, you might think of admitting to deception and explaining your rationale at a later time to a few select employees. That will help in some situations, but it’s also fraught with problems. Sometimes, saying nothing about what you said or did is the better part of valor and keeping your reputation intact. But never forget that in business secrets eventually get out.
One of the important rules of language and rhetoric is that saying nothing about a difficult situation can often make the issue go away. Although sometimes issues need to be addressed, the wiser strategy, on occasion, can be keeping silent. Once ideas are loosed in the ether or in print, they cannot be taken back and will probably have to be dealt with to have a functioning, healthy, work relationship.
The corporate tension
Another reason for deception is to protect the community and sometimes your firm. Trust in institutions for which you work can be of high value. Support for the company infrastructure, personnel, strategy and potential for change can require deception. And sometimes institutional support is needed. In contrast, tarring a company with a poor reputation for honesty can be jarring—and even bring down firms. This is very much a mixed bag. Having worked with a terrific number of very senior execs, my read is that many, if not most of them can be trusted as individuals, as moral individuals. They, too, are very concerned about their reputations. They are able to consider others interests, and sometimes others’ interests over their own.
But put them into a social group, an organization, and there is less reason to guide and check their impulses, less capacity for self-transcendence, and less ability to understand the needs of others. It’s this inevitable conflict between the individual’s needs and the corporation’s desires that creates much of the necessity for deception. I don’t think the conflict is capable of full resolution. It’s the nature of the universe which makes deception necessary.
But in today’s world, it strikes me that our governments often need to be supported—and protected. That may not go down well, but equity and justice can only happen through our governments. You can be damned certain that very few businesses are going to plump for justice and equity. And politicians who are primarily indebted to business make justice a difficult, almost insurmountable task.
The tensions among flawed government, flawed business and flawed society never go away. It’s the nature of the beast. And it makes deception inevitable. The shuffling of centers of power in organizations, in governments and in society implies occasional deception. I’m very aware that some seem never to have been bothered by the situation. But I’m also aware that I was well into my thirties before a realistic approach to the givens of life brought me to acceptance of the tension and less than idealistic behavior—along with the acceptance of deception. So, it’s appropriate to think about and work with these tensions as a sort of “managed anarchy.” Don’t read this as pessimistic. As a free-lance businessperson, I often found managing business and parish anarchy to be both a challenge and a great deal of fun. Needless to say, I was often rewarded immensely by my clients for these abilities—one of which was strategic deception.
Religion and deception
I’ve found that many people—though they aren’t open about it--have questions about deception and can’t imagine themselves lying strategically. Given my theological and philosophical backgrounds, this is a good place to at least touch the subject. Too many people, including religious leaders, think there are absolute standards of truth in human endeavors--and they invoke these Biblical traditions as testimonies to confirm and demand absolute truth. The Biblical text just won’t support that position!!
The problem is created for many people because some biblical passages indicate that divine justice is meted out to one who deceives another and then on other occasions deception and lying are confirmed as appropriate.
Indeed, close scrutiny of the Bible finds that deception is not only acceptable, but also sometimes mandatory. For example, in Genesis 31, the final scene of the Jacob and Laban account, Laban’s outrage at Jacob is focused on his deception. The text makes it clear that Jacob’s deception is a means for divine retribution. In Exodus 1, Shifra and Puah are seen as instruments for deceiving Pharaoh and carrying out the divine mandate. It is deception driven by their “fear of god.” If you track down the many cases of deception in the Biblical text, you’ll find the conflict between the politically correct orientation to deception and the reality focused acceptance of deception. This conflict mirrors human affairs: it can be viewed both as an evil, and as I wrote before, divinely mandated. [The extensive analysis of lying and deception in the Biblical text is found in Richard Freund’s “Lying and deception…” the first page of which can be Googled. Enough said.]
If you are not used to the Biblical Text having both “politically correct” and “incorrect” teachings, think of it this way. The Book of Proverbs is filled with politically correct statements, while the drama of Job, in whom Yahweh takes much delight and eventually rewards profusely, is a politically incorrect drama of a man whose “friends” are chiding him for his political incorrectness. King David poses the same problem for those whose behavior and thinking must always be politically correct. History from the Renaissance on reveals that these idealistic fallacies are insensitive to inevitability of sin. In fact, Richard Niebuhr makes clear that only power can coerce justice and equality--and that moral superiority will always fail in such attempts.
In sum, when you connect all the dots, you’ll recognize the need for deception—and limiting it to a reasoned, strategic decision. It’s just a necessary behavior in business--and in life. And if like me, you have a fairly powerful conscience, you’ll return again and again with questions about your behavior—and sometimes both ignore and forget it. Deception is like compromise, it’s just part of your job—and of life.