Dan Erwin

Deception and Lies Can Be Okay, But . . .

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. 

Most People Are Bad at Spotting Liars

It never seems to go away. You know. The colleague you're never sure you can trust. Or the one who regularly promises but rarely fulfills. And most of us are bad about spotting liars and deception. But there are a few things we know for certain about that tough subject. And for business folk, there's one reality about deception that always rings true.

Powerful people are better liars and more difficult to spot. And Dana Carney of Columbia University as proved that. Those of us with a background in rhetoric and nonverbal research have believed this for years, but we're glad to see that someone has at last validated our well-educated hunches. 

Carney's subjects were not politicians, at least not governmental politicians, but business bosses and employees.  The bosses, with larger offices and more power were tasked to do such things as assign employee salaries.  Half of all the research subjects were instructed by a computer to steal $100, and, if they could convince an interviewer that they didn't take it, they could keep it.  The other subjects were also questioned in the interviews.  The interviewers were trained to identify deception.  (Although the article didn't say so, it reflects the work of Paul Ekman, the expert in deception, who I referred to in a previous blog:  Reflections on BSing.)

The subjects were measured on five variables that indicate lying, variables that can't be easily measured in any other context. 

What the research shows is that "if you give people power, they're more comfortable lying, and it will be harder to tell they're doing it."...

The Wasted Attention to Human Foibles

Some time ago I heard David Brooks comment that the American public pays way too much attention to human foibles.  And in an astute Journal article, Joe Queenan argued the same case. The Obama impeachment fantasy is another case in point. 

I learned years ago that paying much attention to a politician's foibles, especially when the person was near genius policy-wise, and the country needed his or her expertise, was often a horrible waste.  Richard Nixon, a documented dissembler, eventually had to go because of the Watergate Scandal, yet his contributions to international relations are among the greatest of the 20th century:  successfully negotiated a cease-fire with Vietnam, opened the People's Republic of China and initiated detente with the Soviet Union.  

In my mind, significant expertise that benefits the the public community usually trumps personal foibles.  Inevitably, therefore, I had no difficulty admitting that Bill Clinton was a sexual jerk with a zipper problem.  And as far as I was concerned, that was his problem, not worthy of censure, impeachment or discussion.  His expertise in many areas of national importance was impeccable--and the nation as a whole would have been better off if Clinton's sexual peccadilloes had been ignored.  As David Gergen, advisor to three Republican presidents, has since pointed out--on many policy issues Clinton was a genius.  Gergen points specifically to ...

Gossip Isn't Just for the Tabloids

I’m not at all certain why gossip has acquired such a decidedly shady reputation. But before you send me off to Dante’s 8^th Inferno, reserved solely for management and executive development consultants, let me explain my thinking. Two-thirds of all conversations, whether in business or otherwise, are about social relations. Most of which can be labeled gossip. Only a very small amount of that can be thought of as malicious. Indeed, the term gossip originally meant “godsibs,” what business people refer to as their peer group of friends. Gossip is typically the most useful information about an organization. It also comes equally from both men and women. So, I want to shine a significantly different light on all gossip, including “malicious” gossip.

First, some important conclusions: I soak up gossip like a monstrous sponge because it’s just damned useful stuff. It’s also utterly impossible to stop organizational gossip, so don’t waste your time trying. Actually, attempting to stop gossip is futile at best and destructive at worst. It’ll just go deeper underground. Furthermore, you’ll be very sorry if organizational gossip is no longer readily available. 

Gossip and the big picture
Before we narrow in on gossip, it’s important to understand the stuff of communication in organizations and societies. The beginning place for all language is to understand that language evolved ...

You Got the Answer You Wanted. But You Asked the Wrong Question.

One of the most effective tools for successful communication is nearly always off the radar screen. Two words sum it up: anticipate misunderstanding. No matter the business situation, talkers inevitably overestimate their effectiveness. Even when they’re warned of the likelihood of misunderstanding.

Stuart Hall, the cultural theorist, has a delicious way of expressing this: There is no necessary correspondence between encoding and decoding. In other words, just because you composed a message for a specific listener doesn’t mean she’ll understand it.

So if you think your colleagues don't express themselves well, even in very important settings, you may be right.  Most of us seriously overestimate our ability to communicate effectively.  We’ve known that for years, but now comes a business study demonstrating how great the potential for miscommunication really is. 

Ambiguous messaging
Boaz Keysar and Anne Henley, psychologists at the University of Chicago, studied 40 pairs of listeners and speakers.  In the research the speakers were given ambiguous messages to deliver. Fully aware of the ambiguity at the time they assessed the respondents’ understanding, they still overestimated the recipients’ understanding. The talkers believed that their intended meaning was understood "most of the time."  That belief, like a lot of other so called "soft skill" beliefs, doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of research. 

The research showed that nearly half the time those speakers thought they were understood, they were actually wrong.  In 46% of the cases there was a breakdown--the listeners didn't get it.  What was most surprising was that even though the speakers were warned that the information that they were to  communicate was ambiguous, "they still thought they managed to convey their intention with intonation."

Illusion of Control
Keysar and Henley suggested that this overestimation of communication effectiveness is indicative of the "illusion of control."  The psychologist Ellen Langer defines it as the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events, for instance, to feel that they control outcomes that they demonstrably have no influence over.  People show a high illusion of control when they are allowed to become familiar with a task through practice trials—like, for example, throwing dice. Lottery devotees often believe that when they select the numbers, they have a better chance of winning than when the numbers are selected randomly. 

Team Canada beat Team USA in the 2002 Olympics, but it was later believed that the win was the result of the luck of a Canadian coin that was secretly placed under the ice before the game to control the outcome. The members of Team Canada were the only people who knew the coin had been placed there. The coin was later put in the Hockey Hall of Fame where there was an opening so people could touch it. People believed they could transfer luck from the coin to themselves by touching it, and thereby change their own luck. Though the coin is not actually lucky or helpful in any way, people believed it was so they thought it could give them better luck. Completely irrational.

Raising your batting average
So how can a person get beyond illusion to check out the effectiveness of his or her communication when the issue is really important?  Here's where effective questioning can come to the fore. Notice my adjective, "effective."  All too often, checking on the accuracy of message reception or understanding is of little value. Some of the most popular means of checking accuracy are merely clichés. Here’s a list of typical examples, along with an analysis of their real value.

In each instance, a person makes a statement, then “checks” to see whether he’s understood. The tone of the question may be kind, arrogant, demanding, or even thoughtful. Take your pick. Whatever choice you make, the question doesn't anticipate misunderstanding. The analysis of the question is always spot-on.

"Did you hear me?”    Absolute waste of time and verbiage.  The answer is nearly always yes and means zip.

"Do you understand me?"  Nearly absolute waste of time and verbiage.  (It's just possible, though rare, that someone might respond in the negative and ask for further clarification.)  Still, probably zip.

"What did you hear me say?"  Nearly absolute waste of time and verbiage.  People can parrot and paraphrase without ever understanding the meaning or implications of a message.

Using the implication question
The most effective means of checking a message is through what's called an "implication question."  After a message, you come up with a question like this:  "Based on my conversation, what do you see as the next two or three steps?"  You're asking a question regarding information you have not given, and asking them to draw some conclusions.  Then, by listening closely, you can tell whether or not the message was clear and understood.  If so, hurray!  If not, you've got to start over.

If you want to check your own understanding, use what I call the "reverse implication question" to validate your understanding.  You've thought through what you understood was said, and made some tentative conclusions.  So you respond with your own question: "Based on what you've said, here's what I think needs to be done. . . . What do you think?"  And let the speaker respond.  If he agrees, hurray!  If not, the two of you have got to go back to ground zero again.

One thing is not debatable about communication. Overestimating our effectiveness is a regular source of miscommunication. But the implication question is one highly effective remedy.

How Do You Say "I Don't Know?"

I've been musing about why, even when the consequences are harmless, some will and some won't say, "I don't know" about an issue of their obvious ignorance?  If you're anything like most of us, it's a mixed bag.  

Being a pragmatic soul, I'll ask why you should confess to ignorance.  What's in it for you?  Of course, it's an issue of simple honesty.  But I'm unconvinced that simple honesty all the time is valued that much.  When I’m presenting before a group, I look for an opportunity to say “I don’t know.” But no more than a couple times. Too many “I don’t knows” suggest that I’m unaware and dumb. It would be great if more people could occasionally admit to ignorance, but too much of that doesn't make for a job promotion. Overall, one or two “I don’t knows” in a half hour presentation makes for great credibility, but hold it to one or two. 

The fact of the matter is that we all lie or cheat a little.  Don't think so?  In a charming study, the wry Dan Ariely of MIT, explored the subject of cheating, using--you guessed it--poker chips.  To no surprise, he found that, yes, most of us will cheat a little, given the opportunity....

Why Are Fewer Behaving Badly?

Leonard DiCaprio's Wolf of Wall Street is a bit late. Despite the economic rebound, research shows that behaving badly in business is down for the eighth year in a row. 

A report from The Ethics Resource Center (ERC), a 90-year-old non-profit, surveyed 6400 part-and full-time workers finding that 41% had observed misconduct in their offices last year. That's down from 45% in 2011 and from 55% at the highest point six years ago. The president of the ERC, Patricia Hamed, says that more companies are doing what they need to do.

The following is a summary of some of the relevant findings from 2013 contrasted with 2011 from the ERC's survey:

• Lying to employees, 17%, down from 20%.
• Violating company policies related to internet use, 12%, down from16%.
• Abusive behavior toward employees, 18%, down from 21%.
• Lying to customers, vendors, or the public, 10%, down from 12%.
• Abusing substances such as drugs or alcohol, 9%, down from 11%.
• Sexual harassment, 7%, down from 11%.
• Breaching customer or consumer privacy, 5%, down from 7%.
• Falsifying and/or manipulating financial reporting info, 3%, down from 5%.

Dr. Hamed indicated ...

What Are You Reading? Here Are Five for the Intellectually Curious.

What makes you think your company needs a hierarchy to succeed? There's a growing body of evidence that shows that organizations with flat structures outperform those with more traditional hierarchies in most situations. Harvard blog's Tim Kastelle says that hierarchy is overrated and Gary Hamel lays out the rationale for this long-overdue argument.  

It used to be that flattery, conformity and compliments were enough to butter us up. But now, as Adam Grant writes in The Sneaky Influence Tactics You Never Saw Coming, these stealth strategies are tougher to spot.  And if you're not aware of them, you're liable to fall for them. But you can see the virus coming, and put a stop to it early on. 

The corollary to the Matthew Effect is "from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." Slate's Anne Hulbert, in Give It a Rest, Genius, lets us know what the new success books don't tell us. The bad news (I guess it's bad) is that the 10,000 hour rule of those great success books is not so easy as you might think. The books really don't do realistic justice to the grunt work they champion. Here's the more painful insight to Gladwell, Colvin, Coyle and Shenk's good. . .

Racism, Business Diversity and the Ballot Box

In Saturday’s NYTImes, Charles Blow provided his readers with an exceptionally articulate statement on Disrespect, Race and Obama. Blow’s insights are accompanied by fascinating data from the 2012 election revealed by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a Harvard PhD student in behavioral economics. Reflecting on Blows insight and using the data from Stephens-Davidowitz, it strikes me that there is a more significant than usual interpretation of the current political scene—and business diversity. 

In the 1970’s and ‘80’s, Virginia Satir was one of the most respected and revered psychotherapist in the country, and for good reason.  Widely known as “The Mother of Family Therapy,” Satir took a family systems approach to counseling, an approach that was just gaining credibility. Indeed, her change processes are still applied successfully to organizations. But one of Satir's most novel ideas at the time, was that the "presenting issue" or "surface problem" itself was seldom the real problem; rather, how people coped with the issue created the problem. This approach is supportive of systems problem solving in business. Thank you, Peter Senge, et al.

And it’s an insight that applies. . . 

Smokescreen: Does Your Company Have Something to Hide?

One of the important insights from the financial fiascos of the last few years is that senior managers and their company can’t always be trusted to act openly or ethically. The consequence of that is writ large: a huge number of people lost their jobs. Indeed, on several occasions, employees who lost their jobs have expressed their frustrations to me about their firm’s practice, telling me that they would never have guessed that of their firm’s leaders.

But then, as the conversation went on, they emphasized that a person at their level couldn’t possibly know what’s going on behind closed doors. Duhhhh. Sometimes we have to be shocked to see what was there all along. 

The Best Post-Election Quotes: Governors Mark Dayton and Bobby Jindal

After having a both Democratic governor and a Tea-Party Republican legislature for two years, the Minnesota Republicans were swept out of office. Minnesota now has a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature. Here’s Dayton’s comment:

The easier two years are over, and the harder two years are now beginning, because we have the added responsibility to lead. And this is a responsibility I welcome, but given the challenges the state faces and our country faces these days, it’ll be a lot of hard work.

His comment is indicative of the shift to single-party dominance in state governments. Eight years ago, 30 capitals were divided between the parties. After the election only 11 capitals are divided. This is a time for caution, not celebration. Mark Waller, the newly elected Republican leader in Colorado reflects my sentiments exactly: The Democrats absolutely have the votes to do anything they want to do, but that’s a pretty tricky proposition. They’ve got to be very careful about how they do what they do.

And the Republicans

With the Republican shock in national elections, where the House retained Republican control, but without the popular vote, no Republican sounded more intelligent than Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.  He argued that the Republicans need to “stop being the stupid party” and make a concerted effort to reach a broader swath of voters with an inclusive economic message that pre-empts efforts to caricature the GOP as the party of the rich.”

We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything. We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.

The Loyal Opposition

Over the recent years, the American political system has been in disarray. It’s orientation has too often been to power rather than to the good of the country. This is best epitomized by Senator Mitch McConnell’s stated fundamental goal of removing President Obama in the election. To hell with the nation, the community and its needs. Bobby Jindal strikes a more appropriate perspective. His tenure has indicated his focus on serving the community, rather than the mere power needs of the few and the wealthy.

Although the sense of a “loyal opposition” might be useful and exceptionally appropriate, America has no sense of that concept. The concept comes out of parliamentary systems of government and is applied to the non-ruling opposition parties. It indicates that the non-governing parties may oppose the actions of the sitting powers while remaining loyal to the source of the government’s power.

America and Americans could use a modified notion of the loyal opposition in this century. It would understand the source of the government’s power as the electorate and the American community, rather than a monarchy. It would shift the focus to the nation rather than merely upon regaining power. It’s idealistic, but a conversation could be very helpful to educate both legislators and the American constituency.

Why I love politics
David Brooks’ column, urging his readers to see “Lincoln” argues similarly, but from a different perspective. Commenting that we live in an “anti-political moment,” he writes that Spielberg and Kushner’s film “shows that you can do more good in politics than in any other sphere.”

He summarizes my own perspective about politics exactly: You can end slavery, open opportunity and fight poverty. But you can achieve these things only if you are willing to stain your own character in order to serve others—if you are willing to bamboozle, trim, compromise and be slippery and hypocritical. The challenge of politics lies precisely in the marriage of high vision and low cunning. Spielberg’s “Lincoln” gets this point. The hero has a high moral vision, but he also has the courage to take morally hazardous action in order to make that vision a reality.

To lead his country through a war, to finagle his ideas through Congress, Lincoln feels compelled to ignore court decisions, dole out patronage, play legalistic games, deceive his supporters and accept the fact that every time he addresses one problem he ends up creating others down the road.

Politics is noble because it involves personal compromise for the public good.

Happily, I believe both Dayton and Jindal get that!

Flickr photos: Mark Dayton by easy stand, and Bobby Jindal by Derek Bridges