CHAPTER 6
Reducing Lies in the Workplace
ONE OF MY MOST FREQUENTLY REQUESTED SEMINAR TOPICS today deals with the power of collaborative leadership. Why? Because there is a perception shared by more and more business executives that if they want their organizations to continue to thrive in the global marketplace, they must replace traditional, top-down, command-and-control leadership structures with more-inclusive, “silo-busting” networks to tap the collective wisdom, experience, and creativity of the entire workforce.
The key to making that essential shift is knowledge sharing, and the key to knowledge sharing is trust—which brings me back to the subject of this book: lying. As you already know, trust and lying cannot coexist.
Trust is the belief or confidence that one party has in the reliability and the integrity of another—the confidence that one’s faith in the other will be honored in return. Dishonesty destroys trust. Once you discover you’ve been lied to, trust simply vanishes—more often than not forever. And with it goes the very foundation for collaboration.
When trust is low, suspicious and cynical employees view knowledge sharing as weakening their personal power base; meanwhile their leaders, despite lip service to the contrary, follow a need-to-know communication policy, withholding details and insights that are crucial to informed collaboration. As a result, an immense volume of problem-solving capacity is lost to business enterprises every day. Companies are wasting the brainpower that could save billions; or lead to the discovery of a revolutionary new process or product; or, in the current economic climate, help keep them afloat when others are sinking. At the same time, individuals are losing the opportunity to work in the kind of collaborative environment that energizes teams, unleashes creativity, and makes working together both productive and joyful.
By contrast, when trust is high, employees and leaders are more likely to look beyond their individual agendas and functional silos to connect with the whole community in the pursuit of larger organizational goals.
If you are an executive, manager, supervisor, or team leader, this chapter is especially for you. It offers a variety of ideas for reducing lies in the workplace, but many of these suggestions take time, energy, and continued monitoring to implement. I want you to consider upfront why it may be well worth that effort.
Responses from Survey Participants
The final question I put to the 547 business professionals I surveyed for this project was: How do you feel lying in your organization could be reduced? I mentioned earlier that 67 percent responded that their senior managers didn’t always tell the truth, 53 percent said that their manager lied to them, and 51 percent reported dealing with deceptive colleagues. What I didn’t mention before is that about 20 percent of the respondents described their own workplace as an overall high-deception, low-trust environment. Here’s a typical comment: “I was not a liar at all until I started working for a company with a toxic senior management team. It is common knowledge that they tell lies about their own schedules (working from home, showing up late, taking long lunches). Now I think it’s only fair that I do the same.”
It was from this relative minority that I got the most troubling comments about what caused lying as well as the most telling suggestions for dealing with it. The following are the five most representative of those suggestions—all of which, it’s worth noting, singled out the policies and the actions of leaders and all of which I advocate.
Five Suggestions for Reducing Lies in the Workplace
Give us honest leaders to follow. “Everything starts with leadership. When there is mistrust in an organization, it starts at the top. Honest leaders reduce the likelihood of others lying. Otherwise, people are driven by fear and backbiting and lies take over.”
“Make honesty an implicit value and communicate it clearly, but remember that it will mean nothing unless leaders also model and demonstrate truthfulness. We’re not blind. We see everything they do, and all-too-often we follow their bad example.”
Focus on finding solutions rather than on placing blame. “People should be made to feel okay about making mistakes because everyone does from time to time. Then we wouldn’t feel threatened and need to lie to cover up the mistake.”
“We need a culture that accepts mistakes. Make it safe to fail publicly.”
“Management should provide sufficient resources (people, budget, time) to actually do the job required. Then we wouldn’t have to make up excuses for not reaching deadlines.”
Eliminate policies that create liars. “Why can’t employees take a ‘mental health day’? Why make them lie about it?”
“I’ve been in human resources for 25 years. If employees have an incentive program that promotes one type of behavior—say approving mortgages even if the applicant pool is high risk—then their actions will follow that incentive.”
“Managers shouldn’t say they want honest feedback unless they really do. Have you ever tried telling your boss the bad news? I did once and I’m still suffering the repercussions.”
Treat employees fairly and equitably. “We need continuous goal-oriented discussions to make sure people are on the same track. Why make us guess—and then berate us when we get it wrong?”
“No favoritism by managers. The minute we saw how the boss plays favorites, we all felt pressured to ‘suck up.’”
“Have a no-tolerance policy about liars. Don’t hire yes-people in the first place, don’t hire people who lie on their résumé, and do fire liars—even when they are senior executives or top performers. That would send a welcome message to the rest of us.”
“Each employee, whatever his position, has to take personal responsibility for being truthful, but leaders should give extra encouragement to those farther down the ladder so they’ll feel safe about speaking up honestly.”
Communicate, communicate, communicate. “Unless there is a specific reason for not sharing information, employees should be told everything. Management keeps announcing new ‘transparency initiatives,’ but none of them will stand a chance until we dump the need-to-know communication mentality.”
“Everybody already knows what’s going on, and when management refuses to acknowledge that the rumors are true, it causes employees to continually distrust them. And at town hall meetings, leaders should say, ‘I can’t answer at this time,’ rather than making up a story. Why do they have to lie? It’s insulting.”
“We need better, more open communication from the leadership team. Actually...we need better leaders.”
The most depressing finding in my research was that many of those who identified themselves as working in toxic environments were pessimistic about the likelihood of its ever improving:
“Lying is part of how we do business.”
“I’ve given up. Hopefully, I will be able to escape one day. There are too many liars here. Things will never change.”
“Executives lie because of money, politics, power, and a feeble attempt to promote morale. This is just how it is. They try to manipulate us because they don’t trust us with the facts.”
“Work for yourself. It’s the only way you won’t be lied to.”
Research on What Reduces Lying
As you might imagine, there isn’t a lot of research on what really reduces lying, but what there is may surprise you. While not directly applicable to most business environments, this section summarizes what scientists found when they set out to discover if recalling childhood memories, believing in God, seeing a poster of staring eyes, being reminded of moral codes, or receiving higher pay would lessen duplicitous behavior.
Childhood Memories
In a series of experiments at Harvard University, participants were found to be more likely to help the researchers with an extra task, judge unethical behavior more harshly, and donate money to charity when they had actively remembered their childhood.1 The scientists believe that childhood memories include subliminal feelings of innocence—a frame of mind that positively influences ethical behavior.
Belief in God
According to research, a belief in God doesn’t deter a person from cheating on a test—unless that God is seen as a mean, punishing one. In fact, psychology researchers at the University of Oregon and the University of British Columbia found that undergraduate college students who believe in a caring, forgiving God are more likely to cheat.2
Big Brother
A group of scientists at Newcastle University conducted a field study experiment demonstrating that merely hanging up posters of staring human eyes is enough to inhibit bad behavior.3 The research took place in the university’s main cafeteria, where people’s “littering behavior” was recorded. It was found that during the days when diners encountered posters with pictures of staring eyes (instead of images of flowers) twice as many people cleaned up after themselves. When they hung the staring eyes above an honesty box—where psychology professors and staff were to pay for their tea and coffee—the big-brother effect produced nearly three times as much money.
Moral Code
Dan Ariely and his colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles engaged a group of 450 participants and asked half of them to recall the Ten Commandments and the other half to recall 10 books that they had read in high school. Among the group that recalled the books, researchers saw the typical widespread moderate cheating. But in the group that was asked to recall the Ten Commandments, there was no cheating whatsoever. When the researchers reran the test, this time asking students to remember the school’s honor code, they got identical results. Even when they asked a group of atheists to swear on a Bible, the same no-cheating behavior was observed. Ariely’s conclusion is that reminding people of morality, right at the point when they are making a decision, has a positive effect on their honesty.4
Higher Pay
Paying employees more makes them less likely to pilfer shelves or rob the till, according to a study of retail workers at 250 convenience stores in 31 large chains.5 The findings empirically illustrate how higher wages can help reinforce employees’ honesty and ethical standards. The researchers also found that 40 percent of that higher compensation could be made up by savings from the reduced theft. They concluded that, taking into account side effects such as reduced employee turnover and new-hire training costs, companies could break even or potentially show a net gain by paying their employees more.
Increasing Workplace Honesty Begins with 10 Questions
In The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner point out how important honesty is in a leader and how it ranks first among employee expectations, surpassing even competence: “In every survey we conducted, honesty was selected more often than any other leadership characteristic.”6
It’s one thing to understand that honesty and trust start at the top and quite another to develop the strategies and the philosophies that make that understanding a reality. Because every leader, every team, and every organization is unique, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for decreasing deception and increasing candor in your team.
10 Questions to Ask Yourself as You Create Your Own Plan
What do you expect of the people who report to you? “Pygmalion in the Classroom,” one of the most controversial articles in the history of educational research, shows how a teacher’s expectations can motivate student achievement.7 This classic study gave prospective teachers a list of students who had been identified as “high achievers.” The teachers were told to expect remarkable results from those students, and at the end of the year those students did indeed have sharp increases in their test scores.
In reality, the children were not high achievers but had been chosen at random from the entire pool of pupils. It was the teachers’ belief in their potential that was responsible for their exceptional results—a belief that was communicated not directly (the students were never told they were high achievers) but subliminally through positive behaviors such as facial expressions, gestures, touch, and spatial relationships.
In much the same way, a leader’s expectations of employees’ potential can play a key role in determining how well they perform at work. This effect was described by J. Sterling Livingston in his 1969 Harvard Business Review article “Pygmalion in Management”: “The way managers treat their subordinates is subtly influenced by what they expect of them.”8
So, again, the first question to ask yourself is: What do I expect of my team, staff, or workforce? If you expect people to communicate with honesty, integrity and truthfulness, you’ve automatically increased the odds that they will do just that.
Have you covered the basics? Charles A. Lynch is chair of Market Value Partners Company, a management, mentor, and adviser resource for existing and emerging businesses. He has been chair or CEO of a number of major companies, including Saga Corporation and DHL. Listening to Lynch is like taking a course in Leadership 101:
I’ve worked with a broad cross-section of companies—and I know that you are only as good as the people around you. At heart I’m a fundamentalist. I believe that you need to have everyone focused on and in agreement with an overall mission and a three-year strategic plan. Then you have to make sure that each individual clearly understands his or her quantifiable one-year objectives—that those six to eight key objectives are clearly articulated, written down, and agreed to—and that there is no overlap in responsibility. After that, everyone can write their own performance review because it is obvious when people did or did not reach the goals. And if they didn’t—we can discuss why not and what needs to change. It all becomes transparent and upfront.9
When you have a foundation like this in place, you lessen the chances of the misunderstandings and the miscommunications that cause people to cover up, make excuses, and lie.
Are your words in alignment with your actions and body language? Whenever your actions are in direct opposition to your statements, you confuse and demoralize your staff and look like a liar—as this e-mail I received illustrates:
My boss drives us crazy with her mixed messages. She says things like, “You are always welcome in my office” and “You are all a valued part of the team.” At the same time, she is constantly showing how unimportant we are to her. She never makes eye contact, will shuffle papers when others talk, writes e-mails while we answer her questions, and generally does not give her full attention. In fact, we don’t even get her half attention. Then she wonders why we’ve stopped believing anything she tells us.
If you want people to believe that you want and value their honest opinions, give them your full attention. Don’t multitask while they talk. Avoid the temptation to check your text messages, check your watch, or check out your golf swing. (This actually happened: whenever the boss lost interest in a conversation, he would stand, address an imaginary golf ball, and practice his swing.) Instead focus on those who are speaking by turning your head and torso to face them directly and by making eye contact. Leaning forward is another nonverbal way to show you’re engaged and paying attention. In cultures of candor, it’s important to tell people that they are a valued part of the team. It’s even more important to treat them that way.
Do you encourage constructive conflict? Samuel Goldwyn, the fabled American film producer, once reportedly said, “I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want them to tell me the truth, even if it costs them their jobs.”
Goldwyn’s comment underscores the concern that even if a leader asks for dissenting opinions, most employees—especially at lower levels of the organization—find it difficult and uncomfortable to speak up. They’re unsure whether the leader genuinely wants to deal with conflict, and they fear ridicule or retaliation for “being negative.”
In fact, to meet social needs (acceptance and approval), people in any group find it psychologically difficult to go against the majority. As a result, too many people sit in meetings and keep silent, or they gloss over the effect a given proposal will have on their department or co-workers. They wait quietly while the leader proceeds as if everyone is aligned, but this “consensus” is not real. Later, in off-the-record conversations, these same folks may undercut or sabotage the proposal. Rather than discourage resistance and negativity, leaders should surround themselves with people who can debate passionately and honestly before a decision is made—and then unite behind the final decision.
Here are a few ideas to help you get started:
Assign someone on your team to the role of devil’s advocate—to deliberately argue the contrary position as a means of stimulating debate.
Ask part of the group to think like the firm’s competitors (or customers or employees) to bring out and expose flaws in a set of core assumptions.
Establish ground rules that will stimulate task-oriented disagreement yet minimize interpersonal conflict.
Keep the proceedings transparent by making decisions based on what goes on in the meeting rather than on behind-the-scenes maneuvering.
Make sure that team members represent a diversity of thinking styles, skill levels, and backgrounds. If they don’t, invite people with various points of view to offer their perspectives.
Start out with a question and don’t voice an opinion. Once you’ve said, “Here’s what I’m thinking...” you have already influenced the team.
Charles Lynch told me that his goal for executive team meetings was to make them open, candid, and constructive. People were treated as equals—and critique was encouraged—with one caveat: “Tell me whenever you think we’re on the wrong track, but offer a possible solution when you do.”10
Do you optimize the power of “nice”? Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval are chair and CEO, respectively, of Publicis Kaplan Thaler, one of the fastest-growing ad agencies in the United States. Small acts of niceness are the themes of best-selling books co-authored by Kaplan Thaler and Koval and are reflective of their agency’s philosophy that “little things and niceness do make a difference.”
Here are a few of their tips for creating an atmosphere of trust in which people are more likely to tell the truth:
Let people know it’s okay to have a “stupid” idea or to ask a “dumb” question. In fact, it’s desirable.
Let people know it’s okay to bring their “whole selves” (personal idiosyncrasies and issues) to work.
Praise people for being open and honest and minimize criticism for small missteps.
Credit the entire team for a successful result.
If you, as the leader, make an error, own up to it in front of the group.
If it’s true (as it is with Publicis Kaplan Thaler), let people know that failure isn’t fatal—that they won’t lose their jobs if they make a well-intentioned mistake.
Try a “yes sandwich.” Here is an example of how Kaplan Thaler and Koval dealt with a situation in which one of their creative groups didn’t meet client expectations. You can get the general idea of why this is an effective way to get people to face the truth while staying truthful, professional, and nice:
Yes: “You are a valuable part of this company, and the client held you in especially high esteem and looked forward to working with you.”
Problem: “But in the last three meetings you have disappointed them. This can’t continue or you’ll lose the assignment.”
Yes: “Because you are so talented and capable, we have total faith in you to make the needed corrections and to do the right thing in the future.”11
Do you know what your culture feels like? Organizational culture is like a hologram: every part contains enough information in condensed form to describe the whole. An observer can see the whole organization’s culture and ways of doing business by watching one individual—whether a frontline employee, the receptionist at the front desk, or a senior manager—because there is consistency and predictability to their behavior. Here’s how Kaplan Thaler and Koval put it: “Culture is something people experience—that they sense as soon as they set foot in your lobby—and not a set of values posted on the wall.”12
Cultures of candor are achieved through a combination of clearly expressed expectations of acceptable behavior and the ongoing example of leaders (at all levels) who align their actions with those expectations.
The next time you walk into work, ask yourself: What does this company culture feel like? What would a visitor sense about this culture based on the actions and the attitudes of the first three people he or she might encounter?
Do you help your team learn from failure? The general manager of an insurance company, concerned that his salespeople were so afraid of failure that they hesitated to take even well-calculated risks, took action at a sales meeting. He put two $100 bills on the table and related his most recent failure along with the lesson he had learned from it. He then challenged anyone else at the meeting to relate a bigger failure and “win” the $200. When no one spoke up, the manager scooped up the money and said that he would repeat his offer at each monthly sales meeting. From the second month on, he never again got to keep the $200. As people began to admit and discuss their failures, the sales department became more successful, quadrupling its earnings in a single year.
One of the drivers of employee dishonesty is the fear of the consequences of failure. For that reason it can be difficult for people in an organization to have a genuine discussion about failure that doesn’t include rationalizing, blaming, or lying. Creating circumstances in which it is okay to fail in the context of doing one’s best causes deception to dissipate.
To facilitate a more productive conversation about failure, the US Army developed after-action reviews (AARs), which are now used by organizations around the world to help employees learn from their mistakes, prevent future errors, and find new solutions to problems. Basically, the AAR process assembles people who were involved in a planned project or event and asks them to answer these questions:
What was the desired outcome?
What was the actual outcome?
Why were there differences between what we wanted and what we achieved? (Here we are looking for systemic problems.)
What did we learn? (What would we do differently next time?)
Do you know who works for you? As I interviewed people for this book, I found that many employees felt compelled to lie (act as if nothing is wrong) when facing personal issues and concerns. I also found that when employees are actively encouraged to bring their whole selves to work—to feel free to actually be who they are, personal problems and all—the resultant sense of acceptance and support can result in higher morale, higher levels of truthfulness, and higher productivity. The following is one such example.
At a claims office of about 125 employees, the head of human resources spent the day observing the local manager. Not only had the office ranked high on productivity but this particular manager had received fantastic feedback on her company’s leadership measurement survey. The HR executive was curious to watch her interact with employees to figure out what generated this great response.
As they walked through the office, conversing about the normal work conditions, the manager would often stop and refer to specific individuals: “Steve over there has been in our area for 15 years. Steve also coaches Little League. They won their game last Thursday.”
Then they’d move on to someone else, and as they left that person’s area, quietly the manager would say, “Sally had some problems with her daughter this year. You know how difficult teenagers can be. We’ve had many sessions behind closed doors where Sally’s trying to sort through these challenges.”
Months later when I interviewed the HR executive, that day at the claims office was still etched in her mind. “It became apparent to me,” she explained, “that this manager knew all of her people. And I don’t mean just knew their jobs: she knew them as individuals—their backgrounds and hobbies, what their concerns were, what got them excited. She knew when they were upbeat because things were going well, and she knew when they were struggling and needed her time and attention. I asked her how on earth she could do this for 125 people. Her response: ‘That’s my job.’”
Are you seen as vulnerable? Self-disclosure is one of the hallmarks of close relationships, the essence of personal candor and of trust in the other party. Showing your strengths is easy, but full self-disclosure—where you reveal your vulnerabilities and weaknesses—feels more risky.
It may be a risk worth taking. Leaders who combine strength with vulnerability can bond a team faster than any management “technique” I’ve seen. Here are three leaders and their views on vulnerability:
Robert Burnside, chief learning officer, Ketchum. I accept two things as a leader: First, I am in the spotlight whether I like it or not. And, because I’m in a senior leadership role, it’s proper for people to discuss how I’m doing. And second, if I can articulate my strengths and weaknesses to the organization, I believe that people will understand me as a leader who has integrity, who is trustworthy, and who will trust them—because I haven’t positioned myself as some perfect being with all the answers. By making myself vulnerable in this way, I’m saying to people: “I’m a human being and I’m willing to hear from you how I might improve.” I think that’s very effective.13
Robert L. Dilenschneider, president and chief executive officer, The Dilenschneider Group. Leaders have to be strong. They have to demonstrate by example that they have the skill (ability) and the will (desire) to do the job. If you have both the skill and the will, then, as a leader, you can afford to be vulnerable. And if you do it properly, it will inspire people around you to pick up those parts of the challenge you’re not prepared to deal with. I’ve seen that work in company after company. It’s really all about team building. So, in that way, a leader can make his or her vulnerability a real asset.14
Joan Crockett, former senior vice president of human resources at Allstate Insurance Company. Years ago, when Jerry Choate was our CEO, he stood up in front of a room full of people for a speech that was being broadcast throughout the organization. He told a story about how his mother had influenced him and what inspired him. Then he talked about his biggest fear. He said he was afraid that he could let us down. He said that by not being the right kind of leader, he knew he could negatively impact not only employees but ultimately the families of employees. And that’s what kept him awake at night.
I’ve got to tell you, the feedback about that presentation was so powerful and meaningful that it startled me. I anticipated that the speech would get a positive reaction, but I was overwhelmed at the response. For Jerry to speak of what frightened him most—and to express that level of genuine concern for each individual in the company—was extraordinarily compelling to our employees. That one speech did more for pulling our company together, for spring-boarding us into productivity goals and high levels of performance, than a hundred “motivational” talks ever could. That’s what a leader has to be able to do. You have to be willing to reveal yourself.15
Whom do you trust? Getting people to place their trust in you is a matter of always doing what you say you’ll do. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that leaders can talk until they’re blue in the face, but they will never create trust unless their sustained behavior parallels what they say. This is why building deep trust takes so long. There has to be consistency over time. If your personal leadership style is to be candid but transparency is unusual in your organization, people may automatically believe that you have another agenda. It will take time for them to realize that—with you—what they see is what they get.
But trust is a two-way street. It’s not enough that people trust you. You also have to trust them. And I’m not just talking about trusting those you like and agree with; I mean making trust a hallmark of how you deal with every member of your team. Here’s what one department head told me:
I have a deeply and fundamentally positive attitude about the worthiness of people to bring their very best to whatever challenge is at hand. It’s not that I assume everybody’s right all the time, but I always begin with the rock-solid belief that everybody has a point of view that’s worth hearing. Trust has to do with assuming that the other person has value to contribute, even before they’ve proven it. That’s the core—the belief that people have value and that they are going to come up with good answers. Unless I think that I can run my 1,000-person organization all by myself, I have to trust. I see trust as being highly practical.
Summing Up
Lying in the workplace becomes pervasive—and damaging to trust, collaboration, and productivity—when leaders create an environment that encourages or tolerates it. The strategy for reducing lies is actually quite simple:
Acknowledge, reward, and promote honesty.
Don’t hire liars.
Openly share what you know—unless there is a valid reason not to.
Don’t tell people that you “don’t know” when you do know.
Do what you say you’ll do.
Don’t set expectations that can’t be met.
Involve people in decisions that affect them.
Don’t pretend to solicit dissenting opinions if you’ve already made a decision.
Watch that your body language is aligned with your words.
Make sure that each team member is crystal clear about what is expected of him or her.
Foster constructive conflict.
Take the risk of showing vulnerability.
Expect people to be trustworthy.
Eliminate policies that force honest people to lie.
Learn from failure without placing blame.
Fire destructive liars, regardless of who they are.
Be a role model.
Be nice.
Tell the truth.
See? Simple!
I never said it was easy though.
So there it is—the answer to that question I threw at you way back in chapter 1: Yes, it might be simpler and more productive if everyone in the organization were upfront and totally honest in all of their dealings with all of their associates all of the time.
But that isn’t going to happen.
Ever.
And if some all-seeing, all-knowing ghost of companies present visited you in your dreams one night and said: “Hey, guess what! There isn’t one single liar in your entire organization!” you’d probably think he was lying—and you’d be right to. Because lying, as we’ve seen, is one of the core strategies human beings have evolved over the millennia to deal with the complexities of a largely chaotic, unpredictable, and sometimes threatening life.
But if it’s that hardwired psychologically, nothing can be done about it, right? Wrong. As chapter 6 shows, in an emotionally congenial, high-trust environment, where thinking you have to protect or defend yourself happens less and less frequently, the most destructive kinds of workplace lies diminish with startling rapidity, leaving the kindly, well-intentioned “social lies” greater and greater scope to do their good work.