Posted on: Monday, June 28, 2004

AT WORK
Most will tell a lie at work to avoid confrontations

By Andrea Kay
Gannett News Service

Thousands of workers will lie to thousands of co-workers, bosses, contractors and customers today. They'll do it because if they don't, they think they could lose something important. A relationship, someone's respect — even their job.

The lie can be as small as telling someone you like their outfit or new hairstyle when you hate it because you don't want to hurt their feelings, or saying traffic made you late when, in fact, you overslept. It can be as significant as not telling your boss the paperwork that's due today hasn't been taken out of the envelope for fear of losing the account.

People lie because lying helps them survive.

"I had a client who didn't want to pay me because of a mistake he made that cost him more money," one man told me. "I got paid. But when he said, 'Let's keep in touch and work on another project,' I said, 'Sure.' I didn't tell him I'd never work with him again and what a psycho nut job he was. I didn't want him bad-mouthing about me."

When someone lies to us, we feel, to say the least, deceived.

"If a lie concerns me personally such as my job or boss, I'd feel betrayed," an administrative assistant told me.

"They should have told me what was going on," an executive told me recently, referring to his team of managers who neglected to complete an important assignment but never mentioned it. "They put more time into the excuse for why it wasn't done."

Most people don't stay up all night concocting elaborate lies. They're more likely to lie in an instant message or phone call during a spontaneous response to an unexpected demand, says Jeff Hancock of Cornell University, in an article in NewScientist.com.

His research also showed that people are twice as likely to lie in phone conversations as they are in e-mail, since e-mail can come back to haunt you.

Depending on whether a conversation is being recorded, could be re-read or whether it occurs in real time determines when people lie most. People lie less if it can be documented.

Most people lie to avoid confrontation. But the price of lying is costly. In the case of the executive, it led to mistrust of his staff, not to mention lost productivity.

A general manager of a radio station said he speaks the truth because, "I don't want to waste my bandwidth trying to remember what I made up."

Other people lie out of desperation of losing business. One advertising executive told me about the time he was in a meeting with his boss, the owner of the ad agency, and a potential new client. When the potential client said they were leaning toward using a firm in a city closer to headquarters, his boss said, "We can be here in 20 minutes in the Sikorsky," implying he owned this commercial helicopter.

Some people do what they call "withholding information." One marketing manager told me, "I've done that when I didn't want to de-motivate someone by telling them they messed up. No harm in that if your intentions are good."

An information technology professional confesses that she "spins information to make it more palatable," adding that "since I have multiple bosses and am in a highly political situation, I have to tailor information to keep everyone happy and appear to be trying to meet all their priorities."

Most people don't want to lie, but sometimes feel they must. And even though they do it to others, in most every circumstance, they don't want to be lied to.

The alternative: Learn to face and handle conflict, stop making excuses and do what you say you'll do.

Career consultant Andrea Kay is the author of several books on landing a job. She can be e-mailed at: andrea@andreakay.com.