#16 The Good, Bad & Ugly of Lies and Liars at Work

THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU THINK

• Oh s***, how do I answer without letting them know that I know…..?
• Nobody must know that….
• I’m the only one who knows that….
• Who else knows about this? When did they know? Am I the last to know? Do I have to let others know?

…you’re in the Good, Bad & Ugly of Lies and Liars at work.

THINK // 3 insights from the field

?? THE GOOD THING about lies is much harder to appreciate from the perspective of the one being lied to, and much easier to appreciate from the perspective of the one doing the “protective” lying.

Sometimes we lie because we see ourselves as “good people” doing things out of (what we believe to be) “good intentions”:

• I want/need to protect myself or others from pain or harm
• I want/need to repair the honest mistake on my terms first before getting scrutinised by others.
• I want/need to have that valuable opportunity or resource that may not be given to me or others if this truth gets out.
• I want/need people to accept, love and validate me
• I want/need to protect a community, cause that is larger than me.
• I want/need to protect people I care for from public scrutiny, embarrassment, shame, dishonour.
• I want/need privacy and confidentiality to resolve this situation well and exposure may make things worse.
• I want/need to keep things together and not fall apart for my own or others’ sake.

?? THE BAD THING about lies is that even if they work out easier for you in the short term, they create exponentially harder situations for you to deal with in the long term.

To help us unpack 2 bad things of telling lies, let’s use 2 crunchy quotes from Chernobyl, the HBO miniseries about how the 1986 nuclear disaster in Russia happened:

Bad Thing #1:

The more we lie, the more we believe our lies.

In psychologist Jordan Peterson’s book detailing his 12 Rules for Life, Rule 8 is?“Tell the truth - or, at least, don’t lie”

Peterson explains: “Taking the easy way out or telling the truth-those are not merely two different choices.?They are different pathways through life.?They are utterly different ways of existing…”

One key difference between telling the truth and lying is this:

• To tell the truth is to use words as a way to describe reality and help ourselves and others understand reality.
• To lie is to use words as a way to distort reality and cause ourselves and others to misunderstand reality.

To Peterson, this is why lies - even white lies - are dangerous.

The more you lie, the more you (and others hoodwinked by you) lose the capacity to discern the difference between truth and lies.

That is how once mighty organisations like Theranos and Madoff Investment Securities crumbled. Their leaders (Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff respectively) started lying early on to deflect attention away from early mistakes and problematic practices.

The more they lied, the more experienced, skillful and habitual these lying leaders got at distorting the truth. But the more they lied, the more fragmented and dissonant the liars’ own sense of reality became.

Elizabeth Holmes lied big time about her organisation’s invention. But she also allegedly lied to her co-workers about even mundane, ridiculous details. For instance, she sent out emails claiming that she was out of the office even though she was still sitting at her desk just a few feet away from the staff receiving these emails. To this day, Holmes has not acknowledged the truth of her actions. In her trial, despite glaring evidence to the contrary, she continually testified she "never" lied to investors.

As the Chernobyl quote puts it, “the real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognise the truth at all”.

Bad Thing #2:

The longer we lie in the present, the more damage we reap in the future.

Perhaps the most famous quote from Chernobyl is “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.”

We lie to make life a little convenient in the present. After you tell the first lie, the next lie becomes easier, and another lie becomes more necessary.

As the lies pile up, they have a compounding effect. The truth never goes away and the inconvenience the lies create for your future grows exponentially and sharply over time.

We might have paid a hard price if we told the truth from the start. But if we told it early on enough, we might still have time and space to repair the damage given time and intention.

The price of our lies will hyperinflate over time into something way beyond whatever we can afford. At some tipping point, what began as something that would cripple you now becomes potentially catastrophic.

Trying to succeed by maintaining a long series of lies is like playing a Jenga tower game with others when they thought you were simply building a proper tower.

In Jenga, no matter how skillful you are and how amazing you’re playing, it’s essentially shaky business to keep up the game of moving around the pieces. The point of Jenga is sooner or later, a slightly wrong estimation is made and the whole thing comes tumbling down.

That is always the only way the game of Jenga ends.

So it is with the game of lies.

Maybe you believe the lies can be taken to the grave and you die before you get found out - but really that just means you left your mess to the living to clean up. And your legacy - the legacy of a good and trustworthy name - still falls apart.

That’s how it happened for Ravi Zacharias, who died as a famed apologetics preacher but is now remembered as a sexual predator who let his own family and staff at his organisation deal with a crisis of revelations. A multi-million-dollar organisation that once employed 300 people in 16 countries collapsed in months.

Lying your way to success, to acceptance, to manage a crisis, to manage impressions etc. is never a good idea.

It doesn’t work. Not for long.

As the line in Chernobyl goes:

“(The truth) is always there whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn't care about our needs or wants, it doesn't care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time…Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?”

?? THE UGLY THING about secrets and lies is that upkeeping them takes a serious toll on you internally, even if on the outside all seems well.

The more you lie, the more you split and fragment internally. You can really struggle to feel whole and operate in a wholesome way. This is what it means to lose your integrity - you cannot keep it together after a while.

Some people feel it as an internal sensation of weakness, sinking, division, displacement of some sort when they start misspeaking or misbehaving. We can infer these as the psychosomatic presence of a lie.?

Jordan Peterson described the process as such:

“If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character. If you have a weak character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears, as it will, inevitably. You will hide, but there will be no place left to hide. And then you will find yourself doing terrible things.”

The ugliest thing that can happen to a person who lies is that they become a pathological liar.

A pathological liar is someone who:

• lies with no direct, objective benefit
• tells dramatic, detailed and complicated tales featuring themselves as either a hero or victim
• lies frequently, often compulsively
• may deal with people one-on-one or in small groups, versus large groups (because large groups may tend to compare notes with each other and identify the lie.)
• responds to questions elaborately, but vaguely
• may have different versions of the same story – because they have forgotten what they said

What can we handle the ugly consequences of our own or someone else’s lies?

If you are dealing with a pathological liar in the workplace, things will be exceptionally difficult.?

• Once you have reviewed the facts and determined they have been lying, you must address specific issues with them and use facts to call them out on their lies. It is best to do this with a witness, have the conversation recorded as far as possible, so that they cannot lie about the meeting.?
• If the lies have been egregious enough – the individual will need to be fired from the job.?Someone who lies pathologically in the workplace can wreck havoc upon a work environment.
• Addressing the rest of the staff about the termination must be done in an direct, professional way.
• The person terminated for pathological lying will likely go on a “ground war” to seek out audiences to share stories that aren't true – give other people explicit permission and opportunity to ask you clarifying questions and check facts.

Whether you are the person wanting to come clean about your own lies or the person having to clean up someone else’ lies,

the best path forward is to speak the truth as much as you can.

There is a lot to unpack about how detailed we must be, what truth is helpful/unhelpful to a particular audience etc.

But the principle still stands: tell the truth

as far as you can,

as soon as you can,

as much as you can

as clearly and kindly as you can.

Only the truth - told with Good intent - can set us free.

The truth may bring pain and devastation.

But it can also bring moral clarity, situational focus, life direction and kickstart the necessary changes towards building something more solid, sustainable and sure.

FEEL // 2 links to help you feel less alone

WATCH Jordan Peterson on why it’s important to tell the truth - or at least, don’t lie.

READ Liz Kislik on what motivates people to lie at work and what you can do about it

DO // 1 strategy to try this week

NOTICE the next time you’re tempted to lie in a professional setting - even if it seems tiny or trivial looking.

PRACTICE

1. Self-Awareness: Get familiar with what are your own psychosomatic signs that you are not being truthful. Do you feel

• any internal sensation of weakness, sinking, division or displacement?

2. Self-Reflection: Examine why you are tempted. Is it because…

• I want/need to protect myself or others from pain or harm?
• I want/need to repair the honest mistake on my terms first before getting scrutinised by others?
• I want/need to have that valuable opportunity or resource that may not be given to me or others if this truth gets out?
• I want/need people to accept, love and validate me?
• I want/need to protect a community, cause that is larger than me?
• I want/need to protect people I care for from public scrutiny, embarrassment, shame, dishonour?
• I want/need privacy and confidentiality to resolve this situation well and exposure may make things worse?
• I want/need to keep things together and not fall apart for my own or others’ sake?

Ask yourself:

• While these intentions are fair and good, what is the price I will pay for lying vs the benefits? How will I know when the price of lying outweighs the benefits I think I am getting?
• What is a better way forward then just lying? What could I gain in terms of personal sense of integrity if I told the truth?

3.Self-Disclosure: Practice revealing what is more true for you at least to yourself.

• I am tempted to say….but instead I will say….
• eg: I am tempted to say ‘I can’t make it tomorrow’ but instead I will say ‘I prefer not to work on my off-days’
• It’s possible to say…however what I most want to say is….
• eg: It’s possible for me to say ‘I will do it’ however what I most want to say is ‘I can consider doing this if you provide me more resources’

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