In my coaching practice I sometimes encounter clients who coyly ask for my permission to lie on their résumé, in an interview, or in a job situation. Studies have shown that nearly 38% of the résumés contain some lie. The most common lies are job titles (45%), responsibilities (28%), accomplishments (20%), and degrees (about 10%). In each such request my response is the same: NO! Often, their desire to do this intensifies, as they get close to the offer stage in their new job. The most common request I get is their desire to lie about another job offer or a concocted possibility that would allow them to leverage that concoction to parlay a better deal. Once again, my response is the same!
Why?
When we want something badly and we fear our losing it we often resort to lying with the hope that we would get what we desire. Lying also happens in social situations when you want to avoid an unpleasant encounter with someone. “I was late because my car broke down; too much traffic, etc.” Some of these “fibs” are just that; benign statements of our inability to be honest about our shortcomings. Nevertheless, they provide an interesting window into a person’s make-up.
My first (and my last) encounter of lying in a professional setting occurred over 40 years ago in my very first job. I was on a company trip by train to New Delhi in 1967 and I was to do a number of things in one day, which alone was challenging, despite careful planning based on the best-case scenario (no waiting at government ministries!). Telephones and the ways of getting across the vast stretches of New Delhi were quite primitive then by today’s standards. As I was about to depart, my boss gave me a personal errand to pick up some special medicines for him from a store in Old Delhi, which was a much crowded and chaotic place to visit, with traffic snarls. Since I put high priority on my boss’ personal errand I was simply unable to complete the last business errand to see someone by paying him a courtesy visit.
Upon my return to work the next day I pleased my boss by giving him what he had asked me to bring for him and then he asked me about my business. When he specifically asked about meeting that last person, Mr. Patel, on the list of people to visit, I simply did not have the courage to tell him that I ran out of time and could not see him. I wanted to impress him with my uncanny efficiency. So, instead, I lied and told him that it was a productive meeting and that the person did not have anything significant to tell me about the ongoing business. My boss paused, for a period, what seemed like eternity, and then stared at me with a knowing look, and asked, What did he exactly say? I suddenly realized that I was unable to continue this charade any longer without further humiliating myself, but did not have the courage to tell him the truth and to recover from the lie I had just perpetrated. Within just a few more exchanges my boss realized what had happened, but did not push to humiliate me further. At that moment we both knew what was going on. Ever since that incident, relationship with my boss was never the same!
Breach of trust is the biggest casualty in a lie. Once that trust is gone it is often impossible to regain it and it becomes an uphill battle, causing much wasted effort and grief. People often think that telling a lie is as easy as having a normal truthful conversation. They are wrong! They are even more wrong when they convince themselves that it would be easier to sell that lie when they carefully fashion a convincing script to make that lie sellable.
Why?
What most do not realize is that our brain is working at both the conscious and subconscious level simultaneously. When we are telling a deliberate lie, only our conscious brain is engaged in that lie. The subconscious brain is doing its thing independently (that is why it is called the subconscious brain) and the disconnect between the two brains manifests as unavoidable, out of synch signals that betray your lie. Studies have shown that for every neuron working in the conscious brain, about a million neurons are working at the subconscious level. To project a unified message from the verbal, tonal, and body-language faculties is virtually impossible when you are fighting this million-to-one battle within your own brain. Thus, when you are telling a lie every fiber of your being is betraying what is going on and the person at the other end can easily spot that without much difficulty. The same situation applies when you are communicating on the phone. Studies have shown that it is even easier to spot a lie in a phone conversation than it is in a face-to-face interaction. To make matters even worse, when you make a deliberate script to tell a lie the time you spend communicating that lie increases and so do your chances of exposing yourself by your betrayed body language and your tone. So, carefully scripting a lie does not absolve you from its negative impact; it actually increases it, instead.
Studies have shown that the verbal communication provides only about seven percent of your message. The tone provides about 45% and the body language the remainder (48%). This makes it nearly impossible for anyone to manage their brain to synch up their conscious manifestation with their subconscious one, no matter how clever they are!
So, what is the best way to present your case when you are coming short?
The answer is quite simple: Tell the truth in a way that serves you and make the truth that they are looking for irrelevant in the context of you overall message.
Let me explain what I mean. In my own case from 40 years ago, I should have told my boss, “No, I was not able to see Mr. Patel as I simply ran out of time that day to catch my train back, but I called him this morning and explained to him the reason for not being able to see him. He was quite gracious about that and said, ‘we should continue our ongoing marketing campaign by looking for other avenues’.” I am quite sure this would have worked and, more importantly, I would have retained my dignity even without coming across as being super-efficient about my time in New Delhi. Here, once Mr. Patel’s message was known, my actual visit to him became irrelevant in the context that I was facing and what was needed. Then I was too naïve to analyze the situation in these terms.
The same logic applies in a job situation. When you do not have a particular attribute that the employer is looking for it is best to say, I actually bring something even more valuable than that because in the current state of this project you do not need more Java experts (you can contract them), but you need someone who knows how to manage a complex project and work with off-shored resources to bring it back on track quickly. I have done this well many times!
So, before you are tempted to make a statement that is not true and that is unsupportable by facts, find some avenues to make that statement irrelevant and, instead, find how to present other possibilities that they have not considered! This approach will make you stand tall, sleep better, and even get you that job you are really after!