Because of how biz works, when you are in a professional setting and someone lies at your side’s expense you cannot react and you cannot let it get to you… but it does. Lies don’t matter if it is only just you and the liar, but if there is a 3rd party who have to decide what is true and the lie then things get really extraneous.
I, personally, can’t take lies well, especially when I have proof and there is a 3rd party that does not know about the lie. I lose my cool and i become rigid. It is really a handicap to be honest and young, with youth you don’t have the conditioning and thick skin of age to protect you against such harsh tactics.
Lying is a very very powerful tactic, sadly even being caught with the lie may not have enough repercussions or consequences to turn the tide in time. It is a tactic that has a lot of incentives and very little punishment in business reality, and that’s why we have a lot of sycophants and conmen in the biz.
Every time the other side lies to your side detriment the following happens:
- You cannot point the lie out, so in the infinite possible things you can do and say, becomes severely limited.
- You cannot dwell on the lie. It is bad information and any assumptions that may come out of that lie is at detriment to the conversation and discussion.
- You cannot add any more information that may be related to the lie. When the other party lies they “muddy the water”, the cost of time and effort to consume information becomes much greater (i would call this the Information barrier) and things get out of control.
- You cannot speak out of turn. This is because of the same reason above and it just muddies the waters further. The clearer things are the better chance the 3rd party has in reaching a reasonable conclusion… assuming if there is no severe bias to your view of the events.
- Do not bring up “BURDEN OF PROOF IS FROM THE CLAIMANT”, only judges, lawyers, scientists, and some philosophers honor this logical process.
Preventive Measures.
- NEVER BE ALONE. Never make it YOUR WORD AGAINST THEIRS. Always have a witness and take the minutes of the meeting. I am so paranoid these days I always have a witness every meeting I go. Taking it Further, I always choose “home court” advantage when I can.
- Most importantly find out if the person you are dealing with is a LIAR or a conman. Reputation Investigation is something our team is working on, but is a service commonly available. Expect about a weeks manhour wages at about level 3 salary plus some margin for the freelancer.
- Measure the battlefield and Risks, consider already the possibility of worse case scenario: what if the liar is very smart, insidious and plays on the bias of the 3rd party. What is the worst type of situation.
- And finally the best way to deal with them is not to do business with them if you can. AVOID, EVADE, EXCUSE, and DELAY. Even the most honest and honorable third parties are still human and the weaknesses of bias (family, loved one, friend, financial motive, etc…) will be your demise.
What to Do if you are caught in such situation.
- You have to spend a considerable amount of effort controlling your emotions and thinking through how that lie would damage your position.
- You have to quickly assess the Bias factors of the 3rd party. Do not draw your blade if the battle is already lost.
- Carefully phrase your speech as to move your pieces into retreat and defense. Think through everything you say, take the 5 seconds every couple of sentence visualizing what you are about to say.
Lying is a powerful tool of manipulation. I’ve been in a situation where lies are so obvious and the 3rd party is supposed to be so smart that I almost fell of my seat when that person bought it “hook-line-and-sinker”. Ever since then, I realized not to rely on the intelligence of a 3rd party… unless it is a CROWD of people and they have a diffuse set of interests and thinking (not in a group think situation). Fooling a Crowd is VERY hard, and a crowd that has a varied set of experiences, modes of thinking, strengths, confidence, and backgrounds are much harder to lie to. In fact that CROWD is my best witness and source of “objectivity”. (search “wisdom of crowds”)
I don’t like to Lie, I “frame carefully” my wording but I always think about my wording carefully, saying the other “frames” in my head to remember the way I want to remember the truth.
Lying Tactics
- Sowing Confusion – this is done by adding as many subtopics as possible as to confuse the listeners. You don’t need to be consistent, you just need to end with your point and tell everyone that they agreed to your point.
- The insidious lie – this is a lie that is planted in the founding assumptions. This is best employed without even mentioning the assumptions and acting like everyone has the “SAME assumptions”
- Filibustering – is used as a delaying tactic in order to stall the other side from being able to argue otherwise and maintain a status quo infavor of the Lie. Works also for truth.
- Poisoning the Well.
- Leading Statements. Can be used to alter memory of the crowd.
- Every Cognitive Bias or Fallacy listed in Wikipedia is actually a Lying Tactic (I keep telling people to try to memorize or at least intuitively grasp them that way they have more framing tricks at their disposal and are better at spotting fallacies)
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