Sharpening Your “BS” Detector
How to Strengthen an Essential Leadership Skill
Written by Marty Seldman, Ph.D.
About 20 years ago, I was engaged in a discussion about Organization Savvy with an AutoNation senior executive. At one point he said to me, proudly, “My father was a walking lie detector”. He went on to explain how his father leveraged that skill to build a very successful group of car dealerships.
It was a fascinating but rare conversation for me because not that many people focus on how the ability to detect deception serves leaders and their organizations. Not only do I believe it is an essential skill, if I was an employee or shareholder of a company I would want the CEO to absolutely excel in this area. CEO’s make high impact and potentially costly “bets” on people. They do this every time they:
- Hire Key Vendors – Choices about law firms, strategy consultants, IT experts and supply chain partners have big consequences.
- Form Partnerships – Successful mergers, alliances, joint ventures, licensing agreements, etc. particularly with international partners depend on an ability to sniff out misrepresentation.
- Add Someone to the Senior Team – These choices shape the organizations’ culture, and hopefully are leaders with the right competencies and values.
It is easy to point out that mistakes, “bad bets”, in any of these areas could cost a company millions, lost time, and put them at a competitive disadvantage. However, the much more serious concern is “reputation risk” which can lop off $billions of market value overnight. So if this ability is that important, how much training do leaders receive to help them improve? If you are a police intelligence officer, auditor, insurance claims inspector, or poker player, probably quite a bit.
But what about the average corporate leader? For example, did you ever take a course on this subject at university or in an MBA program? Did your company’s Leadership Academy focus on this area? My guess is unlikely. (Caveat: I have been on the faculty of Leadership Academies at PepsiCo, DirecTV, and BD that taught these skills).
So how do most of us acquire knowledge about deception?
- Growing Up – Some of you have been blessed by being raised in a family where you were loved and supported, and the people around you were honest and kept their word. I’m happy for your good fortune. One thing you probably didn’t get, unless your family intentionally taught it to you, was a discerning BS detector. Often people raised in this environment will find themselves later in life in situations where they were too
trusting or even naïve. On the other hand, if you grew up in a place where your home and/or neighborhood contained risks to your financial or physical well-being you learned to recognize certain signs and signals to survive.
Of course many of us were exposed to a mix of these situations. For example, I didn’t learn much about this from my parents, but my aunt, who had no children, took a special interest in teaching me about “how the world works” (Thanks, Aunt Ruthie).
2. Life’s Lessons –
🎶 “Everybody plays the fool sometime, there’s no exception to the rule” 🎶
– From the 1972 song, “Everybody Plays the Fool” by The Main Ingredient
Yes, extremely likely that you, and people close to you, will be deceived at some point in your life. As Tom Hopkins advises, “You already paid for the lesson, might as well take the learnings.”
- Books/TV – Lots of books and TV shows on these subjects. A scary but excellent one is “The Sociopath Next Door” by Martha Stout.
Now I am going to recommend another path to acquiring this discernment, Reading Tells. If you have read my recent article on using “Tells” to gather information, you already know the framework. Pay attention to the cues people are giving us about who they are and their intentions.
Reading the Tells of Deception
I’m going to describe 9 “tells” that indicate degrees of deception. Some may be situational, and indicate only a one-off event (of course worth paying attention to). If you encounter repeated examples you are probably dealing with someone you need to protect yourself from (see A Woman’s Guide to Power, Presence and Protection, Rule 2, Detect to Protect).
First let me describe the type of person we are trying to identify. They have two key characteristics which, when combined, make them dangerous to you, your team, and your company.
- Self-Interest is Number 1 – Let me distinguish between normal levels of self-interest and the kind of self-interest this person prioritizes. Unless you happen to encounter a saint, the people you interact with on teams, or projects display some qualities which can be frustrating, disappointing but are fairly common. These include: biased social accounting, rationalizing poor behavior, self-deception, ingratitude (what have you done for me lately?). The person I am trying to warn you about goes beyond these tendencies. They routinely put their self-interest over the company’s goals and will create risks for the interests of the company, its customers and occasionally society, if it benefits them.
- “What can I get away with?” – Fairness, merit, or integrity are not concerns for them. They look at their environment through a lens of what can they do without much of a
negative consequence. If they can take undeserved credit, assign blame, harm someone’s reputation, hide or distort information, take resources, etc., they will. Obviously, by definition, people like this don’t wear signs. In fact if you listened to their speeches or read their value statements you would receive the opposite message, e.g. transparency, non-political, “leave your ego at the door”. Fortunately my experience is that if you know what to look for these people will reveal who they are.
The Key “Tells”
We don’t want to expect perfection from ourselves or others so if someone exhibits these behaviors once, I would pay attention but not label them yet. However, we should never dismiss patterns of behavior.
- Exaggerating and Over-Promising – This includes exaggerating one’s contributions to a project, what the project has or will deliver, or over-promising deliverables about sales, profits, or cost reductions.
- Taking Undeserved Credit – Anyone can forget other’s contributions on occasion but for some people this is a regular practice and strategy.
- Hiding “Bad News/Giving Only Partial Information – Even after Sarbanes-Oxley this is very common.
- Lying/Giving Different Versions of Events to Different People
- Insincere Flattery – If you are around someone like this and have something they want, “you are not as smart, funny, or attractive as they are telling you”. Notice the contrast in how they treat someone who is not important to them.
- Superficial Explanations/Guarded, Evasive Speech – Most of us will recognize when someone is hesitant, holding back, trying to avoid being candid. We have all had a lot of experience watching politicians being interviewed over the years doing this kind of dance. So pay attention to your gut when you see this. You won’t know what they are trying not to reveal but you will notice their lack of transparency.
- Protection vs Correction – As I have explained in other articles, Correction people want corrective feedback because they want to improve their behavior or performance. Protection people want to protect their image. They get defensive, won’t admit they were wrong or apologize, blame you or others.
- Conflicts of Interest and/or Not Eliminating Conflicts of Interest – Conflicts of interest in business are much more common than people realize. They are a source of most personal and hidden agendas.
- Overly Controlling Information/Punishing People Who Challenge or Disagree – These are the two most serious tells. Ones you really don’t want to see. Someone who is overly controlling information flow in and out of their team is a serious risk to the organization. This is compounded if they punish “truth tellers”.
Of course there are other “tells” of people who are deceptive but this list covers the most common ones you are likely to see on teams or cross functional projects.
I know many of you are familiar with Maya Angelou’s wonderful saying on this subject but it is so perfect for this discussion I will show it again:
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.