Page 17 - Deception at work all chapters EBook

8 Deception at Work

THE DEMONSTRATION The first participant tried, but failed, to
connect to his colleague and the vendor
At a London conference on deception, a explained to the enthralled audience how
vendor of PSE equipment was invited to the device would have worked. The only
give a demonstration. He had planned problem was that he forgot to turn off
to connect the device to a telephone the projector and as he was extolling the
extension in the conference room and to device’s virtues the screen was flashing
ask participants – at random – to speak to ‘Unsure’, ‘Possible Deception’. It took a few
any colleague whom they believed might be minutes for the vendor to appreciate why
deceptive. The vendor connected the PSE to the audience was laughing. Then the penny
a projector displaying Microsoft PowerPoint dropped.
slides, and explained how the device would
display the results.

The bottom line is that polygraph and other machines are not acceptable in most business
situations. However, they do draw out confessions because they bring some liars to the Pivotal
Point where anxiety causes them to lose confidence in their ability to succeed.

THE LYING WITNESS was confronted with the findings (which
were to the effect that her response was
During a police investigation a witness was 92.5 per cent certain to be deceptive), she
shown photographs and asked to pick the changed her story and admitted that she
villain who shot the bartender during a was trying to cover for a friend who was the
drugs related robbery. Her response, which real murderer.
took just over a second, was captured on a
VSA and subsequently examined. When she

The effective interviewer can do this just as well without a polygraph machine, providing
he has a cunning plan.

The cunning plan

This book explains how and why lies are told and how you can deal with them whatever job
you do. There are two main sorts of lies. The first is the achievement lie, which is told in order
to lead you down the garden path so that you give a job to a bad candidate, part with your
money or do something else that is against your interest. The second sort is the exculpatory lie,
used to hide wrongdoing and normally told after the event, such as in a disciplinary interview
or when someone is challenged for doing something wrong.

But either way, the fact is that the clues to deception are overwhelming, providing you reg-
ister them at a conscious level. Once you have done this, the initiative swings in your favour.
You must decide what your objectives are: do you want to deal with the lie or let it pass? If you
decide to expose it you must plan and rehearse your approach and then execute it in a clinical
and low-key way (see Mind Map 1). And the more you practice, the better you will become.