A survey designed to show how good managers are at spotting liars has actually revealed how suspicious we are.
According to the research, two-thirds of managerial respondents can tell when their staff are lying, and 90% don’t believe reasons given for being late for work. But it is one of life’s lovely little ironies that these managers are unfortunately kidding themselves.
Lack of eye contact, avoiding people and body language were the most common signals managers said they use for spotting lies. But these are crude and unreliable indicators; by these standards, every shy person would be branded a liar.
Some people stated that they can tell intuitively whether they are being told the truth or not. Research shows that those who say this are no better at deception-detecting than those who say they don’t possess these skills, and neither has a record better than chance.
The best way of spotting lies involves careful questioning, looking for irregularities and then following up. In other words, it takes time.
We can also give ourselves away by our micro-expressions, which are barely perceptible to the untrained eye – a slight twitch, a swallow, an eye flutter. But you need to be highly expert to detect these, and the majority of us don’t have the ability or knowledge.
Let’s not forget of course that we all lie at some time or another. 'You look fantastic'; 'the food was delicious'; 'great presentation' - all examples of flattery that might not be true, but helps us all to get along that little bit better.
But look at the two figures again: 90% don’t believe their staff’s reasons for being late; 65% believe they can spot lies. There is a 25% gap between the two, where the manager can’t tell if someone is lying - but doesn’t believe them anyway.
What this survey reveals unintentionally therefore is not the ability to spot liars, but managerial suspicion of their people. So if any one tells you either that they can spot liars, or that they trust their staff, they may be telling you porky-pies.
Professor Binna Kandola OBE
