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How to spot lies in the workplace?
Text written by: Mario Junior, Managing Partner of S2 Consultoria.
The ability of human beings to detect lies has always been a subject surrounded by mystery and controversy. In countries like the United States, the issue of lie detection is much more widespread in judicial bodies, courts and even private companies. Many companies have professionals trained to conduct forensic interviews who have been trained in Interviewing and Lie Detection Techniques by the various training institutes that exist there.
In the corporate environment, there are three moments when it is essential to know how to spot lies:
1. The first is during selection, which is a sales process. In other words, the candidate usually wants to show off their best image, to prove that they're better than they really are, so they'll exaggerate a little.
2. Another situation in which it's important to identify lies is in day-to-day work, when faced with certain circumstances, such as when a person says they were absent because they were ill - but it's not true - or that they did a certain task, but they didn't do it.
3. The last important case in lie detection is when an accusation of fraud or harassment arises within the organization. In situations like these, the company should conduct an internal investigation process with a series of tools to select the suspect of fraud or harassment for an interview. Experts should then try to identify, in verbal and non-verbal language, signs that indicate lies.
However, it is essential to emphasize that there are no secure 100% signals. There is no scientific study to back this up. What does happen is that there are some signs that tend to appear in people who are not telling the truth.
In recent years, the search for technical training to carry out forensic interviews and to learn how to detect lies has been growing in Brazil due to the nationwide fight against corruption. The benevolent attitude that used to be common in Brazilian companies towards employees suspected of fraud has started to be combated in a technical way in order to resolve investigations ethically and fairly.
However, it is still common for unqualified professionals to conduct investigations and forensic interviews, which ends up being a risk for those involved in the process because of erroneous and hasty conclusions that can cause injustice to innocent employees.
Reading and understanding the verbal and non-verbal channels of communication is one of the ways of identifying when someone is lying. Among the main ways of identifying lies are observation of body, facial, verbal and paralinguistic language.
Although body language can reveal many things that we try to hide, the ideal is to analyze the context before drawing conclusions. Misinterpretations can become traps for untrained people.
The most effective way is to identify whether the person's behavior is out of your norm. Otherwise, you could make serious mistakes by analyzing a 'nose scratch' and judging that the person is lying, when in fact they just have the flu that day.
Next, check out five tips for untrained people to detect a liar by building a behavior pattern and asking in-depth questions.
Align the language of the interviewees
Before the interview, conduct an informal conversation for about five minutes on non-threatening, controversial and much less work-related topics, so that you can observe the interviewee's verbal and non-verbal behavior patterns. Preferably ask open-ended questions so that the interviewee can offer plenty of content in response.
This way, you'll be able to observe how their body manifests itself when they give a truthful answer, and deviations from the standards can signal, depending on the recurrence, that the person isn't telling the truth. If they deviate from this alignment, ask more questions to try to verify the information that generated the deviation from the standard behavior.
Confirm the information
Whenever the candidate raises a relevant question, ask them to provide a means of confirming it. This can be done through contacts, certificates, etc. If there are no documents or ways of legitimately confirming this information, be suspicious.
Deviate from the candidate's timeline
Ask the interviewee to start the story in the middle or to remind you of one of the points mentioned. If they hesitate, they may be lying. People who create a story do so in a chronological way so that it is easy to remember. If this sequence is broken, it will create a lot of confusion in the liar's head.
Attention to verbal behavior
A professional who is not properly trained may find it difficult to read the non-verbal signals of those who are applying for a job. That's why it's important to focus on what you can analyze, making sure the candidate answers three questions:
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Did he answer the question I asked objectively?
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Did the candidate answer my question with a disconnected subject?
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If my question was objective, direct and assertive, why did my interviewee ask to repeat it or say he didn't understand?
These and other questions can provide fundamental information to alert recruiters.
Watch out for precipitation
Be wary of what you consider to be lies or not. Never make a decision based on an isolated speech or a movement that you find suspicious. Try to use more in-depth questions to try to compose your analysis in more detail, as well as using forms of confirmation for the data provided by the candidate.
#S2NAMÍDIA: Article published in #REVISTAHSM
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