Friday, April 11, 2014

The Verifier Liar

I spend considerable energy convincing company Human Resource interviewers just how dangerous to their company a liar is.

Some are "Grandiose Liars", those who must exaggerate their own self worth and status to others.  We'll target the language of the "Grandiose Liar" in another article.

Today, it is the "Verifier Liar" whom we shall profile.

One who practices lying (deception) is one who will bring your ____________ harm.  Fill in the blank with (relationship, business, company, marriage, etc) most anything.  Others might recognize that the liar has a "personality disorder" in which a diagnosis has been given.  Regardless, the liar will trouble others around her, even if it is just to relieve her own boredom, or gain attention.

The liar will put his or her needs above those of others, including the interests of business, or personal well being.  The liar, if she enjoys gossip, for example, will trouble morale in companies (or any social group) that has interpersonal actions. She may pit one supervisor against another, triangulating fellow employees into disputes.

The liar will steal.

This means that, depending upon your business, the liar may steal product (shrinkage), money, or simply steal time.

Today, here is one type of liar to spot, and being to observe the actions and behaviors. She is the "Verifier Liar."

The "Verifier Liar" reveals herself in her language, as well as her behavior.  The "Verifier Liar" will use sentences such as these:

"I wasn't late this morning, I got in before the store opened up."

"I drove the truck straight to the dock.  I left at 1PM and got there by 2PM.  It always takes an hour."

"I didn't say that to her.  Susie was there, too, so just ask her."

"I brought Bobbie with me in case you wanted to check with him.  I finished everything you asked me to."

In other words, each assertion is made with a presentation of how to verify the truth.

Note to Reader:

Do actually verify.

you will find out something important to you or your company.

The above statements may sound like junior high school, but they are quotes from businesses in which liars are all but admitting, "I am a liar!" by preparing for a challenge, without even being challenged.

You will learn tow things:

1.  Even though the assertions can be verified, the Verifier Liar may not be expecting you to follow through with the verification.

2.  By showing a need for verification, the subject is revealing that not only is she a liar, but she is a habitual liar, and when she is telling the truth, she especially wants to be believed.

"I finished my homework.  You can even ask my mother!"  The student that says this to his teacher may have, truly, finished his homework, but he is showing that he is a liar by his lack of confidence.  The truthful person follows a norm where an economy of words indicates confidence in the assertion (or denial), therefore, no need to emphasize.  He has a quiet confidence that if the matter is looked into further, affirmation will be found.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Those with BPD will go through stages where lying is almost incessant.  Chaos and confusion are often associated with BPD and there is sometimes little remorse.

How Should a Business Deal With Liars?

The best that can be done is in the Interview process where specific questions are designed to tempt the liar to be deceptive and weed out the trouble-maker before he comes on board.

Applications with questions about personality and life are important, with the application giving lots of room for answers.  I do what I can to encourage applicants to fill out as much information as they can.  The more words, the more analysis.

Human Resources that are responsible for internal investigations should use Analytical Interviewing in which the written answers on the application are analyzed, and the interview is conducted armed with this knowledge.

Remember:  people give out far more information than they realize.

We use this information to not only sift out liars, but to hire the most qualified candidate.

Last piece of advice:

When someone says "If I were you, I wound't trust me either..." or something similar.

My advice is based upon statistics.

If someone tells you not to trust them, believe them.

This is my advice. You should take it.


27 comments:

trustmeigetit said...

This is my mother. She is a liar for sport.

She told me another lie the other day that she keeps trying to make me believe about things that happened between our relatives in 1941. Before she was even born of course.



She says to me “This is what happened…. AND I have the newspaper articles to prove it”

I know she doesn’t because I have the newspaper article about the story. I have the obituary.

She does this about everything so this makes so much sense to me.

Usually it’s more that “I’ll send you that document right now and prove it”… Sometimes I will get an email stating its attached (it usually isn't attached) or she will attach something totally irrelevant.



If I call her on the “lack of attachment” she tells me I am lying yet never attempts to resend or just show me in person.

Or when attaches something irrelevant, if I respond with that she never responds again.

I have gotten so good at calling her out that I know I must infuriate her. To no end.

Sad part is I so enjoy doing it even knowing I will never get her to own the truth.

elf said...

My cousin had the awful habit of following alot of his sentence with the words 'believe me?'. As we grew older, from teens to young adults, I came to realize that every time he said 'believe me' he was either either exaggerating or lying lol

Anonymous said...

does this also count when somebody says

"believe me when I say..."

Anonymous said...

What do you think of a person who always thinks someone else is lying? I found myself trying to "verify" everything I say to that person. I usually don't do it anymore, because I don't care if they believe me or not, but it's annoying and tiring too. I wonder why this person always thinks everyone is lying, and why they need explanation and "verification" of everything said.

Anonymous said...

Peter every example you used you said"she/her"lol do women "lie"more than men? ;)

Anonymous said...

P.s I "lied"a bit ;)

Anonymous said...

He used "his or her" in one example, and he used "him" in the homework example. I think he was trying to change it up, without having to constantly say "him or her", she or he" etc. Or maybe he was thinking of specific situations from memory, which caused him to use gender specific examples.

Anonymous said...

Here's a good example: my mother. Sociopath and liar. Recently she became angry my father had spoken to me on the phone about some extremely disturbing abuse she did to me when I was a child. (They are still together). Over the next couple weeks she came into my house on several occassions which I don't typically lock during the day (regardless she knows the garage code) tampered with things inside, on one occassion locked all the doors placing my son in jeopardy of being locked out (she had found out my garage was not opening from the outside because it was broken so I was leaving the front door unlocked for my son after school so he could get in, she stole my mail including bills out of my mailbox (months later she placed bills from several months in a row that I had ended up paying online all together on one day back into my mailbox, she, poured comet on my soap in my shower, etc. On 2 occassions I called her and confronted her (usually I attempt to ignore) and as soon as I would accuse her, she would immediately state that she had a time stamped ticket from a parking garage proving she could not have come to my house during the hours I was away from my house on the two days I confronted her. Her work is 15 miles away from any parking garage and does not go anywhere requiring parking in a parking garage but miraculously would have visited one each time after she came in my house.
Yeah, I would definitely say don't believe someone who "verifies" their lies!

Statement Analysis Blog said...

Anonymous said...
Peter every example you used you said"she/her"lol do women "lie"more than men? ;)
April 11, 2014 at 8:40 PM

I was wondering if anyone would ask if this was due to recent experience.

:)

Statement Analysis Blog said...

If one is in the presence of a person who always think you are lying, you will find yourself trying to justify your language with verification.

I should have noted this.

It comes out when cops pull someone over. Cops often think everyone is lying and the nerves fly and the subject thinks he must prove everything.

I'm not sure that it is terribly rewarding in a career to be hiding behind a bush and pulling people over for going 10 mph over the limit, endangering no one.

ugh.

Peter

Nic said...

Anonymous @ 11:41PM, lock your house and give your son a key. Additionally, set up a camera, inconspicuously, in your house to tape when you're not there. You can buy inexpensive ones at Source, etc. You can even buy security cameras that you can check via on-line when you want to.

Set up all your acc'ts on-line and have your statements sent to you electronically. Not paying your bills affects your credit rating and what seems like a minor inconvenience right now, will come back to bite you in the behind when it's the most important to you.

Sabotaging your home (comet on soap) when you're not there is really disturbing behavior. Leaving your son vulnerable is a whole other level.

You know what your mom is capable of doing. You need to make it so she can't. Period. Not leave things alone to see what she will do next.

"Mom" or not, you need to establish boundaries and state consequences. If she fights back, (verifiable lying) just say that she has nothing to worry about, then, and that you'll look forward to "seeing"/catching the culprit on video; and that once the evidence is in hand, turing it over to the police for their action. And if it is her, she is persona non grata.

Wow.

Nic said...

I have known two people who would frequently accused me of lying. One I figured it was because I knew so many of her secrets that if I chose to spill the beans/share what I knew about her, she believed she had ruined my credibility and no one would believe me. The other one, I couldn't figure out. She just kept injecting herself into conversations to ask for "proof" or even "reply all" to inject herself into something I would share with "all". (Or challenge me that I included someone on the mail list that I shouldn't have because of whatever reason she deemed (fill in the blank) (can you say bcc?)) She would be especially gleeful if she could "verify" via snopes.com that what I was sharing was a "lie".

Neither are in my life today. In fact, all the girls I went to school with/befriended around my early 20's are not in my life because they are liars.

Nic said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nic said...

Something that I've learned about "innocuous" liars is 1) there is no such thing as "innocuous"/white lie lying, and 2) you can't confide in them about anything personal/grievances you harbor about common acquaintances because they will go running to that person to tell them what you told "innocuous" liar about them. Or they will gossip about you/what you confided in them to people you would never share with.

Shamelessly I used this revelation to my advantage by sending out a 'save the date' announcement for a milestone event, via bcc, which inadvertently slammed the door shut on two problematic "friendships" without having to confront them. I wanted to see if innocuous/nosy liar would canvass who got the invite/didn't because she couldn't "see" who it went out to. I haven't heard a peep from the trouble makers since. I was giving innocuous liar the benefit of the doubt, but sadly she proved my hypothesis correct.

Note to self: There isn't much you can count on in life, but you can count on a liar.

Sus said...

"...specifically laid out rules of statement analysis"

"...use specific SA principles"

Two examples of verifying. Yep, I said it.

Unknown said...

;-)

Amanda said...

Sus,

Wouldn't your examples be more like telling someone to follow the rules of something?
Like if a math teacher said "please use specific mathematical formulas to solve these problems".
I'm not sure this would be verifying the math problems.
In medical school, a student might be told to use specifically laid out guidelines for diagnosis of a patient's symptoms rather than guessing.
I'm not sure this would be "verification" in the sense Peter intended rather adhering to principles or guidelines.

Sus said...

Making a guess, then saying it is based on specifically laid out rules of statement analysis or stating an opinion, then saying you used SA principals is verifying a lie.

And "adhering to principles and guidelines" is another.

Amanda said...

Oh OK I get what you mean. I think I remember someone saying that on the ither topic. Some of what they were saying I wasn't sure where it was coming from but I remember one thing they pointed out they had written a statement analysis rule with an example also.

Amanda said...

Just noticing the last part of what you wrote. Confused, are you saying that "adhering to guidelines and principles" is a lie or verifying a lie? I used it as an example of what I thought is intended in a situation like for example a math teacher telling her students to follow rules, use specific equations. She is telling them to follow guidelines or principles. There is nothing that could be interpreted as a lie within that.

Anonymous said...

Nic,

I really appreciate your advice. In the past week I've changed the locks and given my son a key. I need to change code on the garage. I no longer pay any bills by paper. It is funny you mentioned installing a camera because one time I told her I had left my iphone camera running (probably cant do that but just wanted to see if it would get her to admit that episode of tampering) and said I had her on camera doing the tampering in the house. She turned white as a ghost and then quickly said "well, it must have been a different day (that she was in the house tampering?!). The problem is is that I get so worried about one thing and anticipating what she'll do next that I get frozen (instead of taking action to set boundaries, change locks etc). She is highly intelligent in a cold, calculating way and can always come up with something in her diabolical imagination to get around boundaries, so I mentally freeze unsure of what to do, but have recently begun setting boundaries by changing locks etc (fearing she somehow had a copy of the key). My father has told me he will not tell her to stop because it would not do any good because her behaviors show she is too crazy to change. I am just scratching the surface of her behaviors and I do very much appreciate your advice.

Anonymous said...

OT I have a question. Why do some people swear on people's lives or graves? I know a few people who do that, including my mother. :[ Every time I hear it I get creeped out. I don't understand why people go there. I guess it's supposed to prove someone's seriousness but I get a different vibe.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, I appreciate your response. :)

Tania Cadogan said...

swearing on people's lives, or graves, or a deity is meant to imply they are being truthful, in fact it does the opposite and weakens their statement.

Lemon said...

"I'm not sure that it is terribly rewarding in a career to be hiding behind a bush and pulling people over for going 10 mph over the limit, endangering no one." - PH
__________

Peter, did you get a speeding ticket recently? :)

Nic said...

Anonymous @ 8:39, I can't imagine how you feel/deal with the conflicting emotion (mom-trust/intruder-fear). It's probably what she counts on. My impression is that she is jealous of you/your life. If you were single and footloose and fancy free I'd suggest you move away. :0) I hope it all works out for you.

Nic said...

Anonymous @ 8:39, I can't imagine how you feel/deal with the conflicting emotion (mom-trust/intruder-fear). It's probably what she counts on. My impression is that she is jealous of you/your life. If you were single and footloose and fancy free I'd suggest you move away. :0) I hope it all works out for you.