Former CIA Officer Will Teach You How to Spot a Lie l Digiday

Good morning. I recognize that what we're going to talk about this morning is a little different than what you guys normally think about as you do your daily work and things like that, but you know what Lizzie and Shireen mentioned a minute ago. that everyone is a good liar, I mean they've probably lied to everyone in the past, maybe even told a lie or two in the past. Do I have someone in the room to tell me that they never lie? No one is okay, that's good, at least I'm not. You see someone with the lights on.

Would you be surprised if I told you let's do a little experiment first? I want you to find someone in the room and I want you to aim at them. I know he's rude, but I want you to point it out. and while you point, I'm going to point at you, who are you, Aaron? I'm going to point at Aaron, so find someone in the room, point at them, and then look around to see who's looking at you and who's pointing at you, okay? so I'm going to raise your hand and with this being five and this being zero I want you to end up like everyone else doing this for a moment with this being this big zero this being five tell me how many times you think that person has lied in the last 24 hours okay, now look around the room and just look around the room and see what people are doing and saying okay, look around the room okay, put your hands down you can put your hands down let me start by saying you guys are a group. really very polite because I saw a lot of these, I saw a couple of these, some of these, I didn't have displays, although I normally do this as a trainee, I have people with both hands showing, they take off their shoes.

They could talk about how many times they think people have lied. Would you be surprised if I told you that a person lies an average of ten times a day? Well, now I know that some of you sitting there are saying, "No, no, that's not true." I don't like 10 times a day, but think about it for a moment when I'm talking about lying 10 times a day, I'm talking about things like someone asking you how you are and you have a terrible headache and you say it's okay because you don't want to get into that. , so when I talk about lies, I mean a whole range of those little white lies that we tell to avoid hurting someone's feelings or to prevent a conversation from going in the direction we want.

I don't want it to turn into these big blatant lies where I didn't do it right. Why is this important to you? Why is knowing what a lie looks like to you important to you, whether you're hiring? employees, you know if you have a screening process going on, if you have an investigation because someone has been stealing from your company and you need to get in an investigation mindset now, any of those things that you touch on as executives and retailers or people that are involved Retailing is important if you are a shopper and go out to see if you are getting the best deal on the things you want to buy.

Do you want to know if they are people who tell you the truth or not? you want to know if you have a little more room for maneuver, then the purpose of

teach

ing you about lying today and I'm not going to tell you everything because we don't have all day, but I'm going to touch on the topic. the things that are most important to you and I hope you discover that they have something to do with what you do on a day-to-day basis, okay, if I forget to say this and I usually do, I want to say it. before I go, when you finish these 45 minutes with me, you

will

be dangerous, you

will

know enough to be dangerous, so don't take this home and use it on your loved ones, it won't get you where you want. for kids though use it all the time with kids okay i have a 16 year old son if his lips move he's lying so just set him up with that so let's get into this a little bit about me.

I think I told you it's all over the place, I'm actually a

former

CIA. I still work with them a lot, but the point is that it was at the CIA that I learned what it looks like when people lie. I have a master's degree in psychology and forensic education. I spent over 20 years at the agency, I developed a detection program within the agency and we actually took this program to spy on the show live around the world and

teach

people about lying around the world, so people He says, well, Susan, yes, are you teaching everyone what it's like to lie?

Can't they use that against you? It's okay if I learn to lie if Aaron learns to lie and I'm interviewing her for a job and she's lying. I'll see if she knows how to beat. For me, the good thing is that there are so many different things about lying that you can't hide them all, so Aaron can lie to me with a couple of sentences, but sooner or later I'll realize that she's lying and then I'll try to figure out which one. It's the truth, okay, so enough about me, let's get into this. The way I want to start is I want to show you a short video and I want you to tell me if Jamie is this young woman. right here at the end of this video is he lying to me or not okay so all of you walked into the room today with an instinct that tells you whether someone is telling the truth or not we all think we know what deception looks like , as we all think.

We know what the truth is, so with that instinct that you have, it tells you whether someone is sincere or not. I want Jamie put on trial, we're ready to go. Well, my first question for you, TV, is what involvement did you have in the companies recently? Bars were started for county activities. Oh nine. Oh, these are under the direct direction of Mr. Glenn to roll back any contracts no, of course, not before the recent audit that uncovered these accounting irregularities, did you have any knowledge that mr. Glenn was back on dating contracts, no, I mean, in fact, if he had knowledge of that, he would speak up and say something: is there any reason that a computer forensic review would uncover any communication with mr.

Glyn regarding this matter, no, of course, I have no communication with him regarding this at any time, mr. Did Glenn ever reveal or discuss efforts to manipulate the company's accounting with you know, if he had, he would have told you that someone fired him, he got something, something would have happened if he knew something, Jimmy, why should we believe that it is not? I've always had it. a very good reputation with the company. I have no enemies in the company. You know when you know I've always done the best I can and I think I have a very good reputation with that and people trust me and I would never do something like that. that especially for something I've worked so hard on, what do you think should happen to the singing manager who directed this?

I should learn to back out of this contract, I should be fired and go to jail and there should be serious consequences, would you be willing to do that? certify in writing that you had nothing to do with these accounting irregularities yes of course I will sign it right now okay so this was a situation where there is an ongoing investigation at a company because the accountant had been cooking the books and when we went to do the investigation we asked him why he was cooking the books, they were preparing to sell the company, they were looking to increase the value of the company, but he said he did it specifically because he was told we asked. who told him and he didn't want to tell us, so we investigated, we interviewed a lot of people.

Jamie was one of them. Now I heard a couple of people say that she was lying on the top right and maybe she was and maybe she. It wasn't, but as the interview went on, there were times when you caught yourself saying no, I think she's telling the truth and other times when she used to take a nap, that's a lie, right? How do we know if she is telling the truth or not? What are we searching for? Let me ask you this question, even if Jamie was telling the truth, did she have any reason to be nervous?

Absolutely true, so how do we know if her nervousness or her behavior is the result of nervousness or if it is the result of not being sincere? We know that's what we want to learn if you have someone sitting in front of you for a job interview or you're talking to someone at a company, all of your employees at a company because there's been a major theft or even there's been a small theft. . Do those people have a reason to be nervous? They want to make sure you're doing it right. They want to make sure they are transmitted the way they should be.

So how do we know? the difference let's look at some things there are six keys to knowing if someone is telling the truth or not or if someone is deceiving let's look at all of this individually we have analyzed versus speculated well what do I mean by can I look at anyone in this room and say that they are lying to me just by looking at them, just by the way they sit? Well, manage your prejudices. Each of us in this room has a bias that we can learn about. what that bias is, but we may not know, it just happens one week, it's found, people recognize it, but we don't see it, we want to recognize the evasion, what it looks like when someone tries to evade telling me the truth or maybe they tell me the truth.

Tell the truth. I, a deception, we want to be aware of aggression, aggression is one of the main keys for people to deceive, we will all also see transmitting versus convincing, what do I mean by transmitting versus convincing? and finally we're going to look at some of those nonverbal cues any of you who used to watch lie to me that's what you saw with a nonverbal that's what you saw with the nonverbal so let's look at some of them okay so let's get started oops what is the wrong way when I talk about analysis versus analysis versus speculation what I want to see is how a person reacts to things so I need to find someone who is sitting the way I want you actually see the gentleman in the back who has his arms resting well if you were crossing your arms here like that okay, how do we see this behavior?

Like we've always been told that this behavior is closed off and distant and stuff like that, right, and a lot of people assume that closed behavior means they're trying to try to manipulate me, they're trying to seem sincere, okay, I'm just going to stay here. so no one knows I'm lying, well, you know, maybe he's standing that way because he's cold, maybe he's standing that way because it's comfortable for him, okay, that can be a habit. I don't want to turn around and say look closely. Posturing equals deception because if I do that I get in trouble, so a lot of us watch. global behavior is fine we look at the weather they change all the time we look at the weather climate they you know do some of the things that Jamie did when he scratched his nose all that kind of stuff we put too much weight on global behavior that we want to eliminate that's speculation .

I don't want to speculate why that gentleman in the back is sitting there with his arm crossed like that. Well, what I want to do in other words is identify the behaviors that I see here is a direct result of my question, so if I ask Aaron Aaron, did you take the missing merchandise right and she's sitting like that, is that bad? If I look at it as an overall evaluation, that's bad. I don't want to give it that's fine I want it I want to see the behaviors and hear the behaviors as a result of the question I ask and it will make sense in a minute I want to identify the stimulus the stimulus in this case whether it's an investigation, whether it's a selection interview, Whether you are talking to someone you want to employ in your organization, encouragement will be the question you ask during any interview, during any communication, people will move.

I want that movement to come when I ask the question, okay, not when they're just sitting here chatting and it never makes more sense in a minute. I want to focus on the behaviors that, as I said, we directly associate with the response. you say and do something in response to my question, okay, one of those tricky behaviors and I'm going to rely on what we call synchronization and groups and this is really the big problem with synchronization of groups, for example, when I ask question I want that person shows me deceptive behavior within the first five seconds of asking that question if they don't show me deceptive behavior from the list that I'm going to show them in a minute and within five seconds they are not lying to me they are not lying to me lying okay I need to see you are you here one of those behaviors in the first five seconds if I see the first behavior in the first five seconds I don't have to see another behavior for two, three, five or ten seconds, okay, but I have to see the first one in the first five seconds.

I'm not trying to be malicious here, but I've seen CEOs who can live for 15 minutes with a question. I'm going to show you a behavior that will allow you to see it happen, but what I want to make sure is that the first being happens in the first five seconds, that's what it looks like, you are all brilliant people. I know what five seconds is okay my other my other thing I want to pay attention to is groups and this is what makes the difference in our deceptive behaviors versus other people's deceptive categories and techniques.I want to see more of a deceptive behavior within those first five-second to the right within that response, so I have these that are verbal endings that are non-verbal.

I want to see at least two or more behaviors for it to be a misleading answer. Makes sense? So, in c1 I may not like it. I'm going to pay attention to it, but I really want two or more, so if I say my first behavior has to be within the first five seconds and I need two or more misleading indicators, does I have a misleading answer? here I do it right now, you notice I have one that happens before I actually finish the question, that question stimulus. I'm asking you a question and I'm getting nonverbal deceptive behavior.

I'm going to say that even if it's not in my first five seconds, why do you think someone would give me deceptive verbal or nonverbal behavior? Before I finish the question exactly, they are beginning to formulate their answer and guess what they think faster than I speak. Okay, they say average. a person speaks 120 to 150 words per minute the brain goes much faster than that okay some behaviors let's say they go at least 10 times faster some may say it can't be measured because we don't think in words we think in concepts. Very well, if someone gives me a verbal or non-verbal answer before I finish my question it is simply because their brain is going faster than my mouth.

Okay and then I have that outlier, that nonverbal that's outside of that first one. five seconds I'm going to count that, I'm right Aaron I'm going to tell you why I'm going to tell it exactly because I had one that happened within the first five seconds, so any behavior that continues singing let it be left out of those first five seconds before doing another question will be part of my group, so if I have one, I have seven here telling me that I have a liar who tells me that I have a person who is not being truthful and By the way, we never call them a liar, we just say that they are not being sincere Well, then I'm not.

I have someone who is not sincere with me. What if you had only two within those first five seconds? the truthful answer would be that a deceptive answer would be deceptive right now is that the lie there is a bigger lie than the person who only shows me two deceptive behaviors we have no way of knowing that true, we have no way of knowing that those two deceptive behaviors It could be my son telling me he's not on homework I'm sorry, one could be my son telling me he doesn't have homework okay, the person showing me two misleading indicators may be a very, very bad person, but it comes as far as possible. that someone is believing the lie, how important it is for me to convince you that I'm being sincere, and at the end of the day, when people do these kinds of things, what they're trying to do is manipulate us, okay, manipulate. that we believe them, okay, manipulation is a big thing, but that's what they are doing, they are doing and saying things to manipulate our thoughts about them, okay, so synchronizing the groups is the most important thing, synchronizing the groups we want manage your bias.

Okay, now it says up here that I want to ignore truthful behavior. Why do you think I want to ignore truthful behavior? Any good thought, okay, right, we are inherently good, everyone is inherently good. I mean, she's right, she's totally right, you know, look, we were. all raised to be good people, well at least 90% of us in the room were raised to be good people. I can't speak for everyone, right? But we were taught that lying was wrong, right? And your parents tell you that lying was not a good thing. Do it right, did your parents ever tell you?

Look, if you lie, you'll get into twice as much trouble as if you had told me the truth and done something wrong, so we'll know that lying is wrong at least. that's what we've been taught that lying is wrong, deceitful people can give us truthful answers, so if you ask a question to a person they feel comfortable answering, they can answer truthfully. It's okay, any discussion you have, any interview, any other time. whatever you are doing, you are your buyer, you are talking to people and you want to get to the truth, this is your lowest price and people are doing things to convince you that that is the lowest price, let's start with that, they are fine. they're going to do things they're going to say things to convince you that that's the lowest price you're having a conversation with them you're trying to determine that's the lowest price what else can I get? many questions you have you are taking notes you are thinking about follow up questions it is like taking a drink of water from a fire hose there is too much going on if I tell you forget about looking for a truthful behavior because you will see it in some questions forget about looking with a behavior truthful then that cuts your job in half right now you're getting a drink of water from a garden hose instead of a fire hose okay it makes things a lot easier but truthful people or truthful people misleading statements they give you.

Truthful answers make it seem like they are good people. They are cooperative people. They will give you everything you need to make everything go well. In reality, what they are doing is convincing you that they are being sincere because you saw one. good answer, not several good answers, okay, for a moment, let's go back to Jamie. What did Jamie do that made you think she was deceitful? What she did? Did someone say that someone said that she was lying directly? What are you doing? Alright? Can't you touch your face? Her feet were tapping. What else was she blinking too fast to answer all the questions?

Well, conversely, what did he do that they liked? Did you all think she was guilty? Well, what did he do that you liked? Good. Okay, that's okay and you were the one who yelled that she was lying. Okay, no, no, I knew she was coming from that direction, but that's okay, so it was one of these situations where you were, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, that's it. The conversation you will have with people sounds good sounds bad sounds good sounds bad how do we divide it between the two of us? I saw the hand up there yeah, yeah, I didn't decorate the room, I just did the interview, but no, you're absolutely true, and that's when I talk about people manipulating our perception, manipulating us to believe them, that's exactly what I'm about. speaking because there were some questions that she answered pretty well, there are some questions that she didn't answer.

In many situations, we ask people, for example, we do research within the organization, you know, one of our questions will be what do you do here and most people will just give you a job, just a job title, it's okay, but the people we know are already setting out to manage our perception and will give us this long job description. Okay, that goes way beyond what we're asking for, that's why they gave us so much information and the purpose of this is again to convince us that They are good people, well what happens when I listen if I'm a newbie and I hear a truthful answer?

I'm starting to think he's a good person, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, okay, I'm starting to believe they're good, I'm starting to believe. They want, they want to cooperate and when I talk about the halo effect, that's what I mean, so if I don't look for deceptive behavior and I look for truthful behavior, I will find truthful behavior and I will convince. I like the fact that you guys mentioned a couple of things that will be here later. I like the fact that they saw the feet moving. I like the fact that they saw. the nose thing that scratches your nose, but what is the truth, is it sincere or deceitful, what makes us okay, so let's talk, let's go deeper into that, okay, I want to acknowledge the evasion, Have you ever asked someone a question? and they've been talking for 10 minutes and then you realize they never answered the question you asked, okay?

I mean, it happens all the time, if you ask someone, if you ask someone, that's your best price and They check all these things. You have all these reasons why that is their best price, but they haven't told you no, okay, they haven't given you the answer you've asked for if you're interviewing someone for a job and you ask them if they've ever had any problems. with a supplier or problems at work and they give you all these great reasons why they are good employees, but they never answer whether or not they had any problems at work, but we don't.

Listen to it because we're not thinking, we're not listening to whether they answer the question or not, we're just listening to whether they answer, so we need to make sure that they're actually giving us the information that we're asking for. Another thing is what we call failing to deny. The most important thing for the honest person is to give you that answer. Deny if you didn't do something. That's the most important thing. The truth is your greatest ally. So they will want to deny something. If they haven't done it well, they will want to deny. anything that makes them look better.

If they haven't, then we have to listen to people to deny things, so we have what we call exclusionary qualifiers. now by exclusive qualifiers I mean things like saying for the most part fundamentally not really not really exclusive qualifiers beg for a follow up question okay absolutely beg for a follow up question now poor Aaron sat here right in front of me so I'm going to tease her throughout the presentation, but let's say okay, I met Aaron, let's say I met Aaron last night and I really want to make a good impression on you guys, so I'm going to see Aaron this morning and I'm going to say: Hey Aaron, look.

Do you think what I'm wearing is okay for today? Now I realize the conflict here because I'm sitting in front of a bunch of retailers. Well, some of you sell clothes, so I realize I'm putting myself in the right place. the mix here, but let's say Aaron Darren, do you see anything wrong with what I'm using? and your response is not to think about this for a moment, it's not really right, so you know if I'm in my optimistic mood, which I'm not. This happens very often but I'm in an optimistic mood and I don't really listen I think. that I'm fine, right, what I'm wearing is fine, but if I don't hear it from the optimistic point of view of Austin leaving, I hear it from a negative, I'm like, oh really, so my next question for Aaron will be what will be my next question for Aaron, okay Aaron, if there is something that you had to choose that you don't like, what would be the thing that you don't like?

I have to answer that I just want to see if you would know, but you hear what I say, if someone says no, they are really asking for a follow up, so it's my fault they have to come because if I don't ask for that follow up. I'm not going to understand it well. I'm not going to listen to it. I'm not going to hear what the real answer is. So if someone tells you, "well, fundamentally, this is the way we do things or for the most part, these are the things that we, this is the way we do things, they're eliminating something, we want to know what they're eliminating, so you have to ask that follow-up question, well, that's what you do basically, but what did you do in this situation?

Okay, so they're exclusionary qualifiers. these before. Okay, assault, attacking the questioner. Let's say you've had a robbery and you're interviewing all your employees. Ask them if they had anything to do with it, did you delete some of this information correctly and just come back and say that you guys always. they think it's me they know it's just because of the way I was born or how I dressed or whatever if you always think it's me and they ask you they attack you you know how and not even in this store you don't even know what people go through it goes in and out all the time that's big that's okay when I talk about different behaviors there are some behaviors that are much more than others aggression is one of those it's okay if you have someone that gets down your throat because you ask them a question .

I don't even care if he's your son, you know that, but you tell your son what you did last night and they ask me why you always ask me this? Do not trust me. Why you do not trust me? Okay, whatever you did, okay, you have a problem, you have a problem, okay, attacking a third party. party, okay, it's the same kind of thing, you know, locate the stores, the store doesn't have very good security, okay, it's, you know, we have, we don't have what we need here, you know, you guys never bring the right things Of course that will go away because we can't sell it well, they are attacking the third party again, it's a big problem every time you talk about aggression, any type of attack, it's big, which demonstrates an inappropriate level of refer to opposite ends of the spectrum, you ask them a question, you ask them an important question and they say, oh please, you know, oh, here we go again, that kind of thing or they just get angry, they go from 0 to 124 to really no.

Why you just ask a question that's all let me give you a little example of that and you know in aggression it can be words I mean concern can be words or it can be what you do to your face either of youexcept for the movement of the feet, but that is the only behavior at any time, sir. Gulen ever revealed or discussed efforts to manipulate the company's accounting with you know, if he had done it, he would have told someone he fired and got something. Something would have happened if he knew something. He had some counter statements to some compelling statements. feet love feet Jamie why should we believe? that you have always had a very good reputation with the company, I have no enemies in the company, you know and you know that I have always done the best I can and I think I have a very good reputation with that and people trust me and I would never do something like that, especially for something I've worked so hard on.

Well, I'm going to end with that because I think we all see the compelling statements, we see the feet and things like that. I'm not going to just go over the rest of the questions: How do we feel about her now that she's a liar? Yeah well just so you know, at the end of my rope, my role in this investigation was not just to find the person who was being deceptive, but to confront who I thought was being deceptive just so you know she displayed over 26 behaviors misleading in that brief interview, okay, to me, it was a neon sign, I knew immediately it was her, okay, so anyway, there are the keys to success, that we talked about.

Shireen is going to come here, I know we have a couple of questions, so can I answer her question? Okay, they're done, so yeah, I put pauses between my questions and the answer. The reason for this is that you make it just south of being uncomfortable. People have a tendency. want to fill quiet spaces and many times they make those quat even though they fill them with convincing statements or other things that will be misleading if I don't see anything else then I will ask the question but I always try to wait at least three or four seconds before asking my second question because if I'm strafing Adam and asking questions, they're very comfortable answering very quickly.

I have a very quick question for you. Because we're almost out of time, but how does all this work on the phone? Good question, it works on the phone, obviously you lose the verbal, I mean the non-verbal, so you don't see the person move or anything. like that, but you can hear the chair squeak when they move back and forth in the chair. What you'll pay more attention to is the verbal, obviously, listening to see if they're doing any of the things we're talking about here and be careful. Be very careful when you're doing phone interviews about mental drift, don't think about what your next question is going to be, think about what they say in their answer, okay, yeah, that's a good question, the behavior if you're doing the verbal thing. you take nervousness into account, it's okay if you're looking for the moment and the groups again, nervous behaviors, nervous behavior, but you're looking for the moment and those deceptive behaviors and once you see them, you'll start to see the nervousness that you have.

I don't care if they're nervous, that's fine, because people do things and you don't know how people manifest nervousness versus delusion, so you really have to follow the behaviors, the timing, the groups and the behaviors because everyone wants to do it right. We, we do it and I told you how short and dirty it all is. There's actually a book we wrote, Cost Per Lie, that has a lot more detail and can help you as much as you want. A little add-on, we do it too. training all over the country, if they think your company might want to do training at one of their offsite sites or something, we would come and give them a longer presentation, our normal presentations, like three and a half hours, thank you all, couple, quick clean.