Lies We Tell in Leadership, Part 2: Mandatory Insincerity
Lies We Tell in Leadership, Part 2: Mandatory Insincerity
Four ways we individually build falsehoods we collectively hate, seasoned with a dash of game theory
Welcome back to the dingy depths beneath Leadership Land! Let’s pay a second visit to the dive bar known as Liar’s Lair. Leave your dignity at the door, because it’s a dirty deed to hunt for secrets within taboos and other touchy topics.
Above the entryway to Liar’s Lair, there’s an inscription that reads:
Tell me what you lie about, and I’ll tell you who you are.
You ask the bartender what the inscription means. He glares at you for a moment from his unpatched eye, and out of the depths of his grizzled beard comes this cryptic response:
If I could tell you that honestly, this place wouldn’t be called Liar’s Lair.
And he stumps away to misdirect some other truth-seeking patron.
Fortunately, you have Adventures in Leadership Land to tell you the sincerest lies on the internet. Let’s start with the superficial interpretation of the inscription:
The presence of a lie indicates that a hidden truth is nearby.
Hidden truths often contain secrets worth knowing.
We’ll revisit the deeper meaning of the inscription at the end of this post.
Obligatory White Lies
Two prefatory notes for you glorious nitpickers1 out there:
The four lies we’re about to tell are not universal falsehoods. Sometimes, we act out a role that happens to reflect our true selves. The role becomes an obligatory white lie when our true feelings deviate from cultural norms of acceptable behavior, and we feel like we can’t deviate from the script. The four lies we’ll cover are usually mandatory insincerities.
These are American lies, based on our experiences growing up and working in the United States. If you were raised in a different culture and these mandatory lies seem foreign to you, please let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear the lies you tell in your culture :)
“My five-year plan is…”
Chances are, you’ve been asked “where do you see yourself in five years?” at a job interview.
This question basically requires candidates to lie to us. Here are some honest answers, all of which are wrong answers to feed to a hiring manager:
My five-year plan is…
Learn what I can, then sell my expertise to a competitor for a higher salary.
Become your boss.
Perform the bare minimum necessary to scrape by until I retire.
Nonexistent. I’m just looking for a job to pay the bills.
Clone half my DNA and become a stay-at-home parent.
Retire when I win the lottery or when my get-rich-quick scheme pays off.
Start a moonlight side hustle and grow that gig until it replaces this one.
Die. I have a terminal illness.
Whatever the candidates’ true motivations may be, there’s only one correct way to answer the question. They must signal to the hiring manager that they’re:
Passionate about the job
Intent on staying with the organization
Ready, willing, and able to be consistently productive
Ambitious enough to grow, but not enough to usurp
A “go-getter,” but not so “go-getty” that they treat this job like a stepping-stone.
Some candidates might tell the truth with their 5-year plans. Everyone else is telling the interviewers what they want to hear. Since it’s impossible to tell who’s lying and who’s not, the “where do you see yourself in five years” question tests only one thing: how employable the candidate is.
And by “employable,” we mean “how willing they are to parrot the party line and conform to workplace norms.”
“I'm looking to broaden my horizons | I’m pursuing new opportunities.”
People can be pressed into mandatory insincerity when they first join an organization. What about when they leave?
When we ask “why are you leaving the organization?” and the departing employee talks about broadening horizons/new opportunities, they’re technically telling the truth. After all, these responses are so vague that they essentially mean “because I want to.” An employee is leaving, and tells you they’re leaving because they want to leave. Checks out, right?
The reason we call these claims “obligatory white lies” is because they’re disingenuous. Imagine someone telling you:
I love my teammates, I’m happy with my compensation package, and I believe in the organization’s mission…but I want to leave.
It’s enough to make one (or both) of your eyebrows shoot into the stratosphere.
In our experience, people who are actually pursuing a too-good-to-refuse promotional “dream job” usually tell you about it. Sometimes it takes some coaxing, and other times they’ll shout about it from the social-media mountaintops while thumping their digital chests. People tend to be much more open about their strong incentives to leave, especially if they can leverage a competitor’s offer to squeeze a sweeter compensation package out of the current employer.
But when someone keeps repeating some anodyne rendition of “I’m leaving because I want to,” they’re keeping their cards close to their chest2. And those cards usually involve some strong disincentives against staying. They could be bored. They might have a toxic boss or feel trapped in a hostile work environment. They might feel underpaid, unappreciated, and frustrated at their lack of agency. And they probably believe that providing an honest answer is futile at best, self-sabotaging at worst.
So they follow a politically-correct script to avoid “burning their bridges” on their way out. By keeping confidences, they keep their options open. We don’t fault anyone for doing this. We’d also feel inhibited from telling the full truth if we were sitting in an exit interview, facing a stranger from Human Resources we’d only met five minutes ago.
“Congratulations! I'm happy for you.”
When someone tells you about their promotion or shows off a new engagement ring, are you truly happy for them, or are you congratulating them because you feel like you have to?
Before you answer that, consider this: what’s the English word for the feeling of vicarious joy that arises when we witness someone else’s success or well-being?
…
……
………
That was a trick question. We Anglophones don’t have a word for empathetic joy. We have to plagiarize borrow the term from Sanskrit: muditā, and Google search volumes imply that most Americans have never heard of the word.
Let’s avoid jumping to the conclusion that American greed and self-centeredness prevent us from feeling muditā. We don’t need to know what a feeling is called to experience it. We also had to plagiarize borrow a German word, schadenfreude, to describe the feeling of pleasure at other people’s misfortune – pretty much the opposite of muditā. For example, we can revel in schadenfreude when wrongdoers meet the pointy end of the Sword of Justice. We get a visceral sense of satisfaction when an action movie hero serves a cold dish of extrajudicial revenge on the villain, garnished with a witty one-liner.
By its nature, muditā is something to savor privately; this makes its prevalence difficult to quantify. Not having an English term for it also makes it easy to mix with other, similar feelings. For example, some parents “swell with pride” when they watch their child win a contest or walk the stage to receive a degree or award. Are they feeling muditā: pure delight in the accomplishments of their kids? Or are they congratulating themselves for successfully infusing their crotchspawn with genetic and intellectual superiority?
Back to the original question: when someone tells you about their promotion or shows off a new engagement ring, are you truly “happy for them” (feeling muditā), or are you congratulating them because you feel like you have to? Even if you experience vicarious joy at the other person’s well-deserved promotion, is that feeling blemished by envy? Do you compare the size of your own diamond ring to the other person’s, feeding the compulsion to measure self-worth by proxy of material possessions?
“I’m doing well.”
The quintessential American white lie, uttered in response to the question “How are you?” It’s a white-lie response to a white-lie question; people often ask “how are you?” to be polite, not because they actually care. A typical American small-talk ritual goes something like this:
Person A: “How are you?” | “How are you doing?” | “How’s your day going?”
Person B: Flash back 72 hours to when their car was stolen on Friday night and their house caught on fire Saturday afternoon. The family dog ran from the burning house onto the street, and was run over by the thief driving the stolen car.
Person B: “I’m doing well. How about yourself?”
Sometimes, Person A truly cares about Person B’s welfare, and isn’t just asking to be polite. Sometimes, Person B is genuinely doing well. For your rhyming enjoyment, here’s a Liar’s Lair Punnett Square of the potential outcomes:
The upper-left quadrant (liar × liar) is self-explanatory.
The bottom-right quadrant (truth × truth) is the best-case scenario. The scripted exchange is made of 100% natural, certifiably authentic, pesticide-free, rainforest-friendly ingredients.
The top-right quadrant (truth × liar) is probably the second-best outcome where Person A extends an invitation to connect, but Person B declines.
The bottom-left quadrant (liar × truth) arises when Person B realizes that Person A doesn’t really care and reciprocates the indifference.
Not all cultures follow the script of white-lie questions and white-lie answers. Ask a Russian person how his day is going, and you’re more likely to receive an authentic answer. He might flash a radiant smile. A scowl might darken his face as he tells you exactly why his day sucks: he ran out of smetana for his pelmeni, his car broke down so he can’t get groceries, and his nephew was conscripted to fight in a war he doesn’t believe in. Russian candor can be as blunt as a cricket bat to the face, but it’s refreshingly honest compared to the American cultural norm of positivity-at-all-costs.
Does this mean that honesty is the best policy? What happens if Person B doesn’t provide a scripted response, instead unleashing a torrent of personal woe upon Person A? Here’s a second Liar’s Lair Punnett Square, where Person B does just that:
Honesty isn’t necessarily a better policy if you’re Person B.
The bottom-right quadrant (truth × truth) is still excellent because Person B exposed their vulnerability to Person A – a key component to building trust.
The bottom-left quadrant (liar × truth) still sucks, but in a different way. Person A becomes an unwilling, unpaid (and probably unqualified) therapist. Person B might feel better as long as Person A maintains the charade of “sympathetic listener.” Once that illusion vanishes, Person B will probably feel betrayed – like biting into a slice of decadent cake that farts in your mouth.
There are many ways to solve this quandary. Here’s how we do it.
When we’re Person A:
We don’t ask the question “how are you” when we’re not prepared to listen. We skip the pleasantries and get straight to business. We avoid the Liar’s Lair game-theory machinations by not playing the game at all.
By asking “how are you?” only when we’re genuinely interested in the other person’s well-being:
The worst-case scenario isn’t that bad: we extend an invitation, and Person B declines to accept. It’s their prerogative to keep their true feelings to themselves, and we respect their desire for personal space and privacy.
The best-case scenario is that we share empathic joy (muditā) and build rapport with Person B if they are well, or we commiserate with them and build trust if they’re suffering.
When we’re Person B:
When asked “how are you?” by someone we don’t know well, we have no idea if Person A is genuinely interested or not. If we’re not in the mood to probe their intentions, we respond with neutral conversation-killers (“busy.”) and get straight to work. Otherwise, we give a neutral, cryptic response (“surviving,” “could be worse,” “can’t complain,” or simply “fair”) and observe their reactions. If Person A is genuinely interested, they’re more likely to ask follow-up questions.
When Person A is merely going through the motions, we sometimes flip the script by mirroring their question back at them. We forcibly swap the roles and – this is key – deliberately take an interest in the other person, even if they weren’t interested in us (thus avoiding the “mutual indifference” and “captive therapist” traps). By seizing the initiative, we create a much better set of possible outcomes for ourselves and the other person: what could’ve been pointless small talk becomes an opportunity to build rapport/trust (at best) or a missed opportunity to connect (at worst)3.
Tell me what you lie about, and I’ll tell you who you are.
Let’s revisit the inscription above the entryway to Liar’s Lair. What’s the deeper meaning?
The crossroads between truth and lies is not a symmetric X; there’s a strong asymmetry between the two. It’s much more difficult to prove honesty (confirmation) than it is to prove dishonesty (disconfirmation).
You must check every instance of past behavior to confirm someone’s honesty.
You only need a single instance of dishonest behavior to disconfirm someone’s honesty.
Honesty is fragile, but dishonesty is robust. Liar’s Lair invites you to exploit this asymmetry by probing the falsifiability of people’s claims, and by applying the scientific method to human conduct.
Scientific research delves into the gap between theory and practice, between expectations and reality, to discover the mysteries of the universe.
Liar’s Lair delves into the negative space between people’s words and actions, between appearances and reality, to discover human secrets.
To repeat: the presence of a lie indicates that a hidden truth is nearby, and hidden truths often contain secrets worth knowing. Who would’ve guessed that Liar’s Lair, full of scoundrels and iniquity, could be so philosophical?
We use “nitpickers” as a term of endearment, but not an insult. We love sharing wonderful discussions with non-gullible, detail-oriented people. An insightful nitpicker can even widen the cracks in a weak argument and cause us to abandon old beliefs for better ones.
Our only request for you wonderful nitpickers out there is to embrace Wittgenstein’s ladder. We sometimes make reductionist arguments or flawed analogies to introduce newcomers to a topic. Once they climb the ladder of an elementary, incomplete idea, they will naturally discard the ladder behind them. Please don’t sabotage the ladder; please help us by boosting other people up that ladder so that they may discard it themselves in the pursuit of higher truth.
Usually. They could simply be inarticulate, or lack self-awareness.
Words like “forcible” and “seize” make this sound a lot more violent than it actually is. We’re emphasizing the need to take control of the conversation to keep it from devolving, not advocating for the beatings to continue until morale improves. By transforming our role from Person B → A and the other person from A → B, we’re proactively steering the conversation to a better place, rather than drifting in the conversational doldrums.
We tend to give Person A the benefit of the doubt by assuming they’re stuck in “pretend to care autopilot” mode, which can happen if they’re distracted or distressed. By stealing the role of Person A, we’re being aggressively compassionate toward them.