This mantra is catching on at WD-40 Company, thanks to our Chief, I mean CEO, Garry Ridge. At our company, we strive for transparency and truth, which is the foundation for trust in any relationship. Transparency and truth are also necessary ingredients for effective business leadership, achieving objectives, helping people grow in their abilities, squeezing all the learning out of our experiences…the list goes on and on.
But even with the clear advantage of transparency and truth, people still lie sometimes. Or they try to fake their way through. Or they hide their intentions, their true feelings and even sometimes their actions. Why is that?
Lying, faking and hiding are all aspects of deceit, and stem from the same underlying motivations that we humans share. While some people choose to be deceitful, and others don’t, the motivations are identical.
At the most basic level of motivation, the trunk splits into two main branches. Humans do what they do to either gain what is perceived to be a reward, or to avoid what is perceived to be a consequence. Or both. The evaluation of what is a reward or a consequence doesn’t start out as a conscious decision; it’s emotional, based on our hierarchy of needs, as Maslow clearly identified. If I am underwater, running out of oxygen, my emotional drive is survival and I do whatever I can to gain the reward of air while avoiding the consequence of drowning. In that situation, another swimmer might offer me a pound of gold and it would not divert my attention in the least. If I’m instead sitting in a beach chair seaside, sipping a cool drink, thinking about how nice it would be someday to retire, I would more likely respond to the offer, in order to gain the more abstract reward of discretionary time and opportunity for pleasurable experiences—and avoid the consequence of possibly having to work all the way to my grave.
As we grow through childhood and into our adult life, our behaviors are shaped by our experiences. What has “worked” for us during our developmental years and beyond is reinforced and more likely to be part of our behavior patterns for the long term. A child who has been physically punished for helping themselves to a sandwich from the refrigerator will not stop being hungry. They will instead learn how to get the sandwich when no one is looking—they will hide their actions. If asked if they got into the fridge by the parent who is ready to smack them should the answer be “yes”, they will convincingly say “no”. If that child had been hit every time they came home with a poor grade in math, they would soon learn to cheat by taking others’ work home, faking their performance.
But what about adults? Don’t we grow out of our childhood fears and urges? The short answer is “no”. Not without self-awareness and a deep exploration of unconscious and subconscious sources of behavior. It is said that in order to lie convincingly, the first person you have to lie to is yourself. You have to tell yourself that it’s actually true and come to believe it. Or you have to tell yourself that it’s justified because you deserve the outcome you are trying to gain through lying. Or you have to believe that your lie is a counter action to someone else’s hurtful actions, so it’s fair. To change one’s pattern of applying deceit to gain rewards and avoid consequences, we first have to discover our own behavior patterns, to realize that we don’t know ourselves fully and to face ourselves in the mirror—without judgment.
Judging ourselves, or self-loathing, is a powerful punishment that most people will avoid at all costs. They will continue to lie to themselves and use deceit with others in order to preserve a self-image that they can accept. But if through introspection a person can come to understand how they developed their lying, faking and hiding behaviors, they have a chance to accept themselves and then choose a different behavioral future. This often takes a traumatic catalyst, and it always takes courage.
The catalyst could be experiencing loss and pain, because of being deceitful. Like narrowly avoiding arrest during a robbery. Like losing one’s job due to deceitful actions. Like losing one’s family because of alcoholism that had been denied for decades. When the behavior no longer provides the reward and/or avoidance of consequences, perhaps even yielding the reverse, there is now emotional drive to change. When you can’t lie to, fake out or hide from yourself any more, you then have to make a choice. That takes bravery, which is to act in spite of fear of the consequences that have been avoided for many years.
The momentum behind learned deceit is powerful. Even when self-awareness begins, a person might continue to lie, fake and hide, out of strong habit formation. It becomes automatic. It’s an unconscious habit, driven by subconscious drives for reward and avoidance of punishment. It’s a survival mechanism formed over a lifetime. Very hard to stop.
An organization can create a system of behavioral norms that reduces the incidence rate of lying, faking and hiding. The first element in that system is not hiring people who behave that way, of course. But to a certain degree, everyone is tempted at some point to get what they want through deceit. They say that locks keep honest people honest. Once a good person is hired, the organizational system of “locks” includes behavioral rewards for honesty in act and word. Mistakes are not punished if the person learns by the mistake, and it wasn’t intentional. At our company, we call them “learning moments”, and they are celebrated.
Another organizational system element is leadership’s demonstration of being transparent and forthright in all communications and actions. One slippery act by a leader can be the beginning of the end of a transparent organization. Public disclosure of a senior leader’s own errors to the organization gives others permission to own up to their own failings without punishment.
Finally, deceit should not be rewarded by pay raises, promotions and opportunities. If an employee smashes through their goals and creates great profitability for the organization, but they did it by subterfuge and dishonesty, any reward that followed would tell the whole organization that lying, faking and hiding was to be praised.
In summary, people lie, fake and hide because:
- It’s what they learned growing up; it has “worked” to get them what they wanted to gain, and avoid what they wanted to avoid, through to adulthood
- They are unaware of their own behavior patterns, motivations
- They believe their own lies and/or feel that they are justified
- It’s a powerful habit that is automatic and difficult to stop, even if the person wants to
- The environment in which they live tolerates, or worse, rewards lying, faking and hiding
Organizational leaders who understand these factors have an opportunity to systematically eliminate deceitful behavior by:
- Hiring people who have a developmental history that promoted honesty in word and action, as evidenced by demonstrated honesty in word and deed
- Demonstrating clearly their own honesty through transparency and disclosure
- Rewarding honesty, especially in admitting mistakes
- Not rewarding performance results that were based in some part on deceit
- Counseling and if necessary separating employees who exhibit the habits of lying, faking and hiding
As the old saying goes, one bad apple can spoil the barrel. Everybody, especially leaders, has to be the living example.