Former ComputerWorld editor-in-chief Don Tennant has co-authored a N.Y. Times bestseller, Spy the Lie, which offers a systematic approach to spotting deceptive behaviour, a useful skill to have whether interviewing job candidates or dealing with coworkers on a development team.
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I was always a big fan of Tim Roth’s series Lie to Me, in which behavioural tells made Roth’s deception detection expert an almost flawless gauge of dissembling behaviour. Unfortunately, according to this Q&A with ComputerWorld, this is a little more mundane stuff.
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It’s a very systematic approach that requires you to filter out truthful behaviour as part of the process of uncovering deceptive behaviour, among other counterintuitive things. And it won’t turn you into a human lie detector, Tennant says:
When you employ our methodology to spot deceptive behaviors in a situation where you’re, say, interviewing a job candidate, speaking with an employee about unacceptable behavior or listening to the boss talk about the organization’s financial performance at a company meeting, if you spot deceptive behavior, think of it as a heads up that the situation warrants further attention, rather than as a “Book him, Danno” moment.