Deception: Is it a sign of Dishonesty or the Fear of Being Seen as Negative?

Most people do not know this about me, but I took three years of psychology as part of the formal training I received to prepare me for my 21 years of supervising people.
Once of the things I was taught was how to deal with deception. I got to use it a lot over the years and recently I have really have had to use it aggressively.
It wasn’t until after all of this training did I find that our sales department was teaching the sales people how to be deceptive, which made my training completely relevant with having to deal with them.
Somewhere and sometime ago a large number of people were taught that in the business world an appearance of being negative was the kiss of death. That could explain why I was over looked for promotions. Not that I was negative, it was just I did not like people using deception to keep from appearing negative. And I would call their hand…making me appear negative in their eyes.
How many times have you met someone and they provide you this sincere request to scheduled a meeting for the sole purpose of spending some time together getting to know how each do business. I am sure if you have been in business you have had this opportunity a number of times. But how many of them turned out that the person you met had no intentions on meeting with you in the first place? Like not returning confirmation emails on the meeting, or phone calls, or repeat and follow-up emails and phone calls…or worst confirm and do not show up for the meeting?
I am sure you have had a few. If not, you probably have not been in business very long and your turn is coming very soon.
What takes place is that these people do not want to appear negative so they deceive you by being overly positive by saying something like, ‘we have got to get together. What’s your calendar look like for next Thursday?’
Most of the time, this tactic of getting you out of their face is their way of trying to be positive by providing a deceptive ray of hope you are going to really see them next Thursday and they can get away from you and on to someone else in the room.
Now, for the record, thee are many times that the meeting does take place and business is conducted, so this does not happen every time.
Believe me when I say this, but this is trained behavior, not natural to a person’s character. And I can truthfully tell you this because I saw it being trained to a large number of people.
Now, me telling you the truth here did not appear negative did it?..
These people have a real problem with telling you the truth if the truth is negative. They are taught, either by their parents or their bosses, to never appear Negative at all costs. And some go so far to tell add to that sentence...’or you are fired!’. This teaching is justified by explaining that appearing negative shows a weakness and if you are going to be successful you cannot show any weakness, thus, they can’t appear negative.
I am providing this information to those who want to know and to those who read my next book, but I am also providing this information because this action is starting to increase. Since I was also trained to notice this behavior and I was also trained on how to trigger the true reaction from the person trying to ‘Shit-On-Me’ (sorry if that is a little rough, but that is what they are doing to you when they say something deceptive to get you out of their face).
Recently, I got one of these new corporate young guns to tell me the truth….and yes, because I called her hand she got very upset that her training did not hold up to my experience, and she came across very negative. But I was not going to do business with her after that anyway, so all was fair in love and war.
I was told very abruptly that she did not have time to spend with just anyone and her time is held exclusively for those who can advance her or who want to close a profitable deal. So to be kind she uses deception to get people to move along so she can find the people in the room she needs to do business with.
Folks, that is what is being trained in business schools, and corporate universities across America (and oversees) and it now has been unleashed in small business USA.
You want to know how to deal with this growing problem? The next time you met someone and they appear to convince you that they are truly sincere in wanting to spend quality business time with you, listen real closely and watch their eyes very closely. This is the secret. Their eyes will dart past you or look to the left which is the side of the brain that stores deception. If they quickly spout off a date without looking at a calendar or (the good ones do this) seem to be looking at their handheld PDA, but do not log anything down….stop them in their tracks right there and say. ‘You have no intentions on meeting with me do you?’ This is like the hypostasis snapping his fingers to someone who he hypnotized…this quickly and blunt reaction is how their instructors pulled them out of their roll playing lala-land, out of the ‘show time’ mood and back into the ‘Listen to me’ mood.
Do not let it happen to you and fall for this people ‘get-out-of-my’s-face’ attitude. They are trained on how to get to the people in the room they can make money off of quickly and how to get the little people out of their face. And they do this with never appearing negative…or you are fired!….that is almost a quote from their drill instructors.
It helps me to tell people about this especially when I have it happen to me…like it did this evening…So I hope I can help you to handle the next time you are being deceived..