You have perhaps come across people who love to be liked, we all do, but some do it at a cost, they show their bosses that they are competent and hardworking by presenting their colleagues’ work as theirs. At times, even when a project is done as a group, they may claim how their group members left the project for them, just to gain credit and sympathy from their supervisors. A deceptive or dishonest employee will call in sick and request for a day off, but only to find them very active at a party, or in an environment that wouldn’t really be favorable for the sick. Such people wouldn’t mind airing the company’s secrets to the competing corporations. Deceptive employees are troublemakers, they can initiate battles between colleagues, and they love causing chaos, which is why they will spread rumors at work amongst their co-workers, or use force to get certain colleagues to do favors for them. The workplace is where most employees spend most of their time every working day, which ought to be a learning and elevating environment with colleagues you can trust, learn from, and craft meaning friendships. Unfortunately, sometimes co-workers’ habits cause work to be toxic and uncomfortable, this can impel most workers to quit their jobs. If you thought working under a bad boss is the worst, wait until you come across a deceptive employee who is after ruining your relationship with your boss, supervisor, colleagues and clients. Deception refers to acts where a person misrepresents information to communicate a false sense of reality to others. Experts emphasise that one reason why people lie at work is that they are, by nature, quite untruthful people; some people are simply more self-centered, manipulative, uncaring, and exploitative than others. These people see others as pawns to be used for their own advantage. They have no reservations about lying to get what they want. Some of the factors for deception are unfeasible expectations, extreme competition, and harsh consequences for failure. According to Edgar Innocent, a marketing manager, most employees resort to lies for fear of how their bosses would react if they knew the truth, they don’t want to be a disappointment. He calls upon managers to allow employees to be open and honest as that’s how they would build the company, and find solutions in time as a team. For him, most employees would rather offer false calculations or information to their supervisors and bosses, as they wouldn’t want to be blamed for their mistakes, a thing that would affect the company in the long run. “This can happen in workplaces where the employers are too bitter and react harshly to mistakes,” he says. Innocent carries on that some employees become deceptive in the process of yearning to excel but in vain. They may hide their own ineffectiveness and deficiency of achievement, because they have no idea how they can be better, and may not know why they are that way. In such a scenario, he urges managers to provide such employees with training and coaching opportunities that would enable them to execute their tasks effectively and professionally, without telling lies. According to Innocent, once you realise that an employee is a continuous liar, train them into better behavior, but if they persist with their deceptive habit, let go of them, especially if their false information causes poor decision-making, upsets relationships, and employee turnover. Harvard Business Review states that effective liars tend to have higher levels of emotional intelligence, which lets them manipulate emotional signs in communication, monitor their audience’s reactions, and avoid non-verbal leakage (when our body language doesn’t match what we are saying.)
