Toxic People: Decontaminate Difficult People at Work Without Using Weapons or Duct Tape Read Free Page A

of these is available, you have to use your questioning and observational skills.
    Use your eyes and watch them carefully. When they least expect it, shift the conversation with a question they do not anticipate and listen for their response. Have you tripped them up? Are they stammering? Do they lose eye contact? Watch their body language, and if they start to lean or step back, this can be a good indicator. Excessive eye blinking is also a sign. (But beware—they may just be nervous.) If you do detect a combination of these peculiarities, you may have caught them in a lie!
    DOES THEIR BEHAVIOR CHANGE?
    When you know someone, be alert for changes in behavior. If someone who is generally calm all of a sudden becomes fidgety, this is a red flag that sends you a message of behavioral change. Or perhaps someone who usually is very quick-paced and talks at a rapid rate suddenly appears to be moving more slowly and their speech pattern slows down.
    “One of the most important indicators of dishonesty is changes in behavior,” says Maureen O’Sullivan, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of San Francisco. “You want to pay attention to someone who is generally anxious but now looks calm, or someone who is generally calm but now looks anxious.”
    The trick is to gauge their behavior against a baseline. Is their behavior deviating from how they would normally act? If it is, that could mean something is up.
    LOOK FOR INSINCERE EMOTIONS
    Have you ever faked a smile? Of course you have! Most people can’t fake a smile convincingly. You have detected a fake smile when the timing was wrong, the smile was held too long, or it was incongruent with the situation. O’Sullivan says, “Maybe it will be a combination of an angry face with a smile; you can tell because their lips are smaller and less full than in a sincere smile.” These fake emotions are a good indicator that something has gone amiss.
    PAY ATTENTION TO GUT REACTIONS
    Your gut reaction is a result of all the experiences you have had. This includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. When you hear those voices in your head warning, “Beware!,” listen to them. Events and people in your past have done or said something memorable that became a frame of reference for you. When all these frames become a reel of film, they speak in the form of gut reaction or intuition.
    Beatrice was an excellent caregiver, and Jeff’s mom, Sophia, always looked forward to her scheduled time. Christmas Eve was traditionally a family event with neighbors dropping into Sophia’s home to savor homemade cookies and champagne. Beatrice surprised Jeff by staying past her scheduled time. Her behavior was also a shock, as she imbibed too much and became quite different. She apologized the next day, and Jeff let it pass. However, his gut told him to beware.
    Jeff started paying closer attention to Beatrice’s behavior. About two months later, he was notified that she had lied and had not taken care of Mom for an entire day—leaving Sophia alone! The service that employed Beatrice was very apologetic and asked Jeff what he wanted to do. Their recommendation was to terminate her. Although difficult to do, Jeff knew firing her was appropriate.
    While you might not know what it is you’re seeing when you think someone isn’t being honest and you might attribute it to suspicion or instinct, a scientist would be able to pinpoint it exactly, which leads us to the next tip.
    WATCH FOR MICROEXPRESSIONS
    When you have a gut feeling, Paul Ekman, PhD, a renowned expert in lie detection, sees microexpressions. “A microexpression is a very brief expression, usually about a 25th of a second, that is always a concealed emotion,” says Ekman.
    When someone is acting happy but in actuality is upset about something, the true emotion is revealed in a flash on the face.
    Whether the concealed emotion is fear, anger, happiness, or jealousy, that feeling will appear on the face and be gone in the blink