Have you ever worked with a liar? I mean someone who just could not resist the urge to exaggerate, fabricate, fib, and prevaricate throughout the day. I am not talking about someone who has a diagnosable condition that compels them to lie. Nor am I concerned with someone whose grasp of reality is so tenuous that they cannot distinguish it from fiction. I mean someone who chooses to lie so much that it becomes almost an instinct, a mindless habit, like nail biting or Facebook.
Like you, I have worked with such people, and, probably also like you, have worked far, far too often for such people. For instance, I once had a boss who was such an inveterate liar that she would often forget she lied to you and then would later tell you the truth. Other times it was the other way around. She would also tell different people different versions of her lies. Her staff was aware of her hyper-mendacity, and some of us (the ones we could trust) would occasionally compare her latest lies in an effort to come to some consensus on what might be real.
Perhaps, and I hope this is not true, you have had a similar experience.
In an effort to distill limoncello from this rotted fruit, I chose to make a close study of Ms. Mendax (let’s call her) by trying to trace some pattern or find some purpose in her lies. After all, I reflected, she could be okay sometimes. Once I would even have called her a friend. And while I always knew she had an untrustworthiness buried deep, she also could be kind and even empathetic. So what caused Ms. Mendax to come to lie with such abandon, and why did the sheer quantity and audacity of her lies seem to increase over time? I mean, some of her whoppers were real knee slappers.
I could go into all the gory details of Ms. Mendax’s life, professional and otherwise, including her messy relationships, but I will strip my observations down to the core to keep things simple. Bear in mind, though, that these things are never quiet so clear cut.
Here are a number of my observations and conclusions.
Ms. Mendax obviously had been a liar long before I ever met her, and quite an accomplished one at that, but her lying saw an exponential increase at a particular crossroads in her life that I got to witness. It started small, innocently almost, with untruths about minor personal matters and activities, such as where she went for lunch and who with. Why the subterfuge? I will leave it to trained psychologists and licensed plumbers to determine why her mental sewage pipe sprung this leak. I only know that it did.
Conclusion 1. Lies don’t spontaneously generate, but they often start minutely, and the more self-serving they are, the more self-replicating.
For Ms. Mendax, her subsequent lies seemed to come even easier to her. Each lie lubricated the bowel through which the next lie would pass, and soon she could not help herself. Yes, when it came to lying, Ms. Mendax was incontinent. Smart people have actually studied this phenomenon. In the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers found evidence that due to a biological impulse the more you lie, the more and more you lie. So don’t blame the liar. It’s biology! I would add that not only does each lie make it easier to tell the next lie, but the need to cover up those earlier lies may make generating subsequent lies a necessity. Ms. Mendax often told lies to conceal her previous lies and then lied to cover up those lies, and it was off to the races from there.
Conclusion 2. Small, self-serving lies, infrequently told, soon grow larger and more frequent due to neurological propensities and practical necessity.
In addition to the neurological lubrication that her lies received and the need for subsequent lies to cover the initial lies, Ms. Mendax seemed to enjoy lying, particularly when she saw the consequences of her lies were fairly minimal. Ironically, her lies were a success not because her staff (the ones we could trust) believed her but because we could do nothing about them as she was the boss. Her lying put her on a wild power trip.
Conclusion 3. When people get away with lying, their success will embolden them to lie more.
Ms. Mendax came to revel in her ability to use information to manipulate her people. In the middle of a private meeting, she would say, “just between you, me, and the walls,” before serving up a large slab of baloney, a flagrant attempt to draw people into a corrupt intimacy that would have been laughable if some of her staff (the ones we could not trust) did not fall for it. Soon enough, she devolved into a full-time gaslighter.
Conclusion 4. Lies are ultimately a form of abusive manipulation and a means of control. If you capitulate to the lies, you become part of the corruption, but you resist at your peril.
Ms. Mendax’s lies served nobody, not even her most of the time. They accomplished nothing. They had no lasting purpose and only existed for the sake of existing, like a Kardashian. They became like a giant snowball rolling wildly down a mountain slope, gaining mass and momentum with no objective other than certain destruction at the bottom of the abyss.
Conclusion 5. Unfettered lying, like all corruption, is ultimately self-destructive and nihilistic.
Let’s call this accretion of lies the Snowball Effect. I have seen it play out with many others aside from Ms. Mendax, most notably her staff (the ones we could not trust). Even the smallest of self-serving lies, if unchecked, will tend to generate and accumulate more lies and rapidly grow out of control.
In the end, although Ms. Mendax ruled by fear and manipulation, she retired as a laughingstock, hated by her peers and her employees, and, as both a liar and a yelled, she has a snowball’s chance in hell of staying out of hell.
I relate this experience and my conclusions not to garner sympathy — let’s face it, it is hardly unique — but to serve as a caution. It’s the little lies, the convenient deceptions and concealments, that get you started on the runaway trip down that slope.
Share your thoughts on this topic or participate in a discussion by leaving a comment below or by contacting me directly by email:
You must register with Substack to leave a comment, which stinks but is painless and free.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Post this essay on social media or send it by email to someone you want to inspire/annoy.
Subscribe to receive my weekly newsletter and special editions directly to your mailbox.
You can improve your ability to achieve your organization’s mission.
Visit my website and reach out to me to learn how.
The Snowball Effect