How To Know When They Are Lying

Entrepreneur Magazine recently published an article by Ken Osborn, founder and executive director of The CIA Institute. The article reveals seven subtle cues that often mean a person is lying.

Looking for these cues can help you detect a dishonest employee, contractor, business partner or client. Here they are:

1) The Nose Touch - Humans have erectile tissues in our noses that engorge with blood when we lie. This causes a tingling or itching sensation that requires a nose touch to satisfy. The absence of a nose touch doesn't guarantee truth, but the presence of a nose touch often means deception.

2) Speech Disturbances - When people lie, they force their brains to pretend that the lie is true. This confuses the brain, and taxes their cognitive ability to think efficiently. So when people lie, they pause longer and speak slower than normal and often experience speech disturbances that serve as gap fillers, such as "um," "er" and "uh."

3) Incongruent Behavior - When someone's words don't agree with their body language, their communication is incongruent. Watch to see if the words being spoken match up with the person's facial expressions and hand gestures.

4) The Neck Rub - People rub their necks because of the stress they experience when they feel that an obstacle may be insurmountable. If you're interviewing a potential employee who is constantly rubbing his neck, he probably doesn't feel confident about the position.

5) The Eye Rub - An eye rub is an indicator of disbelief. Let's say you are training a new employee. The employee begins to rub her eyes even while verbally affirming your statements. This probably means that he/she doesn't believe you or disagrees with your instruction. Many subordinates feel uneasy about disagreeing with the boss, but their bodies don't hesitate.

6) Upward Inflections - People upwardly inflect their words when asking a question. You may have noticed that some salespeople will upwardly inflect certain statements of fact. This is a red flag that should alert you to potential deception. The salesman might say, "Your competitors have seen their profit margins increase by 30 percent by using our product." If you notice that he upwardly inflected the words, "30 percent," you should disregard this statistic and be suspicious of him altogether.

7) Stabbed Hollows - In the study of graphology (or handwriting analysis) hollow letters represent honesty. Anything that disrupts a hollow letter could indicate deception. Let's pretend you enter your office to find a note from your top salesman on your desk. His note indicates that he had to go out of town to visit his sick mother and won't be able to go to the annual trade show. You notice that every "o" in his note has some sort of mark interjected into the hollow space of each letter. You would be right to be suspicious of the facts in the note.