We’ve been brought up to believe that lying is unacceptable, but what if successful deception is actually a prized skill in the office? Stylist investigates the art of untruth

During the first month of my first magazine job, my new manager sidled over to ask how I was doing. I was, I confided, a little overwhelmed. I couldn’t understand how she kept so on top of things, while I was a mess if I was a second over deadline. Did she have any advice for me? “Lie!” she whispered. I nearly fell off my chair. “I never hit my deadlines. And if I know what the editor is asking for can’t be done, I fib and say I’ve exhausted every avenue, when I haven’t made a single phone call.” That manager is now the editor of her own magazine, after a meteoric rise through the ranks. I learned the lesson early – liars rise to the top.

According to a growing body of research, the ability to carefully manage the truth is a sign of intelligence and, alongside ambition and dedication, is becoming a major CV plus point. Liars are not only more intelligent – they are more creative too. New research from Harvard and Duke university, recently published in the Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, has found that telling lies is intrinsically linked with an ability to think outside the box.

Fib to Succeed

Kang Lee, director of the Institute of Child Study at Toronto University, believes that as children we learn the three fundamental types of lies: lies that are kind to others; lies that are a form of self-deception; and lies that protect us from punishment. “These are the kinds of lies that we continue to tell into adult life,” he explains. In fact, you’ve probably either told, or heard, all of the above today, at your desk, or in the boardroom. There is a sliding scale – we are not suggesting you’re committing fraud in your office daily – most of us simply stretch the truth to our own ends. Researchers who asked a group of people to keep tabs of all falsehoods they told in a week found that about 10% of ‘lies’ were simply exaggeration. These are the hardest lies for others to catch too – you’re telling the truth, but in a way that leaves a false impression.

Zuzanna Rafalat, CEO of online beauty company Zuneta perfected this art early on. “We’re a retailer, selling luxury brands,” she says. “When we started, these brands assumed we had an expensive office and a big team. I didn’t feel the need to correct them. Now, we have all these things, but initially we just needed creative omission of the truth.”

The inextricable link between lying and success is partly because, as a society, we are telling more lies than ever – so if you’re not peppering your own working life with half-truths, you could be at a disadvantage. Robert Feldman, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts and author of The Liar In Your Life says, “We’re seeing a kind of cultural shift where we’re lying more. It’s easier to lie and in some ways it’s more acceptable.” The way we communicate in offices makes it easier for us to lie too. A study of 2,000 Brits found that on average people lie 28 times a month through email, social media and mobiles, compared to 17 times face-to-face. With much of our work being conducted remotely, this is increasing lying in the workplace by over a third. A University of Massachusetts study confirms this, finding that people told five times as many lies over email as people speaking face-to-face. Hands up everyone who’s used the ‘Didn’t you get my email?’ fib.

Born to Deceive

Lying is bred into us since before we can walk. There is an evolutionary basis for deception – animals play dead when threatened, until their potential attacker loses interest – but humans learn how to fib from their parents. Whether it’s watching them tell Gran that her vase has pride of place on the mantelpiece when it’s actually at the back of the wardrobe, or being encouraged to make-believe that we are fighting dragons in the garden, we are taught that lying is, in many circumstances, perfectly OK.

By the age of three, most children know how to fib, and by six most children lie several times a day. Interestingly, how good they are at it can be a strong indicator of future success, according to research by the University of Toronto. They found that at the age of two, only 20% of children lie, but almost 90% were liars at the age of four. When they tested the IQ of 20% of the two-year-olds who had worked out how to fib, they were found to be higher than average, as lying successfully is much more taxing on the brain than telling the truth.

So if lying is a sign of intelligence, and is strongly linked to success, how are we harnessing it in the office? Take the first kind of lying – to be kind to others. One in every four lies is told solely for the benefit of the other person – and women are much more likely to tell these. They are the lies that grease the wheels of social interaction, and can be hugely important at work. Our ability to stretch the truth makes us popular, according to Feldman, who has spent 25 years studying the science of deception. “Convincing lying is actually associated with good social skills,” he says. “Good liars get ahead because they know how to make people feel better and feel valued.”

Would you lie at work?