How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 101

9. Lying by omission, through the use of vagueness or by distortion of crucial details.
This is a manipulative tool that can be used for wriggling out of obligations they don't want to meet,
while still managing to remember obligations that they expect you to meet, or have met (in front of the
boss) or to influence your decisions and behavior by withholding a significant part of the information
required to make a correct decision. This technique is also used in propaganda.
There are so many ways to lie that it’s almost impossible to list them all. But manipulators are very
knowledgeable about even the most subtle and stealthy ways to lie and are artful in their use of the
various forms of lying.
One subtle approach to lying is lying by
omission or through selective presentation of
facts. When someone wants to pull the wool
over your eyes, they don’t have to make an
obviously absurd or bogus claim. Many times,
all they have to do is make sure they don’t tell
the whole truth about something. It’s as simple
as leaving out a very important detail or
something crucial to understanding the whole
picture. In his first book, "In Sheep’s Clothing",
Dr George Simon gives an example of an aging
salesman concerned about his job security who
asked his boss if there were any plans to lay him
off or fire him. His boss told him there were no
such plans. But he didn’t tell him that his sales
accounts were about to be shared with a new,
younger employee and that soon he’d be in a
position in which he might prefer early
retirement as opposed to dwindling
commissions. Sometimes, what a person doesn’t say or do can be a much more effective manipulation
tool.
Another type of subtle lying is the use of vagueness. When you confront a manipulator about an issue,
they may give you an answer, but they might also be so vague about the details that you end up
remaining largely in the dark. Sometimes, the manipulator can manipulate you effectively by doing just
the opposite — by using specificity in a response in such a way that it may provide a limited answer to
the question you’ve asked, but without providing additional detail that would better address the intent
of your question.
Lying by distortion of crucial details provides one other way to obscure the bigger picture and mislead
someone. In fact, when someone really wants to lie effectively, they’ll often recite a litany of true facts
(all to give the impression that they’re on a truth-telling spree) while simultaneously leaving