What to do if your employees do lie?
Many leaders expect team members to tell them the truth — you need to make smart decisions and make sure you know what's going on. Most in return for trust do tell the truth (sometimes embellishing it a little in their favor). But sometimes you have to deal with an employee who distorts the true state of affairs too much or outright lies. This is one of the most difficult situations that a manager can face, as he cannot know exactly what is really happening, or he tells himself that he must be wrong. ⠀
Some employees fear that management or other colleagues will react negatively to the truth. They feel personally involved and fear that their words will backfire for themselves or others. ⠀
If employees are afraid that they will get into trouble, then the manager's job is to provide psychological safety and encourage them to tell the truth. This does not mean there are no consequences. But you need to clarify: they help do the job when they are honest and greatly complicate the task and create risks when they lie, so it is preferable to hear the real truth in the form in which they understand it, even if it is not what was intended. ⠀
Sometimes people take too much on themselves and don't know how to get out. They try to look more effective than they really are, or to mask their own incompetence and lack of success. Often they cannot understand why they do not achieve it and how to fix the situation. It is not enough to simply expose a lie, since the underlying incompetence will not go away and the negative results will speak for themselves. ⠀
Finally, some employees have personal goals, such as career advancement, that they feel they cannot achieve honestly through good work. Such workers are even more difficult to deal with, as their lies are often aimed at undermining the credibility of other team members. By catching them lying, you can push them to lie even more diligently, and then the responsibility to protect other team members from reputational damage will fall on the leader.