Santosh Rathod

Introduction to Detecting Lies:

The following techniques to telling if someone is lying are often used by police, and

security experts. This knowledge is also useful for managers, employers, and for anyone to use in everyday situations where telling the truth from a lie can help prevent you from being a victim of fraud/scams and other deceptions.

Warning: Sometimes Ignorance is bliss; after gaining this knowledge, you may be hurt when it is obvious that someone is lying to you.

Signs of Deception:

Body Language of Lies:

• Physical expression will be limited and stiff, with few arm and hand movements. Hand, arm and

leg movement are toward their own body the liar takes up less space.

• A person who is lying to you will avoid making eye contact.

• Hands touching their face, throat &

mouth. Touching or scratching the nose or behind their ear. Not likely to touch his chest/heart with an open hand.

Emotional Gestures & Contradiction

• Timing and duration of emotional gestures and emotions are off a normal pace. The display of emotion is delayed, stays longer it would naturally, then stops suddenly.

• Timing is off between emotions gestures/expression s and words. Example: Someone says “I

love it!” when receiving a gift, and then smile after making that statement, rather then at the same time the statement is made.

• Gestures/expression s don’t match the verbal statement, such as frowning when saying “I love you.”

• Expressions are limited to mouth movements when someone is faking emotions (like happy, surprised, sad, awe, )instead of the whole face. For example; when someone smiles naturally their whole face is involved: jaw/cheek movement, eyes and forehead push down, etc.

Interactions and Reactions

• A guilty person gets defensive. An innocent person will often go on the offensive.

• A liar is uncomfortable facing his questioner/accuser and may turn his head or body away.

• A liar might unconsciously place objects (book, coffee cup, etc.) between themselves and you.

Verbal Context and Content

• A liar will use your words to make answer a question. When asked, “Did you eat the last cookie?” The liar answers, “No, I did not eat the last cookie.”

•A statement with a contraction is more likely to be truthful: ” I didn’t do it” instead of “I did not do it”

• Liars sometimes avoid “lying” by not making direct statements. They imply answers instead of denying something directly.

• The guilty person may speak more than natural, adding unnecessary details to convince you…. they are not comfortable with silence or pauses in the conversation.

• A liar may leave out pronouns and speak in a monotonous tone. When a truthful statement is made the pronoun is emphasized as much or more than the rest of the words in a statement.

• Words may be garbled and spoken softly, and syntax and grammar may be off. In other

words, his sentences will likely be muddled rather than emphasized

Other signs of a lie:

• If you believe someone is lying, then change subject of a conversation quickly, a liar follows along willingly and becomes more relaxed. The guilty wants the subject changed; an innocent person may be confused by the sudden change in topics and will want to back to the previous subject.

• Using humor or sarcasm to avoid a subject.

Final Notes:

Obviously, just because someone exhibits one or more of these signs does not make them a liar. The above behaviors should be compared to a persons base (normal) behavior whenever possible

A core competence is the result of a specific unique set of skills or production techniques that deliver value to the customer. Such competences give an organization access to a wide variety of markets. Hamel and Prahalad (1990) refer to a number of organizations and their products to support their concept including NEC, Honda and Canon.

Core competences are interesting from a traditional marketing point of view since it could be argued that they take a product or production orientation rather than a market orientation. If you focus on production techniques and skills then aren’t you looking at your business from an internal point of view? The answer is yes. However, the core competences give a business a competitive advantage in a number of markets, markets where customers perceive a benefit from the product. So if needs are being met better than the competition, there is an argument that core competences are indeed market-oriented. There are at least three tests of a core competence.

Three tests of core competence.

• Provides potential access to a wide variety of markets.
• Should make a significant contribution to the perceived customer benefits of the end product.
• Should be difficult for competitors to imitate.

For example, Microsoft has expertise in many IT-based innovations and technologies. Customers perceive many benefits in relation to Microsoft’s products. For a variety of reasons including unique skills, it is difficult for competitors to imitate Microsoft’s core competences.

When trying to identify a core competence, it is often easy to mistake them for scarce or unique resources i.e. resources rather than skills or production technologies. Also often skills and production technologies do not amount to a core competence or resource because they do not comply with one or more of the three tests. They are the thresholdsthat the organization must achieve to remain competitive. Threshold competences andscarce resources may not provide access to a variety of markets, may not be so significant to customers and may be less difficult to imitate.

In summary there are core competences and scarce resources, and threshold competences and threshold resources.

In order to be competitive an organization needs material resources such as premises, a factory or offices - depending on the nature of business of course. Material resources tend to be the most straightforward to achieve. Then an organization needs to achieve the right balance between Human Resources, training and recruitment. This state is more difficult to achieve. Intangible resources, including core competences are the most difficult and challenging to achieve. This is depicted in the diagram above. In fact they drive competitive advantage.

References.

Prahalad, C.K. and Hamel, G (1990) The Core Competence of the Corporation, Harvard Business Review, May/June.

Stalk, G, Evans, P and Shulman, L, Competing on Capabilities, Harvard Business Review, March/April.