Why Leaders Cannot Be Indifferent to the Truth: Part 3—Deceiving with Fact-based Lies

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Feb. 20, 2017 - PRLog -- We've been talking about the deceptive nature of alternative facts (i.e. lies) and their effects on the workplace; however, there are many practices beyond lies that can have equally destructive results. One of the most common is paltering.

While a lie entails either the active use of false statements (lying by commission) or holding back relevant information (lying by omission), paltering involves the use of truthful statements to influence someone's beliefs by giving a false or distorted impression. For example, let's say you are asked about a prior lawsuit where your company was charged with housing discrimination. You can lie, you can change the topic, or you can palter like Trump in the September 26^th presidential debate: "We, along with many, many, many other companies, throughout the country—it was a federal lawsuit—were sued. We settled the suit with zero—no admission of guilt. It was very easy to do. But they sued many people."

Trump's response is technically a truthful statement in that he did settle the suit and he did not admit guilt; however, it presents a misleading sense of innocence. In reality, Trump signed a consent decree, which included "pages of stipulations intended to ensure the desegregation of Trump properties." And while many companies have been sued for housing discrimination, this lawsuit was 1) "squarely aimed" at Trump and 2) his company was the only one sued at that particular time.

   Trump has shown that stating the aggregate truth is not one of his more predominant traits, though let's not get too sanctimonious about our own ability to be honest...

Read more at: www.leadersayswhat.com/2017/02/paltering