I like, “I’m sorry - am I misunderstanding something?” And then give your evidence they’re lying.
Leaves the door open for you to be wrong (because you could be) but puts them on blast because they know you’ve seen through their bullshit.
“Am I misunderstanding this email from last month where you said X?”
Always get everything in writing. Also helps with making them think twice before committing to a lie in the first place.
this is a great tactic. Admitting that you don’t know everything allows you to respectfully challenge a norm or assumption without looking like a know it all.
Hahaha - I don’t intend this to be offensive, because I talk & think exactly the same way - but this is the most “tell me you work in corporate without telling me you work in corporate” sentence ever lmao
I swear it must seem like we make up the lingo as we go sometimes.
Hope we can circle back on this later to leverage our brainstorming synergies. I’ll send out the minutes to stakeholders in a bit. 😛
Oh man, listen to Weird Al’s song Mission Statement. I love that it exists.
"Listen, you droopy-jawed sack of shit. Every poorly thought out, caveman grunted word that leaves your cat shit smelling mouth is filled with such bullshit that you could fertilize a farm that would feed the country of North Macedonia for a decade. Now sew up your rock-salt looking crusty lips, so no one has to hear you spew your lies likes they are a fire hose draining a tank full of your crippling insecurities. "
If it’s more formal, you don’t say anything. In almost all cases where someone would be tempted to lie, I should already know what the correct information is before I even asked a question.
In less formal situations, I would just keep asking follow-up questions. Lies are generally very shallow.
Edit: My point is that there are methods to call someone out without actually making direct accusations. Accusations are “hostile” and not generally worth derailing a meeting for something that can be dealt with later.
Depends what matters in that context. If it’s just the facts, then just quote them if you can. If you must, for whatever reason, point it out you just paraphrase their statement coupled with the the facts, like for example “You stated this thing happened, however we found the other thing to have occurred”. Don’t explicitly say that they lied, leave room for interpretation, perhaps there was a mistake.
The most corporate of corporate ways is to say that what the other party is saying doesn’t align with your experience/observations. In specific circumstances, though, you can (and should) challenge it as bluntly as possible.
Example…person A says “My local users have been running their Dell Precision 7780 laptops with 65W power bricks and no performance impact.” Person B says “that’s not possible, they’re equipped with i9 CPUs, RTX 5000 GPUs, and come with 200W power bricks.”
Example: A says “I asked you for this load balancer configuration a month ago and you never did it. I’m copying our managers so they can see that you’re the one holding up the process.” Person B says “I told you via your service ticket that it was done within a couple hours and requested feedback. Here’s a screenshot of the ticket’s chat log, which explicitly says that it’s done and you need to add the DNS entry to make it work. Here’s a timestamped screenshot of my command line showing that you haven’t done that. Here’s a screenshot of my /etc/hosts file and browser showing what it looks like when the DNS entry is correct. This whole thing could have been handled with a 3-line Teams chat, no need to escalate.”
Only thing I would say is to watch your language and use of “we/you/I”, do not say “I told you”.
It comes across as combative.
My favorite was trying to get some other tech to update BIOS and essentially telling them “run it again, except this time READ THE FUCKING PROMPTS/OUTPUT” in the politest way possible. Funny enough, their BIOS update went through that time!
The recent BIOS updates for some of these Precisions and Latitudes have really tested the patience of my team…yeah, reading literally anything on the screen is apparently a lost art.
It was the Dells (in my case, desktops) for me too 😅 BIOS updates were pushinf through WUFB for the HPs, which is great, until HP pushes a janky BIOS update.
That doesn’t align with the information we have.
Friendly:
- we have different observations
- our experience differs
- could you share your data? I’m surprised by the results
- we have different expectations, could you give us more background on how you arrived at
Distant / British
- we eagerly await your results
- that’s a brave observation
- a bold relationship with reality
Corporate war:
- help us reconcile our records with your reports
- can you reaffirm the commitment dates?
- I’ve CCed your partner/CEO to bring help you back into compliance
“I don’t think that aligns with my experience”. For some reason, people find I statements less abrasive, so they tend to be a bit slower to harden up against them. Best done with specific examples, even better with receipts, because people are more than likely going to want to know what you’re talking about about.
“Just to make sure we’re on the same page…” is something I write a lot
I don’t have the patience for this shit. I quit! 🖕🏻
“I trust you, but I still need to verify.”
“Trust but verify” are some excellent words to live by. Some boss I had years ago bestowed that wisdom upon me when I was still a wee spritely junior engineer.
It’s hard to implement in practice, though, and I still fall victim to the “Damn, I should have just checked” pretty often.
„That might not be entirely accurate”.
“Hm. Why do you say that?” “Interesting. Can you explain that to me?”
Here… Take this rope… Tie a knot. No reason
Another one I heard is “We don’t have the exactly same understanding”
