Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception

Spy the Lie is an amazing book primarily about detecting deception in communication. However, it provides great universal insights into the way people behave during communication and how we can interpret such behavior to better understand how they really feel about what they are saying. The book is really comprehensive and covers the important topics in great detail, yet it still reads very well and the text is clear and easy to understand. The authors present numerous examples to illustrate the presented information and they truly do their best to transfer at least some of their remarkable experience to the reader. Of all the interesting topics in the book, the most important ones include - the basic guidelines ("the model") how to approach deception detection during interviews, - behaviors (verbal and nonverbal) that indicate that the person you're talking to may be lying, - behaviors that should generally not be relied upon as indicators of a lie, - types of questions to ask and how to formulate the questions for maximum effect. While the authors repeatedly emphasize how well the method presented in the book, if applied well, can work in practice, they don't forget to warn how cautious you need to be about interpreting any indications of deception and that you need to carefully consider the information you're getting and follow up with further questions to confirm your possible suspicions. Overall, the book is a very good guide to interpreting human communication; it gives you guidelines to follow and points out what to look for as well as what pitfalls to avoid. I'd recommend the book to anyone interested in lie detection during interviews. However, anyone who would like to learn quite a lot about how to handle potentially tricky communication situations and how to interpret certain behaviors in these situations would benefit from reading the book as well.

This is long but it I am so grateful and want to give my recent triumph with the help of this book....I currently own a medical spa. Our biggest challenge is hiring hard working, honest people, passionate about the business. Statistically we are average with the number of good hires but that is not a good thing when statistics say only 51% last more than 12 mos. Especially for lower level jobs being less. Many people just want a paycheck or want free services and could care less about helping customers and learning about aesthetics or medicine. Within the first few chapters I had already found ways of asking questions in interviews that when applied were astounding in getting the right response. A good example was when I was interviewing a woman whom I felt had amazing qualifications for my Front Desk Manager’s position. She had owned her own pet salon for over 17 years but sold it and went to work for Pet Smart. I thought that seemed a little strange so asked her why? She naturally had a response that she wanted to move to Texas, originally being from Wisconsin which was horribly cold and owning a business was just too stressful. I wanted to know more as this didn’t seem like the mentality of a successful business owner so I asked her what kind of paycheck she wrote herself each year. Her response was “my gross income last year was $80k, which I am so proud of.” 1) She did not answer the question. 2) “which I am proud of.” Is used to further convince me she was making good money.” Luckily as a business owner I know it probably takes at least $80.K just to run a business. But this was not enough for me to disqualify her and author Russell Targ says just 1 red flag is not enough, so after a few more positive type questions I asked another. ‘Tell me about a time you didn’t get along with a co-worker’. I’m paraphrasing because she gave an overly long explanation of events which in-and of itself is a red flag but within the overly verbose statement She stated “they get annoyed with me” but didn’t tell me what “they” get annoyed with. When I asked what ‘they get annoyed with’ she minimized a situation where she had the flu 4 days and the next day she went to an already committed dentist appointment to get her tooth pulled and was in too much pain so again had to call in sick. I was a bit suspicious at this point as to why her boss would be annoyed with this if she was such a great employee since both those explanations seemed reasonable. So I later in the interview snuck in an “assumptive question” about her being late to which she confessed several additional times having been late but of course had plausible excuses. I was even more suspicious at this point about her integrity as an employee so asked the question a different way, ‘tell me a time you had a challenging client’ to which she told me another very verbose story about “a client who brought in a badly matted dog and when after shaving it had lots of bruising etc. the lady gave a terrible rating.” I tried not to sound judgmental so I commiserated with her on that as a business owner how awful that must have felt. We exchanged some giggles and at this point I felt she really was ready to open up to me. I then asked her to ‘describe a bad day at work’ where she gave another story with many excuses why where she had ripped a dog’s ear by accident, the police and media was called accusing her of animal abuse, she was taken to court and her name was smeared in this small town which was hard to recover from.😳 Now I am a bit alarmed but the old me is wanting to believe her that it wasn’t her fault so Finally, I wrapped up after many other positive exchanges I asked ‘if I were to call her employer what derogatory things might they say about her’ to which she replied “they don’t like the way I do things which of course with further questioning her reply was to minimize all of their complaints.” Now, here is where I used to get tripped up. I usually have a phone interview that lasts about an hour or more before setting up face-to-face interview and that is how this one was. I as usual wanting to believe the best in everybody was mostly paying attention to the many positive and outstanding things she had to say and want to believe her excuses so immediately set up a face-to-face interview. But this time I did something differently after hanging up with her. I paid really close attention to the “cluster” of suspicious things she mentioned and by then it hit me like a ton of bricks. In every bad hire I have ever made they had answers like this woman where they minimized, evaded the questions, or had great excuses. Now while we all have great excuses from time to time the book says to pay attention to multiples. Needless to say I politely cancelled the interview. After reading this book the signs were as clear as day. I am happy to say I am now able to cut my phone interviews down to just 20-30 minutes even shorter when I see these “cluster” as the hook puts it.

Spy the Lie" by Philip Houston is a practical and fascinating guide that teaches you how to spot deception using the same proven techniques developed by the CIA. Instead of looking for unreliable body language "clues," it focuses on identifying specific verbal and non-verbal behaviors that people show when they are feeling the stress of a lie. It’s written in very clear, everyday language with plenty of real-world examples, making it a great tool for anyone who wants to communicate more effectively and know who they can really trust.

The content of this book is very good. They comprimised their practical knowledge in this book. And it actually works. It is not about being a lie detector - that does not work. And the science behind it also shows, that lie detection on a specific person can't be trusted. But this book combines detecting lies and getting the lie out through interaction. They minimize speculation and show, not to trust your bias. Their theory behind their practical knowledge also makes sense and is biological based. It is amazing, how much you can learn about lies and learn to uncover it in everydays interaction - the more important, if they lie to you, because they want to sabotage you. I also read scientific papers about this theme and try to learn from other sources. But I made the decision, most of them are actually not helpful and by far not practical. But this book is. This book actually gave me much more for the money, than I paid for (both) of their books.

Books was received in good quality

This body language book gives points to learn as well as anecdotes and analysis to help develop skills. Its not going to make you an expert but it is going to equip you with some very cool skills to go and practice.

easy to understand and worth of money

Nice book. I found the book easy to read, well written, with nice examples but I was expecting something more with the contents.