I heard a noise in the bedroom across the hallway after I had gone to bed. My best guess on the time was near midnight, but it could have been later. In the room were supposed to be two sleeping grandchildren, one aged 5 on the top bunk and the other aged 3 on the bottom. I wondered who was up, so I went to see. When I entered the room, my eyes instantly noticed two bright brown eyes of the 3-year-old staring back at me in shock that I was there. He wasn’t in his bed; he was halfway down the ladder from the top bunk and knew he wasn’t supposed to be up there. He did what anyone caught doing something they weren’t supposed to do, he used misdirection as a defense, immediately saying, “Grandpa, I needed the light and the house (a small plastic house) to sleep with.” I fell for it and never talked about him not being in the top bunk in the middle of the night. Instead, I tucked him into bed, extracting a promise of sleeping, so that I could go back to sleep.
As a leader, you need to become a discerning listener, one who listens to what was said, and what wasn’t said. A corollary skill is the ability and willingness to ask more questions to gain clarity or to re-direct the conversation and get it back to the original intent.
Over the years, I found very few people who would directly lie to me, but often encountered people who tried to misdirect our conversation.
Misdirection is used to put you on the defensive and make you question yourself. Once you recognize it, you need to use a different question to gain back control of the conversation. Let me share a few common forms of misdirection you’ll encounter.
Attacking – Yes, one form of misdirection is to attack you, instead of responding. They might say something like, “You never appreciate me…”, or “You don’t care about me.” Many leaders will run from that. Don’t do it. A simple correction to re-direct the conversation can be something like, “That’s not correct, I really do appreciate you, but that wasn’t the issue. I asked you to …”
Not answering – Sometimes the person will give you an answer, but it wasn’t the answer to your question. I remember one time as part of an investigation I had to ask each person if they were using their cell phone to take pictures of other staff. One person responded with, “I don’t currently have any pictures.” My response to her was, “You didn’t answer my question, I asked if you had been using your cell phone to …” If you’re curious, she admitted that she had taken pictures but deleted them.
Either/or – Another way to misdirect you is to imply there are only two solutions, even though there could be many more. A nursing supervisor was speaking with a Registered Nurse about working overtime, again, and when she started asking more questions, the nurse stiffened and responded, “Either you let me work overtime, or quality of patient care will suffer.” The supervisor was savvy enough to not fall for this and instead re-directed the conversation by saying, “This isn’t a quality-of-care issue, it’s about time management, and I want to better understand what’s happening so that I can help you.”
When those you work with know that you won’t easily be misdirected, they’ll begin to give you better answers up front.
And if you catch a 3-year-old in the middle of the night where he shouldn’t be, just give him a hug, tell him you love him and put him back to bed.
Only a simpleton believes everything he’s told! A prudent man understands the need for proof. Proverbs 14:15 (TLB)
