Just because you hear these phrases commonly in the workplace doesn’t mean it’s what people are really trying to say.

According to business adviser Paul LaFontaine, there are as many lies in business as there are people. Next time you hear any of these phrases, you might want to ask yourself if there’s another message somewhere between the lines:

• People are our most important asset. — “People are our most unpredictable asset. Our most important assets are really our financial assets.”
• We judge people by their performance. — “I’m judging your performance based on how much I like you.”
• It isn’t personal, it’s business. — “Everything is personal. I don’t like you.”
• The customer always comes first. — “I should come first. I’ll help out the customer if it really helps me out, but if I can ignore a problem and have it go away, you can be sure as heck I’ll do it.”
• This was a rational decision. – “I calculated the odds of this working or it crashing and burning, and then I went ahead and did what I wanted to do anyway.”

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Tags: Asset, Customer comes first, Peformance, Workplace lies