Lately it feels like exaggeration is widespread. This has reminded me of The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, which I read years ago and skimmed again this week.

It’s a fascinating book and relevant for business leaders, so I recommend reading the real thing. In the meantime, here are a few of my (highly unscientific) take-aways for teams and marketplaces:

Given the opportunity to grade our own tests, peek at an answer key, calculate our own bonus or score our own golf game, most people “fudge” their answers a bit. More interestingly, we tend to be convinced that we scored ourselves correctly, and have little or no recollection that we exaggerated. These results were repeated consistently across age, country and other demographics.

While most people fudge a bit, some conditions can cause group dishonesty to get out of control. For instance:

Leaders can increase team integrity by trying to avoid the negative conditions above. A few other things that help: