By Erika Allen, J.D., Ph.D.
Consultant to this Program
You know the harm from even run-of-the-mill office gossip: hurt feelings, destructive team alignments, distrust—not to mention the basic distraction from real work. Moreover, gossip that goes unchecked can even expose your organization to defamation, harassment, or other legal claims.
But what is the poor manager or HR associate to do? After all, isn’t “talking trash” inherent to human nature? Isn’t even the best workplace prone to a little mudslinging? Not necessarily. Read on to better understand gossip and help your employees and colleagues tone it down.
What is gossip? The first step to getting gossip under control is to understand what it is and why is happens. In almost all cases, gossip at work is fulfilling one or more of the following. Responding to gossip as a “symptom,” then, is a matter of resolving the underlying cause.
Gossip makes us feel good that we are not the worst in the room. Most gossip—in any environment—is negative, of course—tales of crazy personal lives or horrendous work mistakes. What is the appeal here? These stories underline for the gossipers that there are people doing, well, worse than they are. For all those running from failure rather than chasing success, gossip offers a buffer from the bottom. When was the last time you reminded your team that, individually and collectively, you are striving for the best? On the flip side, how do you convey to your workers than you know no one is perfect (thus causing gossiped stories of imperfection lose their luster).
Gossip makes us seem more knowledgeable. If information is power, then gossip can seem to offer a cheap way to the top. Gossip allows the gossiper to demonstrate a certain insider status that may be especially desirable in workplaces where employees feel that there are barriers to otherwise open communication. Can you earnestly tell your workers that they are free to visit with you or ask about anything they might need? How can you encourage colleagues to be direct and open with each other?
Gossip builds bonds. Gossipers share a secret and, in so doing, develop an alliance. Even mutual disgust or horror at another’s mishap is a way for one person to identify with another. While this may lack integrity, it still may be appealing for the person desperate to connect to others. Consider if your workers have productive ways to connect. What sorts of activities or work patterns could foster truly productive alliances?
Gossip is familiar.Increasingly, a celebrity lifestyle culture has overtaken traditional news reporting and debate of public issues. The viewing public has long sought to emulate the standard media communications in their interpersonal worlds. No surprise, then, that we see so much gossip—it follows the same principle and satisfies the same needs as celebrity tabloids. If you have no other standard for communications at your workplace, you may just find yourself living with the standard borrowed from such publications. Do your employees know how to write a critical email? Can they verbally express a complaint to a coworker? Do you have a model for these things?
Gossip is a time-filler. The mind is an active, industrious thing. The brain will fill slow moments and slack time with whatever it needs to stay stimulated. Got a gossipy group? Your first question ought to be whether these employees have enough work tasks to stay occupied and industrious.
Gossip is easy.Think about the gossip that spreads most easily, in your workplace or even in the celebrity media. It is always the stories with simple fact patterns and base human emotions: drugs kill a young star; a professional athlete is revealed to be a philanderer. Why these stories? Because, in part, we can understand them and even take a position about them. As life and work have become so much more complicated, it can be a relief to share a tale that one can absorb easily. So, how do you better ensure that your employees can be smart and confident—about work matters at least?
At the end of the day, gossip emerges as a style of workplace communication born of specific conditions as well as specific unmet needs. Why is it so pervasive? Because these conditions and needs are pervasive! Indeed, gossip is difficult to entirely eradicate from the workplace. Yet I hope this article encourages you to tackle gossip with a compassionate and smart understanding of where its origins.
