Though I have not worked at many organizations throughout my short career, I feel pretty confident in saying that most organizations deal with gossip on a weekly basis. What I mean by gossip is talking about a someone or a situation with somebody who is neither a part of the solution or a part of the problem. It’s human nature to go complain about someone/something to a third party instead of addressing the issue with the source. I work for a company that is currently going through a culture change where we are encouraged to provide feedback on performance and maintain an open line of communication with our co-workers, and I can say from this experience that it is not an easy thing to change. It’s much easier to keep your frustrations to yourself or go and vent to a co-worker versus taking the initiative to go to the person directly about the situation or provide constructive feedback on how you can work together better in the future. Talking to someone else about the issue won’t resolve it, it’s just indulgent behavior at someone else’s expense.
Finding a way to curtail gossip within your organization is extremely
important. A solid organization should be filled with leaders that encourage
the building of relationships through displaying consistent character and
making good decisions every day. This will create a bond of trust and help
those on your team succeed. Allowing gossip to take place does none of these
things. Gossip destroys trust, assails credibility, and is one of the greatest opponents
of a healthy corporate culture.I recently attended a culturetrack training workshop based on the book Change the Culture, Change the Game. The focus of the training was encouraging our organization to create a culture that embraces accountability, fosters open communication and encourages focused feedback with our peers and leaders. There is nothing wrong with having open discussion and communication within the organization. In fact, it’s a positive. Communication can be good-natured, inspiring, impassioned, productive, healthy, educational, informational, effective, etc. We discussed in the training that most organizations have a history which comes with folklore and legend. Every culture has stories to be told, company “heroes” that become legend, company “villains” that are chastened, and a variety of characters to be acknowledged and talked about throughout the years. The key is to pay attention to the intention behind the communication – is it meant to help or hurt, to advance or undermine, to build up or tear down? Gossip is not to be confused with other forms of communication – they are not one in the same.
To sum it up, usually a simple conversation with the person directly involved is all that is needed to solve the problem at hand. Though curtailing gossip can be somewhat awkward, when an organization sets cultural norms that embrace direct communication and core values of respect, it’s easy to refer to the company values and agree that gossip is unacceptable without sounding like the moral police. Next time a person comes to you to gossip about a co-worker, try asking the person, “What did he/she say when you talked to them about XYZ?” It is important to foster an environment where employees first address issues with each other directly instead of defaulting to complaining to someone else.
