Fred Harteis News Articles - It has to do with the receptionist’s private life, the secret scoop on why someone in your group got a fatter raise than everyone else’s, or the boss’s wardrobe—the height of her heels, or why he dresses up for long lunches on Thursdays. Love it or loath it, gossip is a part of the workplace. The “grapevine” provides an informal channel for receiving information that shapes our opinions of our job and co-workers. How can you stop workplace gossip when it annoys you? Can you use it to your advantage?
Get to the Good Part
We typically think of gossip as something negative, but recent research shows it as more nuanced. It indicates that informal communication through the grapevine can sometimes be useful, and that men and women gossip equally.
“Men’s use of gossip for humorous social exchange and as a way to compare themselves to others may benefit both themselves and the organizations,” Hafen said. “Women’s use of gossip as a way to learn what others might need and help them out is an important, indirect way of getting information that might benefit the organization, gossipers and gossipee.”
The Ties that Bind
We’re at work approximately 2,000 hours a year, so we’re bound to chat with co-workers. Although relationships that are too close may affect productivity, it turns out that employees who are friendly with each other cope better with office stress. Gossip often helps.
Humorous gossip can turn a happy hour into an informal meeting when employees share their institutional memory and insights while also poking fun at one another and relaying stories of mischief that may have taken place at work. These details can help a new employee learn a great deal about their co-workers and organization—some of it quite useful.
While compassion and gossiping aren’t often paired, Hafen notes that compassionate gossiping may describe stories that circulate knowledge and sympathy about co-workers’ troubles.
“The question is not whether to gossip, but how to do so skillfully and ethically, and how to avoid the label of ‘gossip’ which is so much more likely to stick to women than to men,” she notes.
“Skillful gossiping is the key to surviving, even thriving, in workplace politics—knowing what questions to ask whom, and how to pass on stories that will help yourself and others,” Hafen wrote in her research report.
A Path to Power
Gossip can also determine who’s in control in your organization. As more than 75 to 90 percent of grapevine communication is accurate, strategic gossipers position themselves as those “in the know.”
Findings from separate studies by researchers at Oklahoma State University and Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, show that gossipers can be self-assured and hold positions of power in the workplace.
“Rather than being lonely social isolates who utilize gossip as a means to elevate low status, gossipers emerged as influential people likely at the hub of their communications networks,” said Sally D. Farley, social psychologist and principal author of the Albright study according to coverage of the research by The Oklahoman’s Paula Burkes on the MetroWest Daily News.
Frequent gossipers were seen as significantly more powerful, and possessed more masculine, or dominant and aggressive traits and fewer feminine, or soft-spoken submissive traits. So, for women, gossip used strategically can make you be seen as holding power in the workplace. To an extent, that is. The Albright University research also showed that frequent female gossipers, were shown as being more emotionally distant and not well-liked.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Despite its positive power, gossip can also be destructive to an organization when it is used purposely to destroy reputations or generates animosity that damages relationships and disrupts work. Unchecked, malicious gossip can be low-brow, hurtful and a huge waste of people’s time. False workplace gossip can result in company liability. If it is chronic, it is management’s responsibility to stop it.
Handle With Care
Here are some tips that may help you manage gossip in the workplace:
1. If the news you’re receiving is disrupting your work, voice your objection quickly and firmly or change the subject to something work-related.
2. Try to determine why the person is giving you this information. Is it to help or hurt someone? To make a connection with you? To tell you something about a co-worker that they might find it hard to share themselves, for instance, absences due to a family member’s health problems. Understanding the speakers’ motives may help you learn something deeper about them or your organization.
3. If it could affect your fate but hasn’t been communicated from management through formal channels, take it in, but take it with a grain of salt. This goes for rumors on layoffs, buyouts or your job moving to another part of the country. Sometimes, things change faster than even the rumor mill can handle.
4. Carefully choose the information you share with co-workers. Some things are better left unsaid. Something you say casually may seem harmless until you hear it from a third party you never mentioned it to. The grapevine works like the childhood game of “Telephone.” The message the speaker at the end of the line hears may be quite different than what the original speaker intended. Remember the potential for information to get twisted as it’s passed along.
5. If the gossip you’re hearing is hurtful, harmful or won’t stop, seek help from management or your human resources department. If you’re a manager, know that it is your responsibility to stop it.
6. And, if you come across an interesting tidbit that might boost morale, make someone’s day, or make you seem “in the know” in a positive way, by all means… pssst…. pass it along!
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About Fred Harteis: Fred Harteis leads Harteis International. Fred Harteis has a background in agriculture and has created many successful business ventures.