Gossip at Work: It’s a Good Thing!

By Lon W. Schiffbauer, BA, MBA, PhD, SPHR

Do you like to gossip? Share something you’ve heard with someone or learn a tasty tidbit about someone you haven’t seen in years? Come on, you know you do. You live it, and so do I. And you know what? That’s okay!

Gossip is a casual or unconstrained conversation about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true. We’re talking small talk, idle chitchat, playful banter, shooting the breeze—these all come under the heading of gossip. And you know what? We love gossip! Around 60 percent of time spend in conversation with other people involves some form of gossip about social relationships or personal experiences. But why? Why do we spend so much time gossiping? Well, it turns out that is serves several important social functions:

Social Grooming

Gossip creates and maintains social bonds, allowing us to form larger groups, and larger groups help us accomplish bigger and more ambitious goals.

Encourage Cooperation

Gossip helps to solidify personal relationships and encourage cooperation.

Promote Reputation

Gossip is also an important tool in establishing and communicating an individual’s reputation. This can, in turn, help foster cooperation.

Prosocial Gossip

Prosocial gossip is the sharing of information about others to protect the recipient from potential antisocial behavior or exploitation. For example, if you tell your friends to never take a class from a given professor because they’re unorganized, constantly behind, never answer emails, are condescending, and a harsh grader, you’re engaging in in prosocial gossip—trying to protect your friend from a bad class experience.

So if gossip is so valuable and popular, why does it get a bad rap? It’s because gossip trades in rumors, and rumors can become particularly problematic in the workplace.

A rumor is a circulating story of uncertain or doubtful truth.

Sounds pretty antiseptic, I know. And you know what, rumors can be pretty awesome sometimes. Have you ever heard how cool Keanu Reeves is, I mean, in real life? Yeah, me too!

Thing is, most rumors aren’t always so benevolent and kind-hearted. It’s when gossip trades in rumors that it becomes a rumor mill. It’s hard to overstate the toxicity rumors bring to the workplace.

So if we know that rumors can be so harmful, why do we spread them, let alone believe them? Interestingly, we tend to place a great deal of credence on rumors. For example, when you’re shopping for something, especially big-ticket items, do you ever read customer reviews? Let me take it one step further and ask you this: what do you trust more: customer reviews or the company’s own marketing and spec materials? If you’re like most people, customer reviews would trump official company materials. But here’s the thing: customer reviews are nothing more than rumors, and highly questionable ones at that. Who wrote the review? What were they looking for in the product? What were their expectations going into the purchase? We assume that these reviews are written by peers with similar expectations and values and our own, but is this really the case?

Consider this: very few people write reviews, only about 15 people out of a thousand. This isn’t what you would call a reliable sample size. What’s more, most reviews are highly subjective and have very little correlation to actual product quality. Instead, they tend to be capricious and circumstantial.

Remember our definition of a rumor: a circulating story of uncertain or doubtful truth. This is a fairly accurate description of most reviews we read, and yet we place so much stock in them.

Myself included.

Okay, so rumors are at best unreliable, and at worst, harmful, it then stands to reason that the goal of any leadership team would be to eradicate gossip and rumors from the organization completely, right?

Not so fast. Remember, there’s a lot of good to be found in gossip. Also, there’s another term for the rumor mill, and that’s word-of-mouth.

Word-of mouth may be how rumors spread, but it’s also how workplace values and behaviors and expressed and reinforced.

So rumors are going to happen. We need to accept that. However, that’s doesn’t mean that they need to all be bad or harmful. Our goal should be to create a workplace that allows for the benefits of gossip to thrive while at the same time mitigate for the harmful effects of ugly rumors. So, how are we going to do this? First, we need to understand what allows harmful rumors to take root and thrive.

Anxiety in The Environment

When people are anxious and uncertain of what may be around the corner, rumors go into high gear. As humans, we have a high need for predictability in our lives. When we don’t have a good bead on what’s happening and how the environment may likely affect us, security gives way to rumors and insecurity. It’s at times like these that we turn to our leaders, which bring me to trust in leadership.

Lack of Trust in Leadership

It’s not hard to see how a lack of trust in leadership can give power to rumors. Anything that the leader does or says is going to be scrutinized and debated, and not in a charitable light. Anything they say will be questioned; anything they don’t say will be interpreted as an attempt to hide the truth. This brings me to our desire to fill the vacuum.

Desire to Fill an Information Vacuum

There’s a saying that nature abhors a vacuum. The idea is that there are no vacuums in space because any denser surrounding matter would immediately fill said vacuum. I like to modify this observation and say that an organization abhors an information vacuum. Simply put, if people sense there’s something going on in the environment, and information on whatever’s happening is lacking, people will make crap up. And most of the time, the stuff we make up? Well, it’s not very positive or charitable. It’s a byproduct of our evolutionary history. Let me show you. It’s 200,000 years ago and our ancestors come across a dark cave. What’s in the cave? They have no idea. Well, when faced with a lack of information, many of them assumed the worst prepared for the worst. On the other hand, those who assumed the best prepared very little for any potential danger lurking within. As a consequence, when a big angry momma bear came charging out of the dark cave, those who were unprepared where, well, naturally selected out. Meanwhile, those who were prepared for the worst killed the bear and made coats and blankets, thereby surviving not only the bear but the winter. So, when you hear rumors full of fear and dread, know that these folks are preparing for the bear in the cave.

Desire to Establish Oneself as An Expert

We are a community species, and we are always looking for ways to measure, assess, and improve our standing in the community. Particularly, we like to be the go-to person, the person in-the-know, the person with an inside track. People cozy up to those with insider information, so we create just that—or at least the perception of insider information. Maybe you know some of the decision-makers or have been in a meeting or two, so people, come up to you and ask what you’ve heard. That gesture alone shows that they perceive you as someone with insider information, and you don’t want to jeopardize this image, so instead of saying that you know nothing, you report out what you’ve heard and the conversations being had, and BAM! You’ve established your value as an informed insider and now have influence in the organization. Sure, your currency is Monopoly money, but influence is influence.

Desire to Build Alliances in an Uncertain Environment

With so much uncertainty in the environment, it’s only natural that we should start to look for ways to build alliances in the environment as a means by which to get that inside track. Tell me what you’ve heard, I’ll tell you what I’ve heard, and let’s commit to keeping one another in the loop. In other words, let’s look out for each other and maybe we can both come out of this unscathed.

Okay, so this is what gives root to negative rumors in the workplace. Now let’s talk about what we can do about this, and in particular, how to reduce negative rumors and give space to the positive ones:

Let Go of the Illusion of Control

Don’t try to eliminate or control the message; seek instead to be a trusted member of the dialogue. As we’ve seen, not only is there no way to eliminate gossip from the workplace, but in fact, even if we could, the effects would be devastating. Think of your workforce as a quilt, and each individual member as a panel in this quilt. In many ways gossip is the thread that stitches together the quilt that is the workforce. It’s only by being a trusted contributor to the conversation can you hope to influence the discussion.

Provide a Communications Timetable

People can be patient in their search for more information, if they know when that information might be forthcoming. Provide your organization with a regular schedule by which you will be providing ongoing updates.

Transparency, Presenting All Sides

Explain decisions and behaviors that may appear inconsistent or secretive with data. There seems to be this tendency among lesser leaders to believe that the less information they provide the more employees will just have to take them at their word and be done with it. It doesn’t work like this. Transparency will help the organization see how the leadership read the environment and made their decision.

Be Open About Threats

Openly and honestly discuss worst-case possibilities. Your candor will be refreshing and in fact even soothing. Actual threats are almost never as anxiety-provoking as the unspoken fears. Being honest like this will also increase your credibility with the audience, and as we mentioned before, the more leadership is trusted, the less likely ugly rumors are to take root.

So, there you are! Take these insights, tips, and tools and become a valued and trusted contributor to the discussion.

In other words, go off and gossip!

References

Lombrozo, T. (2016, May 23). Why Do We Gossip? NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/05/23/479128912/the-origins-of-gossip.

Lon is an Associate Professor of Business Management at Salt Lake Community College and holds an MBA, a PhD, and is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). In addition to his academic background, Lon spent close to 30 years working and consulting for such companies as FedEx, Intel, eBay, and PayPal, as well as a variety of small to mid-sized companies around the world.