Good Gossip at Work

A: “Hey, did you hear that XX was criticized by her leader?”

B: “Really? Why? What happened and when? How did you know that?”.

A: “Er, I heard it from XXX who said the leader was very angry and it’s said that it’s because XX did……”.

B: “Oh, she is so daring. Didn’t she know that according to the firms rules that the things cannot be done.”

A: “Well, who knows? Maybe she …….”.

Did you usually see the similar scene like the above one in your workplace? And what do you think of it? Do you think it’s a positive phenomenon or a negative one? In actual, when we begin to work, we all know that the above scene, gossip, cannot be avoided. And for most workers, no matter really true or not, saying something that happens in their workplace or to the people around them is a good way for them to keep interaction with their colleagues and relax themselves, and to some extent, satisfy their curiosity.

However, for the leaders, they don’t want there is too much gossip in the company, especially the gossip that will have very bad effect on the development of the company. Then, how do the leaders deal with the gossip? Ban it and punish the gossipers? Or overlook the gossip as long as it doesn’t have a bad influence on the company? Maybe not too many leaders can find a very effective way to solve this problem because in most leaders’ opinion, gossip is not a good phenomenon at the workplace and they all pay more attention to the bad result of the gossip. If they can find the good effect on the gossip, there may be some unexpected good results, which will be helpful for the development of the whole company.

All in all, no matter the leaders or the workers, they all know where there are people around, there must be gossip. So finding the positive effects on gossiping at work and guiding the workers correctly will turn the bad effect into good one.

Article by Rasha Ali Mueed Alshehre, from University of Colorado Boulder, USA.

Full access: http://mrw.so/36LOs3

Image by Ki Young Lee, from Flickr-cc.