Gossip

What do you think? Is gossip healthy, unhealthy, or neutral?

Gossip is talking about someone who is not present and it is problem-making, not problem-solving. The Harvard Business Review states that malicious gossip is communication minus responsibility.

Gossip Can

Bond people.

Be neutral at least ¾ of the time.

Help us keep up with our social circle. 

Be an informal source of information if you mistrust formal channels.

It Can Also

Be an unhealthy way to express anger or frustration.

Be a passive-aggressive way of surfacing or engaging in interpersonal conflicts.

Be a form of workplace violence (it is a form of attack).

Create a toxic environment.

Be the first step in escalating incivility leading to unprofessional conduct, bullying, and harassment or violence.

What Does the Research Say About Gossip?

A 2019 study defined gossip as “talking about someone who is not present.”  This study found that people gossiped an average of 52 minutes per day. Robbins and Karan reviewed data from 467 people (269 women, 198 men) who participated in one of five studies on gossip. Participants were 18 to 58 years old.

Participants wore a portable listening device called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). The EAR sampled what people said throughout the day and only about 10 percent of the conversation was recorded and analyzed by research assistants.

Conversation about someone not present was considered gossip. The study found 4,003 instances of gossip. Gossip data was sorted into three categories: positive, negative, or neutral.

The data was further filtered into a celebrity or acquaintance category, topic, and gender of the conversation partner.

Study Findings

•    Younger people engage in more negative gossip than older adults. There is no correlation with an overall frequency of gossip when all three categories are combined.

•    About 14 percent of conversations were gossip, or less than an hour in 16 waking hours.

•    Almost three-fourths of gossip was neutral. Negative gossip was twice as prevalent as positive.

•    Gossip was primarily about an acquaintance, not a celebrity.

•    Extraverts gossip far more frequently than introverts, across all three types of gossip. 

•    Women gossip more than men, but only in neutral, information-sharing, gossip.

Tips for Managing Negative Gossip

1. Be professional and lead by example: encourage positive communication. Discuss positive qualities about a colleague or friend. Don’t gossip negatively about others. Ask others to stop talking negatively about those not present and walk away from negative gossip.
2. Treat others respectfully. Make everyone feel welcome and important, be open-minded, and treat everyone with care and respect. By supporting a healthy and positive workplace culture or social situation, people feel safe and appreciated, are less likely to separate or form exclusive social cliques and help prevent unwanted gossip.
3. Act. If negative gossip in the workplace is prevalent take the offender(s) privately aside and ask them to refrain from non-professional discussion topics. If they continue to spread negative gossip and poison the workplace give them verbal or written warnings. Actions resulting in a hostile work environment may be grounds for termination. In a personal situation, request that the gossip stop or walk away if it doesn’t.
4. Escalate the problem if gossip continues. Contact Human Resources, and terminate the employee. Ask yourself if you want to limit or stop your socializing with the gossiping group.

Takeaway

Everyone gossips and it is pervasive. The problem isn’t when gossip is neutral or positive but when it is negative and creates a toxic environment. It is difficult to enforce a no-gossip rule at work because people will find a way around it if they want to. It may be easier to stop it by not participating or walking away.

It doesn’t matter what our circumstances are, it is up to us to lead by example and stop listening to and participating in negative gossip.  Remember what your grandmother used to say to you, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

Photo by Unsplash Vitolda Klein