How to (Mostly) End Gossip in Your Organization
The ruinous impact of gossip in your company
I’m going to estimate that people telling each other unflattering stories about their coworkers and clients, then fretting about those stories wastes at least 10% of the available work week for the average company. 4-5 hours of complete trash weekly per head. That’s more than just lost productivity, too. It’s lost productivity that undermines whatever things are great about your company.
By indulging in the basest form of human interaction, designed to make someone look bad, people are almost certainly violating values they and your company hold dear. If, when you’re telling a story and you would be worried if the person the story is about overheard the story, you’re doing it.
Want to know what’s worse? I’ll bet you’re doing it too.
Where gossip comes from
In his book, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari posits a theory that humans have evolved such that a desire to gossip is deeply ingrained in our thinking patterns. Gossip tickles that naughty part of our brain that revels in the juicy thing we’re sharing or hearing. This is the very part of our brains that makes reality TV possible. The human desire to gossip is natural, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on preventing it within your organization.
Gossip thrives in the following business environments:
Struggling companies – someone must catch the blame for perceived failures, and people are eager to deflect.
Opaque leadership – in the absence of clear, transparent communication from the top, people will make up juicy, often destructive stories to fill in the blanks.
Gossip from the top – when leaders themselves indulge in gossip with their people about their clients and other team members, the standard is set. Gossip is cool here...the bosses do it!
Fighting gossip head-on is futile
I’ve been around some company efforts to make anti-gossip rules. One company tried a “if you talk behind someone’s back, the person you talk to is obliged to rat you out to the person you talked about in 24-hours...” While well-intentioned, this rule, and others like it have failed miserably.
Making gossip unnecessary
To minimize the desire for gossip, first set and maintain high performance standards from everyone. Hit your goals and, when you don’t, lead the narrative with a transparent treatment of the truth about why. Err on the side of sharing more information rather than less with the team but be sure they know how to understand the information you share. Mistakes should be publicly owned, not hidden, and cultures of accountability should rule. Who needs to gossip when everyone knows what’s really happening? Gossip in this environment is seen as ignorance and conspiracy-thinking rather than filling important information gaps.
Not sure what information gaps you have in your company? Invite us in for an organizational discovery project to find out what your people are likely gossiping about.
Making gossip uncool
Lastly, while you can’t mandate “no gossip” with effectiveness across the company, you can make it a condition of leadership in your company that leaders will (1) be careful not to gossip about others, (2) recognize when they do and apologize as appropriate for setting a poor example, and (3) make gossipers aware that it is not appreciated or cool. By gaining leadership support in these three areas, companies create important negative psychological repercussions for engaging in gossip so that, while it’s not “outlawed,” there aren’t positive emotional rewards for engaging in gossip.
The Spark Notes:
Gossip wastes significant time and productivity in companies, with employees spending at least 4-5 hours per week on unflattering stories about coworkers or clients—undermining the company’s strengths in the process.
Indulging in gossip violates both personal and organizational values, thriving in environments with struggling performance, opaque leadership, or leaders who model gossiping behavior themselves.
Combatting gossip effectively involves setting high performance standards, embracing transparency, addressing mistakes openly, and fostering a culture of accountability where gossip is seen as ignorance, not a necessity.
Leadership must set the tone by avoiding gossip, addressing their own lapses, and discouraging gossip in others, creating a culture where gossiping loses its appeal and social rewards.
