Rumor and Gossip: Deadly Sins

Some may think gossip is a healthy way of dealing with uncertainty, but gossip and rumors are deadly for teams and organizations. Here is what you can do to stop the idle chatter at the water cooler. 


If you or others have an issue at work, one ground rule is: don't gossip and don't spread rumors. In my book Communicate or Die, I call rumors and gossip one of four capital sins of speaking that can paralyze organizations. Rumor and gossip are usually about the personal affairs of others. A French phrase aptly sums up this way of speaking: "Les absents ont toujours tort"("Those who are gone are always wrong"). The French got it exactly right: rumor and gossip are never communicated directly to the people whom they badmouth. They are at the opposite end of the spectrum from responsibility.

A few careless — or worse, maliciously and carefully placed — words can destroy what took years to build. Rumors and gossip have the power to damage the best organizations. They are possibly perhaps the most deadly ways of speaking.

Even if they did no other damage, rumor and gossip are costly at the least. If 1,000 people work for a company, each earns an average of $30 an hour and each spends an hour a day gossiping at the water cooler, over lunch or at the copier, the organization will lose $30,000 a day, or around $10 million a year. Not to mention opportunity costs — opportunities missed while people chatter away.

Rumor and gossip rise with uncertainty, so expect more of them now. The more people sense that their job is on the line, the less straight they will be to your face. Fear will block them from communicating honestly. At one of our clients, people had never been trained to say what they thought to each other's faces. In public, they said only the words they thought their superiors wanted to hear. Two people, the chairman and the CEO, took it to the extreme. Each of them called me overseas — each separately — to complain about the other, when their offices were about a three-minute walk from each other.

As I use the terms, rumor and gossip include complaining about an issue to people who have no power to do something about it. Most of us have that nasty habit. We complain to anyone and everyone except the person who can actually do something to resolve our complaint. If you are an account executive, complaining to other account executives about the VP of sales will only aggravate your issue, because all you do is gather evidence for your viewpoint instead of speaking to the VP directly. The person who complains only to co-workers who cannot act fuels the perception that "nothing matters," "we have no power to change things," "they never listen," or "life here sucks."

When enough people in an organization add enough of this fuel, the environment begins to mirror their complaints. Of course, the people doing the complaining have no idea that they had everything to do with shaping the environment they so vigorously oppose. They don't see that they literally speak that environment into being.

Minimizing rumors and gossip is essential for the health and productivity of your enterprise. How can you do that? I recommend three ground rules.

• First: No gossip. 
• Second: Complain only to the person who can do something about it. That person is usually either the one who gave rise to the issue, or the manager in charge. For instance, if you have a complaint about how people are promoted at your company, the person to talk to might be the company president, the department chief, or the head of human resources. If that person cannot handle the issue satisfactorily, then you both need to determine a third person who can resolve the issue. 
• Third: Offer not a problem but a solution. Don't allow people to delegate problems upward in the organization. Hold them accountable for solving problems.

All the best,