How to respond to workplace gossip without fueling conflict

You meet a person’s reputation before you meet them

Before you start talking to a new manager, you hear, "Be careful, he doesn't like when someone disagrees with him". At a meeting, the manager stays silent for a long time about your proposal. You can read that as reluctance, even though he's simply checking the numbers carefully. The information he's heard before has provided a ready explanation. This example moment shows the power of informal circulation of opinion: a secondhand account can shape an interpretation of an event before we can build our own experience. Reputation then shapes the conditions under which we are only beginning to get to know someone. In workplace research, gossip is defined more broadly than the usual accusation of fabrication. It involves informal, judgmental conversations about someone who is not present. It may concern either a mistake or a coworker’s exceptional honesty of a co-worker. Truth and tone are distinct dimensions: praise is exaggerated, and critical information can be accurate and necessary. Therefore, banning every conversation about absent people does not solve the whole problem. Organizations still need to share knowledge about collaboration and respond to troubling events. What is also important is whether the absent person would recognize their own behaviour in the story. The statement, “For the third time, we did not receive an answer before the deadline,” can be verified. The statement, “He thinks everyone else is beneath him,” already includes an interpretation of the subject and an assessment of the character. In a free conversation, both levels are easily mixed, and the next recipient may remember the forceful label above all else. When they later work with the person being described, they may begin looking for evidence that confirms what they heard. It's a possible outcome, not proof that any conversation about absenteeism is hurtful, but it's worth noting the moment when describing a particular event stops being an understanding of the problem and begins to define the whole person.

One conversation can serve several purposes

Imagine that a new employee asks why no one raises problems during a meeting. A colleague tells her about a previous sharp reaction from the boss. Such an exchange can serve to warn and convey an unwritten norm. It can also build a bond: the person involved becomes one of us. At the same time, the story can reinforce the belief that speaking up is always pointless. Even a real event, repeated without context or information about subsequent changes, can eventually begin to serve a different function than the beginning. A review by Sun, Schilpzand and Liu organizes the sources, functions and consequences of gossip, taking into account its social nature. Not only is the person concerned important, but also the sender and the receiver. Their relationship and the reason for the conversation change the meaning of the same sentence. The information about a problem given to someone responsible for its resolution has a different context than the identical story told for the next group's entertainment. This perspective allows us to analyze behavior without simply dividing people into gossipers and gossipers. Sun et al., 2023

Who pays for a negative story

The meta-analysis of Wax and colleagues included 52 independent studies. Negative gossip was associated with less favorable individual, relational, and organizational outcomes than positive gossip. Particularly unfavorable dependencies on attitudes, emotions, and relationships with co-workers were observed on the part of the targets of gossip. Wax et al., 2022. In everyday practice, it is easy to understand the potential reputational cost for the person sharing the gossip as well. The listener may think, “If this person talks about others this way, they may talk about me in the same way.” A short-lived sense of community does not have to mean lasting trust. The person being the subject of the conversation has limited opportunities to explain his perspective because he often does not know what the story is about. Informal information can be particularly powerful when official channels leave a gap. Lack of explanation of a staff decision or a change in design favors speculation because people try to understand the implications for their work. An organization may not always be able to disclose all the circumstances, but it can clearly say what it knows, what cannot be communicated, and when further information becomes available. Pretending employees don't notice the change rarely helps. Similarly, banning gossip isn't enough if the team doesn't have another way to get the information they need. A good answer is to organize communication and separate the common from the private, which does not require confirming every story or publicly explaining the situation of an individual employee.

How to listen without becoming another link in the chain

Three questions are helpful: what exactly happened, how do we know about it, and what are we going to do with that information? “Mark is sabotaging the project” is an interpretation. “Mark did not deliver the file by the deadline” describes an event that can be verified. If the information is about possible harm, you shouldn't end the conversation with an accusation of gossiping. Someone may simply be asking for help or see if one's experience is being taken seriously. Then the goal is to find the right and as safe as possible channel of action, taking into account the preferences of the person affected.

What a leader can do

When you don't know why someone has been promoted or changed teams, there's room for speculation. Explaining the rules doesn't require confidential data. It helps you show what the criteria were and what the organization can't comment on. The leader should also be careful about their own informal evaluations of employees. A manager’s “offhand remark” carries more weight than a coworker’s comment because it may be interpreted as a signal about who can be disregarded and who deserves special favor. It's also helpful to think about your own role after hearing a story. Do I need to pass it on to protect someone from a specific risk, or do I just want to have an interesting conversation? Do I know the source, and can I make the limits of my certainty clear? If the issue involves a serious violation, the appropriate step may be to report the facts to the right person rather than spread an allegation throughout the department. An ordinary collaboration problem, by contrast, often calls for a conversation with the person concerned. The right route depends on the type of issue and the participants’ safety. Responsible conduct does not mean being silent about everything, but giving the necessary information to people who can do something about it, as reliably as possible.

Informal conversations can't be completely eliminated, but you can change the way information is handled. Good questions restore context, separate facts from judgments, and lead to action where it is needed. A person’s reputation should not depend on a story repeated with increasing certainty merely because it has been told many times.

Using Empatyzer to respond to gossip

Empatyzer can help prepare a response to a conversation that begins to rely on informal judgments about a coworker. In Talk to Em about yourself, the user can arrange what they actually heard, what they inferred from it and what they want their response to achieve. This allows them to prepare a question about a specific example or a calm refusal to adopt a personal label. Talk to Em about a specific person can in turn support the preparation of a direct discussion of difficulties, if such a contact is appropriate in a given situation. It's important to describe your own observations and not present what you hear as an established fact. It doesn't verify the truth of the rumor or establish the reputation of the employee. It doesn't replace the explanation of a serious report. It helps prepare a way of speaking that limits unnecessary accusations and draws attention to behaviors, needs and possible actions. Responsibility for deciding who receives the information and for what purpose remains with the user.