An anonymous person has been quoted as saying, “Samson slew 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. You and I may have destroyed as many relationships with the same weapon.”
Words are powerful and workplace gossip has become almost like air: it's everywhere. So pervasive that management literature not only recognizes gossip as a force in the workplace, but also has studied how it starts, how to use it, how to make it work for you and how to stop it.
Writers in the field of organizational development, human resources and management seem to recognize that gossip "is a universal human behavior that we all engage in, and which serves a functional purpose for employees and organizations.”(Summerhurst & Talbott)
I don’t know that I agree that is has a functional purpose, but the literature seems to posit gossip as an outgrowth of our supposed evolutionary journey allowing “us to exchange information about other people, so short-circuiting the laborious process of finding out how they behave.” (Dunbar, 1996)
How do you stop it? Research has discovered that if the gossip is immediately challenged or redirected, the gossip will stop; however, if a second person joins, it grows. Business etiquette and Scripture agree - stop it before it starts.
Remember what my Dad told me years ago: Small people talk about other people. Ordinary people talk about things. Wise people talk about ideas.
Are you wise and trustworthy?
Proverbs 11:13 (NLT) A gossip goes around revealing secrets, but those who are trustworthy can keep a confidence.
Copyright ©2009 by P. Griffith Lindell
Thursday, June 11, 2009
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