Are you a Gossip? | Leis Network

Environments Feed on Themselves

At work, are you adding to the rumor mill, or on balance, are you keeping your opinions of others constructive and productive? The old adage, “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all” is a helpful mantra to live by.

As a manager, gossip and “he said, she said” is one of the most disruptive, tiresome, and ultimately destructive phenomenon of a team. Effective managers and Associates emotionally rise above this behavior. Manipulative managers manage by it.

The friendly gossips by Eugene de Blaas on Wikimedia

Early in my career, our team contracted a turn around. I assumed the Controller responsibilities along with management of a group of 60 persons working in a fast changing, stressful industry characterized by daily price changes involving large dollar volumes and thousands of daily customers. At least 3 days a week hundreds of customers often waited in lines for more than an hour to settle their accounts amounting to thousands of dollars. Working conditions were highly charged and volatile, subject to unique situations that tested processes and decision making rules.

But before I fixed the waiting line issues, I needed to deal with the caustic group dynamic. For the first week, group members entered my office with complaints regarding their co-workers. It seems this behavior was common practice. Often it was supervisors doing the complaining. Issues inevitably revolved around personality conflicts, jealousy and petty annoyances. When stress is high, little irritations become magnified. Some of the frustration regarded customer service; inevitably some people spent more time than others engaging the customer. When does developing rapport turn into laziness?

I held a mandatory staff meeting after work, including pay (Certainly enlightened managers understand the personal and corporate message they are sending when they have hourly Associates stay after work on their own time, and surely if your corporate policy is so silly you as a competent manager possess the acumen to get around this issue). Here’s what I told them:

We are a team of professionals trying to give service to customers who’s personal livelihood depends on our integrity and accuracy and good will. To be effective, we must change our team atmosphere and take on a different view of our team than has been the custom. The choice is simple; we can work together as a team or we can nitpick each other and destroy our effectiveness. We are all in this together, or we are all holding each other back. We can develop an empathetic team or a team of individuals.
Remember the advice you give your children on how to behave and how to treat their classmates. Many of our frustrations with our colleagues are childish and emotionally insecure, and if we take just a moment to consider our reactions to each other, we would embarrassingly see those traits in ourselves. I strongly implore you to consider the mature view in your interactions with your fellow group members, all of whom have the common goal of providing superlative customer service. If we don’t do that, we threaten the enterprise, and our jobs. We also make our careers less than they could be, along with the relationships we find there. Often I find this larger picture can bring my thoughts and emotions into better focus. Hopefully that is true of you also.
The second reason I brought you together today is to further frame our team and my position. Some of you may be in the habit of viewing your manager as the principal of the school wielding power over their children. Some of you have approached me in that light, attempting to get your fellow classmates in trouble. I refuse to be such a manager. It is not good for the team or our morale. Neither it is good for your own sense of self-worth to have a boss with such power. We are all adults capable of exercising our discretion. Ultimately each one of us will look back on our lives and decide whether we acted out, or whether we treated others with dignity and grace, especially under pressure. None of us need a teacher or boss to act with responsibility and maturity.
On the other side of the ledger, I am the manager of the team. Let me clarify what that means to me. I am NOT your grade 5 teacher or your principal. Tattling on your fellow group members does not make you a teacher’s pet. Remember, we are all adults. If you come to me regarding non-performance or irritating behavior, and you have not talked to the person yourself about it first, then I must regard your behavior as first and foremost a difference of style, or once again, question your maturity.
If you are at an impasse with a co-worker, of course I shall be more than happy to facilitate and coach. That is my primary role. If you feel more comfortable with another team member as a facilitator, by all means approach them. We are all in this together. But asking for intervention before you first attempt to understand each other actually threatens communication, the group dynamic and morale. It also puts me into the unfortunate position of nursemaid or babysitter. If I act on your one sided version, or use it to gain leverage on the other Associate, I both undermine the trust of the team and my position in it even while I reinforce the idea that I am an active participant and cheerleader in only your version of events, rather than that of the team.
It is time to lay to rest the public school version of human interaction. There are no teacher’s pets here. Likewise there can be no class room bullies or whiners. These concepts are for children. We are adults and all of us deserve to be treated with respect. Both ends of the spectrum will result in your being viewed as non-team players. If you have honest issues that you can not resolve with each other, please come and visit and communicate. My first concern will not be resolution, but to encourage methods for you to resolve the issue yourselves. My first and foremost concern is the healthful interaction and development of the team and its effectiveness. I cannot do that from a position of director, which undermines everyone’s ability to adapt and discern and innovate. I will try to facilitate and coach, and in the last resort, I will convene the group to make decisions that affect all of us. But first and foremost, we are a team with several common goals to help our company get where it needs to go.
Our priorities must remain for the customer, and the organization’s well being. To that end, it reflects not at all well on any of us if we are part of petty squabbles, or encouraging a personal gossip mill that reduces the work place to fights for personal ambition and prejudice. Please treat your colleagues with respect.
We will now enjoin some team members to agree on what superlative and responsive and measurable customer service is……

The team atmosphere was holding everyone hostage. It destroyed trust and hampered productivity. Undoubtedly, it spilled over to the customers and reflected badly on the Associates and the organization. The firm was in economical straits but there is no way to solve the profitability issue without first repairing the emotional health of the teams.

Too often managers spend too much time asking their colleagues their opinions of others, and end up running a kind of second hand kindergarten. Associates view the situation as such. Lack of objective measurement contributes to the problem. Lack of appreciation for diversity and variances in style make it worse. Associates with little patience for such environments will either leave or revert to emotionally disengaged C players. Team members must be treated as autonomous adults and if they are not, and encouraged to act as children, they will quickly adopt that posture. After all, they have too often been encouraged to view hierarchies through that robotic prism and often rewarded for that behavior for most of their careers.

Months later, we completed a redesign of the systems architecture and software (see the References section at the link), with a 2 year payback by rejecting the VAX system contracts alone. Accuracy increased and customer wait times went from hours to zero in 95% of instances. Just as impressively, manpower requirements also declined. The new system was credited as the reason for our increased efficiency since volume had not declined. But I believe it was our team effectiveness that made the larger difference. Certainly the atmosphere and camaraderie of our team must have had a positive effect on the customer experience. I came to feel humbled by that team’s cohesiveness and determination to improve. They inspired many of their colleagues in other teams.

Gossip and Insider Knowledge

As a last illustration, gossip goes further than personal, petty animosities. Gossip regarding your own company contains an additional component besides a breach of fiduciary duty and ethics; it could well be illegal. Contrast that with political officials and the soft expectations we have of them:

One of the individuals in the caucus today talked about a major insurance company. A major insurance company — one with a name that everyone knows that’s on the verge of going bankrupt. That’s what this is all about.” The next day, share prices fell sharply across the insurance industry.
Let us stipulate we do not think it necessary for even U.S. Senators to understand the internal mechanics of credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. But if we have learned anything amid the panic over Bear, Lehman, Merrill and adventures in naked short-selling, it is that rumors can obliterate economic value, instantly.
The SEC has been issuing subpoenas for an investigation into rumor-driven market manipulation. Of course, Harry Reid stood up in broad daylight to talk about a troubled insurer “with a name that everyone knows,” so his contribution was merely obtuse. And predictably destructive. The steep drop in the share prices of insurance companies Thursday destroyed wealth for uncounted middle-class investors holding onto stock in companies still considered healthy.
The Trouble With Harry – WSJ.com. Wall Street Journal. 2008. Available at: http://wsj.com/article/SB122307428150903783.html [Accessed October 5, 2008].

In most for-profit institutions across the country, Harry Reid’s comments would be cause for private censure at the least and more probably dismissal, even for a first instance. Both the breach of ethics and besmirchment of the company’s brand name would be sufficient reason. Both reveal a foundational short circuit with rational thought and long term self-interest.

Please consider yourselves stewards of both your team and your organization. Do not take opportunities of controversy to exploit your position. Good Superiors will treat you badly for it and depending on your public penchant for it, your career in the organization will be limited or ended.

Lastly, we all make mistakes in life. We all say things we should not in the heat of battle. No one is perfect. When sanity clears, be the first to repair the damage. And if you are a good team mate, it is then when a little friendly counseling from a position of empathetic trust can go a long way. Good luck.