018 Dealing with Gossip in the Workplace
Today, a simple trick. Stop the gossip queens and kings of your organization. Are you a leader trying to get more from your business and life? Me too. So join me as I document conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois. So I hate Gaza. It's not fun and undermines the organization, it's not something you want, going on with your teams does a lot of bad things, it reduces your productivity, it's going to hurt your morale, it's gonna open the door for harassment, and tons of other issues. So this is all also known as being not worth it. Now, people gossip for a lot of reasons. For them. It's entertaining, right, they might be trying to bond the share information, there's a bunch of different things that they could be trying to do with this. But I think ultimately, they're trying to increase their status, they have information or they know something they think would be valuable, or at least intriguing for other people. And because they are the ones who share that information, they feel like they get to increase their status and become this person who knows everything. Right, as if they're some like spy master from Game of Thrones or something. But okay, here's the fun fact is that this is the wrong way to go about increasing your status, don't do it. So there are three things that you can do when someone is gossiping. Number one, you can say nothing. Number two, you can join them, you can encourage them in what they're doing. And then number three, you can fix the problem. So let's go into storytime. I had a captain, while I was I was also a captain in the Army Reserve. And this captain was brand new to the unit. So he showed up, he had only been there for maybe a month, and he decided it would be a great idea to start gossiping. And he chose me as one of the people he wanted to gossip to. So I was sitting in my office, I'm at my computer doing something he walks in and shuts my door. Now that's never a good sign. When you walk into someone else's office and shut the door. It's because shits about to go down. And so he pulls up chair sits down, and then he starts just ripping on our battalion commander, and bringing up all these different problems, things that I mean, if for only having been there for a month, it's like, I don't know why you're so opinionated. Maybe you should wait and get to see how things are actually actually going right get a better understanding of the organization first. But he just kept going. And I let him I sat there and I just let them keep talking. I didn't say a word until he was done. And then finally I said, All right, who's going to tell him? And the look on his face was priceless. It was almost worth going through the entire conversation. And he's like, What do you mean? Like, well, if you found all of these problems, and you've only you've only been here for a month, so if you're seeing all these problems, we should probably go tell the colonel so that we can get them fixed. He said, Well, no, we can't do that. Like, well, then why are you telling me these things? He's like, Well, no, I just thought that you would like to know. And so I stood up, I walked over to my door, I opened it. I said, if you don't want to fix a problem, you're wasting my time. Don't come in my office with this shit again. And so he left the office. And he actually didn't stay long in that unit. Because once he realized the way that he was seeking power trying to raise his status wasn't going to. Right, there was no he lost that incentive to want to stay. And so you can do this in your own organization. Right? This is super easy. It is hard as a leader because a lot of times you don't know that the gossip is actually going on. It's your your team members who you need to lean on and hope that they're not going to just fall into the gossip. Hey, a lot of this comes down to the people that you're you're hiring right the characters that you're bringing in. Sometimes it's just hard to know who's doing what and so you need to lean on this, this concept of transparency and build the trust so that your team knows if they bring you a problem or something that they see that you are going to do everything you can to make that problem go away. So now when someone new comes in, or someone just decides to gossip, everyone else on the team is already aware that the easiest thing to do is go tell you because you're not going to just flip out right? You're not going to start firing people. You're going to hear what they're saying. You're going to assess what they're saying. And then you're going to try fixing the problem. If you can get your team understanding that that's how you're going to lead. It is going to be way easier for you to remove all gossip from your organization. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. And for more fun Meishan on how to build effective and efficient teams through your leadership. Is it leading for effect.com As always deserve it
