Interesting comment on bringing gossip into the mainstream. Personal
experience was:
In 1972-73 I was in a branch of the Army where gossip resided in a
"fashionable way", i.e., it was fun but could be demoralizing. I was
responsible for supervising (??) 25 highly motivated, well-educated
people. Over a period of time I tried many ways to get them to stop
gossiping and finally asked them what I should do.
Their suggestion: 1.)Talk about the gossip on a daily basis as a group;
2.) I as the supervisor was to verify if it was rooted in real management
circle discussions or not; 3.) If it was real, explain it further if
needed and clarify any inaccurate parts of it; 4.) If it was wrong, say it
was wrong and attempt to explain (as a group) why and how it could have
gotten started.
Interestingly enough, gossip still remained but no longer as a way to
demoralize the group. What they discovered was that were a couple of folks
in another group who liked to exaggerate the truth or start false rumors
to TIME how long it would take to get back to them as the originators.
As I was leaving the Army to rejoin the civilian work corp, one of the
regrets of the group was that the new supervisor did not have "gossip
control and cleansing" sessions everyday as I had done. It really did not
take much time and we learned to laugh at the unfounded gossip and clarify
the founded gossip. In either case it served the group well in
establishing trust (I did not duck any real issues contained in the
gossip) and camaradie.
Perhaps the singular learning I took out of it was that gossip in a very
open communicative group will occur. Turing it to their advantage for
learning about what was going on in the Army was the key role I could
play. To this day, I practice rumor control and cleansing even though I am
not in direct line management. It appears to help people understand what
is going and what they should focus on.
Dave Buffenbarger
dwbuff@aol.com