Cheap power

All offices have a gossip network. No one planted it, and no one cares for it, yet it spreads faster than anything in the company’s official plans. It requires no budget, approval or place on the organization chart. All it requires is someone willing to speak and a listener willing to hear.

Armstrong Williams, writing in The Epoch Times, says: “Gossip is one of the oldest and most destructive forms of human power. It needs no office, no title, no evidence and no accountability.” Yes. Power without office and influence without accountability. That is what makes it so dangerous in a workplace.

We tell ourselves that gossip is harmless: “nothing more than talking,” a kind of steam-venting at the coffee machine. That is the comforting falsehood. Gossip is not a lack of power; it is the cheapest kind of power, and anyone willing to trade a colleague’s reputation for a moment of attention can have it. And the uncomfortable thing is that it doesn’t have to be true in order to work.

As Williams says, “A suspicion mentioned by one person can turn into a verdict accepted by many.” When a rumor is repeated often, it begins to sound like common knowledge. By the time the facts finally come out, if they ever do, the appointment will have gone to someone else, the client will have quietly moved on, and the good reputation built over fifteen years will bear a blemish no memo can remedy.

Having some knowledge of a colleague is powerful, and it is even more powerful to be in control of how that knowledge is presented. Someone might have been with the company for many years, have helped the younger employees and supported the team in difficult situations. Nevertheless, a single error, whether it was actual, exaggerated or entirely made up, ends up being the only thing people recall about them.

That isn’t true accountability; that is merely what Williams correctly terms moral laziness.

If someone actually causes harm within an organization, that harm must be acknowledged and dealt with. The victims should have the opportunity to be heard. Sometimes consequences are necessary. To conceal widespread wrongdoing under a false sense of politeness is a form of cowardice. There is a great difference between accountability based on verified facts and character assassination based on rumor. Williams draws a clear boundary: “Justice aims at truth and proportion; gossip aims at excitement, influence and destruction.” One creates a healthy company while the other gradually corrupts it.

One aspect leaders tend to underrate is how gossip makes people take pleasure in someone else’s embarrassment. It gives a small kind of excitement from feeling important because you know something or think you do. It allows people to feel superior without having to look at themselves. The gossiper gets a little attention but loses trust in the process.

In every office I have ever seen, when people see you criticizing someone who is not present, they start to wonder what you say about them when they are out of the room. You can’t build a loyal team on that foundation. A culture that relies on gossip will eventually gossip about everybody, including the boss.

So what does a leader do? You must starve it, starting with yourself, since culture isn’t determined by the memo on the wall. It is shaped by what the leader allows, keeps on repeating and rewards. Before repeating anything you have heard about a colleague, you should ask yourself whether it is true, whether it is necessary, whether it is fair, whether you have heard the full background and whether you would say it yourself if the person were there in front of you. Also, are you spreading the information to protect someone, or because causing destruction makes you feel powerful? These six questions would make half the group chats in corporate Philippines disappear.

Although the truth might clear a name, it seldom restores every opportunity that the lie had quietly taken. That is why restraint in such situations is not weakness but wisdom.  And silence when the facts are not yet clear is not cowardice but discipline, the kind mature leaders deliberately practice.

Three thousand years ago Solomon said, “A person who is perverse causes conflict and a gossiper divides close friends.” Although the technology has changed, the human heart has not.

The true test of a leader is not whether you have information about people. The thing is up to you in terms of what you decide to do with it. Decide to uplift people, since it is much harder than bringing them down, and that’s why the better ones choose to do so.

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