Monday, February 4, 2013

How to Deal with Office Gossip – Combatting Gossip in the Workplace



Gossip can be a very wicked thing. Gossip has gotten people fired, destroyed reputations, and ruined careers. Yet it is an easy thing to not only encourage, but fall into doing yourself, while in the workplace. Are there ways where you can combat gossip so that it isn’t such a negative force around you will do your job day in and day out? Of course there are!
1.  Don’t Focus on the Negative
It may sound silly, but gossip starts because people are relating to a shared negative feeling they have about someone. Whether it is the new employee that started yesterday or the supervisor, a team can easily be united because of shared negative feelings. This negativity can easily get out of control and change someone’s perception of an event that occurs as well. For example, a simple conversation between a receptionist and a supervisor can be put into the gossip mill as the two individuals having an affair.
Focus on positive things instead of negative things. It may not make you very popular because you don’t have the juiciest news about everyone’s least favorite person, but it will make you feel better about yourself. Positive energy spreads positivity, while negative energy simply destroys. Pretty soon you’ll find that people are either following your lead or excluding you from the circle of gossip, and both of those aren’t bad things.
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