Bite your tongue!

Chicago CEO Bans Office Gossip

By GAIL ROSENBLUM, Star Tribune

April 25, 2008

Here's something to dish about at work: A CEO in Chicago has banned office gossip. Can't do it, not even a little. And if you're caught trying, you'll be introduced to something called "completion," where you must face the person you've been whispering about and 'fess up.

Tummy aches all around!

Exactly, said Sam Chapman, CEO of Empower PR. A year ago, Chapman said he got so tired of a "bad gossip problem" at his 17-person firm that he hired a business coach to help him fix it. The solution? Zero tolerance for tattling.

Chapman fired the employee who was earning a gossiping gold star (for personal trashing and sharing trade secrets outside of the firm), then canned her two cronies. Now Chapman hires only people "who appreciate a no-gossip zone. Gossip is a reputation-wrecker for everybody: the person who [the gossip is] about and the one doing it, who is hurting his or her own reputation."

Chapman said that "problem gossip" now occurs about once a week, instead of several times a day. "We changed our culture immediately. You'd be amazed at how quickly a no-gossip community can tighten up and behave themselves."

Ashley Gonias, 22, was an intern at Empower before the ban and said she literally can feel the difference. "You walked into a room before and it was heavier," said Gonias, a senior account executive. "Seriously, I can say almost to the day that it was implemented. It was just lighter. You had that freedom to talk, to say, 'This really bothers me.' Before, you would never say it, and it would just sit there and fester."

Dana Leavitt, 26, joined Empower after the ban and, while supportive in theory, admits the policy is challenging. "When I catch myself doing it, I'll stop myself," Leavitt said. "I don't think I was ever conscious of it before ... how easy it is to gossip. You never think about it when you're doing it."

Don't say what?

Which raises the question: Outside of one small company, is a gossip ban humanly possible? Or, put another way, if we can't gossip at work, what will we talk about?

We live in a culture, after all, that has elevated gossip to an art form. Just last week, gossipreport.com launched as a way for web users to dish on neighbors, co-workers and potential dates. The site encourages users, mostly college-aged, to vote on gossip and rate their peers based on personality, looks and how good or bad they are in bed.

This comes on the heels of juicycampus.com, another gossip site that's getting heat, and gaining popularity, for its anonymous threads of potentially devastating dirt (much of it false) about fellow students' sex lives, religious preferences and physical attributes. ("Who's that tall girl who works at the info desk??? Her muffin top is GROSS.")

"My initial reaction was, 'Good for them. What an initiative,'" said Minneapolis business consultant and author Sue Morem about Chapman's initiative. "But it's not possible. Part of what makes an office co-worker situation work is keeping up on people's lives."

Morem was one of many people interviewed who noted that gossip (juicycampus aside) isn't always bad. "There is a lot of truth and value in gossip," she said. "We need to be able to reach out." In times of downsizing rumors or leadership shifts, for example, talking with co-workers "helps us process," she said.

On the personal front, she recalls a pregnant woman who got troubling news from her doctor. She came back to work "desperate to talk about it, but she didn't feel like she should be the one to bring up her personal problems." One co-worker told others, and many people came over to ask how she was doing, which was tremendously comforting, Morem said. "There is benefit to reaching out and sharing our concerns."

Ascan Koerner, a communications studies professor at the University of Minnesota, agrees. He calls Chapman's concept "silly."

"People inherently are interested in what those around them are doing and the consequences of those behaviors. Not only does [the ban] go against human nature, but if people would really not gossip at all, the organization would fall apart."

By talking about what others are experiencing, Koerner said, we learn "what behaviors are encouraged and socially appropriate," and what behaviors are a bad idea.

Unfortunately, plenty of gossip heads south from there.

Tanya Gajewski, manager of Client Services at the Storefront Group in Minneapolis, has seen gossip used in deliberately dangerous ways to sabotage or gain power over others, "diminishing them in others' eyes by emphasizing their mistakes and vulnerabilities." Gossip, she said, is powerful, whether good or bad.

That's why Chapman did what he did. "I have to stop myself, too," he said. He's also been told to do some "completing" of his own. "But it sure is a lot easier to focus on your work when people aren't gossiping about you," he said.

Chapman does make one distinction, however. His employees may still talk about Britney, and read US Magazine.

And you heard that here first.

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