I have a question for the nine. If you could give young gals entering the business world as college grads one piece of advice, what would it be?

Dotsie,

I can tell you what I tell my own daughters. I tell them to stay above the fray. When a battle takes place, go for the high road, that is, support the good goals of whatever organization you are working for. Don't argue at the "people" level. There's other times for that. Your bosses and work associates will think more highly of yopu, and you'll stay out of trouble.

Judy

Dotsie,

I found that answering your question took a lot more thought now than it would have when I was working.

1.) You're better than you think you are.
2.) Think with your head, and make sure you look at things from all points of view
3.) Don't borrow trouble

Carol

What examples have you seen of corporate gossip and how does one go about stopping it?

Dianne,

Actually, corporate gossip can sometimes be useful. One time I heard from several people that my boss was going to be fired. He and I got along fairly well even though I didn’t always agree with what he did. I told him about the gossip I’d heard. “That’s possible, Judy,” he said. “But no one has told me about it.” At Christmastime parties that year I heard the gossip again. But at our last meeting for the year as we summed up what we’d done, my boss turned and whispered to me, “See Judy, I didn’t get fired after all.” It was a month later when I went out to my car, got in, turned the motor on, and heard my cell phone ring. It was my boss calling me to say to not bother coming to the meeting that morning. I’d been right. He’d been fired. For me, it turned out to be good I’d been prepared for that event. I hadn’t assumed it would happen, but I made sure I was OK if it did. And I also prepared my boss.

Judy

Diane

I think it's hard to give a generic response to the question of corporate gossip because the gossip can take so many forms. I've seen people deliberately start false rumors about someone else. I challenged someone on this when I saw him doing it and his reply was "Sure. If I say something to make the other guy look bad, it will only make me look better in comparison." This kind of situation, I say, take head on and succintly point out why the individual is wrong. And, I recommend doing it privatly first, and then publically but politely if the gossip presists.

I'll say more later. My gradson is getting fussy and he's fighting me for the mouse.

Carol k

Dianne

I apologize for leaving out the second n in your name in my last message. I didn't proof read the message before I posted it.

Another kind of gossip is about one's personal life. I wasn't really into the gossip circle, so that may have had an impact, because most of what I heard was true. The most memorable situation was when a female sales director became pregnant and she wasn't married. She was responsible for a multi-billion dollar territory. She had twins and returned from maternity leave. She was very upfront about the situation, except for identifying the father. Her career seemed to continue to go well. Then she had a second pregnancy and after her third son was born, she left the company. I have no idea if she was asked to leave. There was no gossip that she was. But, she handled herself like a lady over the three year period. She acknowledged the situation and mantained her dignity.

Nothing happened to the person who was said to be the father. He continued to stay married and he continued to be promoted. He did have a break down at work, but it was publically attributed to the stress of the job.

Most of us have done something, although not as radical as this, that we wouldn't want people to gossip about. But if they do, and it's true, there's not much you can do except carry on with dignity. If it's not true, then I think you should go out of your way to demonstrate via your actions that it couldn't be true. For example, say the gossip is that you stole a pencil. Make a point of borrowing pencils and immediately return them with thanks. Then mention it later:"Sue was so nice. She let me borrow her pencil. I told her how appreciative I was when I returned it at the end of the meeting."

Another kind of gossip is about your career. If someone is saying bad things about you to make you look bad, then we're back to the first situation I mentioned in the first message on this topic. Confront them privately, if they don't stop, make the corrections publically in a positive manner. The key here is to not get angry, be firm, be polite, and a little humor always helps. If the gossip is true, mantain your dignity and work on changing the impression the gossip has created. Suppose you got demoted. Ok, you got demoted. Don't bring it up in conversations unless someone asks. Most important, don't let it color your picture of yourself and work extra hard to demonstrate your competence in your new job. If it's not true, demostrate that it's not through your actions.

Hope this makes sense. I'd be interested to hear if it does.

Carol K

Thanks. It does make sense. I've seen a lot of inner damage done by gossip and it seems impossible to stop it. I've always wondered about the people who send anonymous letters to the pres. or CEO. It has always reminded me of high school.

Carol, you mention the guy having a break down due to pressure at work. Let's not think for a minute that the pressure from his personal life didn't have soemthing to do with it too.

You also mentioned confronting themprivately. This is such good advice. I believe this is true for any situation, not just professionally. As momw ould have said, "go right to the horse's mouth."

Hi All,

First, I wanted to compliment Carol on the nice job she did on responding to the question about corporate gossip. It’s a tough one. But here’s a favorite maxim of mine. DON’T LET PROBLEMS FESTER. There are too many times in my career that I just felt I was too busy to deal with a problem and waited until it hit me in the face. One time, however, I did something that saved my career. My boss had come up with a new scheme of management. He called it “matrix management” and what it meant was that people didn’t report to any one person, they reported to multiple people. So-o-o some people got very good at never being accountable for anything. They always just switched which boss they paid attention to at the appropriate time. For me, this meant that I couldn’t count on anyone to meet their commitments. Another department head in my area had made a commitment he couldn’t possibly meet and he just kept leaning on people harder and harder – like they had no life outside of work. I think it was the only time at work I felt truly frightened. So I wrote the “Cover Your Ass” letter. I told my boss and my boss’ boss what was happening and that I couldn’t meet my commitments if we continued the matrix management approach. They didn’t get angry because I sent the letter only to them. But when our area got in such trouble that a special task force was set up to look into the situation, I pulled out my letter. Out of four managers I was the only one who didn’t lose my job or get demoted. But I did get put into another job I didn’t want. It took a long time to recover. After that, I always told my managers to look around and watch for problems, to not be hasty, but to speak up or record their concerns when they saw a significant problem.
Any other examples of this sort of thing?

Judy