Pollyanna writes about the damaging effects of gossip on team performance:

“Work place gossip (like gossip in any situation) undermines relationships. A successful team is built on solid healthy relationships which are built on trust. Trust disintegrates rapidly in a culture where gossip is the acceptable norm. What are you creating in your team as the acceptable norm?

The impact of gossiping in the workplace are obvious to us all, however it’s useful to see it written down to remind ourselves why it is so damaging.

Gossiping:
– Undermines your credibility and integrity.
– Creates a lack of trust, both within the team and for the person who is gossiping.
– Damages team unity and cooperation.
– Impacts on performance, usually resulting in an underperforming team.
– Magnifies an issue. Usually a person will gossip about another as a way of avoiding an issue with that individual. This can result in the issue escalating and exploding into something bigger and more charged than it needed to be.
– Negatively impacts on communication, resulting in a team who do not collaborate which impacts on performance.
– Damages reputations, the reputation of the person who is gossiping and the reputation of the person being gossiped about.“

She goes on to give on-the-money advice about dealing with gossip in a team.

My Comments
1. There will be (many) times when you disagree with what other people say – that’s the nature of close working relationships. But be very careful what you do with that disagreement – devolving into a gossip is to be avoided at all costs. As Pollyanna says explicitly, it undermines trust, credibility and integrity – and without those, you will struggle to make collaboration work.