If gossip is a female name, gossip has no gender. It is practiced in both feminine and masculine. It is shared, mixed and deployed in the corridors like wildfire. Around the coffee machine and on WhatsApp, corporate gossip is a delicacy that everyone loves, a little pleasure that is hard to deprive yourself.
There is no shortage of ingredients for good gossip: little internal sentimental stories, quarrel between two colleagues, remuneration, games of musical chairs, new taking up of office ... The theater of office life offers every day new pretexts to peddle gossip and gossip!
Also read: "The people who matter in the office" # 19: The closet!
Gossiping is fun when it concerns others. It is much less when you are the object yourself! Gossip has not, to my knowledge, had the honor of being the object of study by a great American management thinker. If this were the case, such a study, for sure, would show that more than 95% of managers are exposed to gossip at least once in their career! Difficult to escape!
What does the gossip look like? It is a social animal, which network a lot, who knows everyone in the box. With an attentive ear, he knows how to be kind. He is a good comrade to whom we like to confide what we have heard or what we know. If some have a reputation as a gossip (and they are sometimes proud of it), others are so discreet that they are difficult to suspect ...
How to make sure that an open space comrade is a gossip or not? There is a very simple way that has proven itself in playgrounds: you give him a crisp and tasty anecdote, under the guise of secrecy. "I trust you, you don't repeat it". Simmer three to five days.
If, by then, your confidence comes back to your ears, your comrade is not to be trusted. The test is more fun if the anecdote is a little lie that makes your gossip look like a sad sire! A precaution, however: for this to remain good child, your deception must not put anyone in the embarrassment, if not the gossip ...
For the benefit of this column, do not hesitate to share your own experience of important people by writing to qperinel@lefigaro.fr.
