Workplace gossip has a bad name. It tends to get associated with rumour, conflict or a toxic organisational culture. Yet the informal exchanges circulating through a company's social networks can also serve an essential function: helping people make sense of their environment, read relationships and reach information that does not always travel through official channels.
This article explores the various forms workplace gossip can take, the links between personality and information-sharing behaviour, and the levers available to executives and talent management professionals for telling constructive exchanges from those that weaken trust.
The point, then, is not necessarily to stop informal conversations, but to understand what they reveal about organisational culture, the quality of leadership and how information travels.
Workplace gossip has a reputation problem. Most people regard gossip at work as disruptive, unproductive, even toxic for organisational culture. Yet the informal communication travelling through social networks can play an important part in how an organisation functions.
Leaders therefore need to understand that workplace gossip can have beneficial as well as damaging effects, depending on how it is used and managed.
Episode 141 of the podcast The Science of Personality looked at the advantages and drawbacks of workplace gossip. Co-hosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp were joined by Allison Howell, MS, CEO of Hogan Assessments.
Here is what to take away about the various forms gossip takes at work, about the relationship between personality and information-sharing behaviour, and about the leadership strategies for handling these informal dynamics better.
"Gossip is an informal communication channel that often spreads through social networks," Allison Howell explains.
It is common to associate gossip straight away with spreading rumour or false information. That is not necessarily the case, though.
As Allison Howell points out, gossip is above all about using unofficial means to share information.
In a working environment, it therefore serves an important function: helping people make sense of what is going on around them.
Because these informal exchanges frequently concern people and relationships, they supply contextual clues for making better sense of an organisation's culture, its relational dynamics and its plays for influence.
Take the onboarding process.
Once the official steps are over, paperwork, introductions and a tour of the business, new joiners generally start talking with their team in a more informal setting.
That is often the moment they reach the information that actually helps them read their new environment.
What is the best way to work with this manager? Who gets on with whom, and which relationships are trickier? What reputation does this department have within the company?
Compared with what is officially set out in a new starter's welcome pack, this informal knowledge passed by word of mouth can prove extremely valuable to someone trying to understand the dynamics of a new team.
Despite these benefits, several myths persist about workplace gossip.
The first concerns reliability. Information can indeed change as it is passed along, as in the game of telephone where a message shifts gradually as it moves from person to person.
Gossip can also be a central tactic in certain smear campaigns.
But beyond the notion that informal information is necessarily false, gossip is also often regarded as morally objectionable and linked to gender stereotypes.
Historically, gossip has played an important part in the political mechanisms of social control.
"People in positions of power often present gossip as something morally dubious," Allison Howell explains.
"It is a parallel form of communication that those holding power may want to prevent, label as negative or seek to discredit."
In a company, gossip can indeed challenge traditional power relations precisely because it is not officially sanctioned and may contradict the information put out through institutional channels.
The association between gossip and gender is a myth too.
Gossip has long been caricatured as a form of trivial chatter, essentially female. That reductive view overlooks the protective function these exchanges have been able to serve.
Historically, women have used informal communication networks as a survival mechanism for sharing information about risks or dangers that could not be raised openly.
During witch-hunt periods, for example, gossip allowed people, mainly women, to communicate outside society's traditional power structures.
"It is no exaggeration to say that people have been killed because of gossip," Allison Howell says.
These received ideas can obscure the real value of informal exchange in a working environment.
One element plays a decisive part here: trust.
It shapes both how effective gossip is and how much credibility is granted to the information shared.
"The world is full of disinformation. Between artificial intelligence, politics and distrust of traditional media, it is becoming hard to know what is actually happening," Allison Howell explains.
Advertising, brand messaging and influencer marketing all have an impact on consumer credulity too.
As messages multiply, people grow more sceptical about how reliable the information reaching them is. They also question more closely the intentions of those trying to sell them products, services or ideas.
In this context, people naturally turn to the members of their social network they trust in order to get more authentic interactions or information they judge more reliable.
Workplace gossip can thus reveal where the real sources of trust sit within a group.
Allison Howell mentions a piece of academic research she carried out during her mass communication studies in northern Wisconsin.
The state's Department of Natural Resources was trying to stop the spread of invasive aquatic species. To do so, it wanted to persuade boat owners to clean their vessels and dispose of used bait properly.
The trouble was that a strong distrust of this public body existed.
Boaters did, by contrast, attach great importance to the opinions of local bait shop owners.
"These were people their communities trusted. A message like 'Let us protect our lakes' felt far less troubling coming from them," Allison Howell explains.
"The people a community grants its trust to are extremely effective at passing information along in a world where the institutions themselves are not necessarily seen as reliable."
In a company, gossip can also convey a form of authority or status.
Simply having access to certain information can, for instance, give the feeling of belonging to a privileged circle.
Sharing an opinion or a secret can also strengthen the bond between two people.
And someone recognised as a source of useful or valuable information can build relationships with colleagues faster.
"Gossip is going to happen, whatever else occurs," Allison Howell states.
The reason someone joins in these exchanges reveals as much about their personality as their manner of doing so.
On socioanalytic theory, human behaviour is guided by three broad universal motives:
Each of these motives can lead a person to take part in gossip, with constructive as well as destructive consequences.
Everyone has social interactions at work. At one moment or another, then, almost everyone takes part in some form of informal communication.
Just as personality characteristics shape why a person shares certain information, they can also anticipate the style they will adopt in these exchanges.
Someone extraverted may, for example, want to share information in order to create or strengthen relationships.
Someone particularly demonstrative or ambitious may use gossip to attract attention.
Someone empathetic may take part in this kind of exchange in order to protect themselves or the members of their team.
But gossip can equally serve exactly the opposite purposes: destroying trust, seeking more status or damaging someone else's reputation.
Understanding personality and individual motives then becomes particularly interesting within personality assessment, leadership development and talent management. One and the same visible behaviour can be driven by very different motives and produce equally different consequences for the team.
Given how inevitable these informal exchanges are, leaders have every interest in observing the distinction between constructive and destructive gossip within their organisation.
That generally means putting several listening mechanisms in place, knowing how to read the signals available, taking context into account and building solid relationships with peers and team members alike.
Leaders wanting to draw on the constructive side of informal exchange have to invest in trust and encourage people to speak up.
They also need to listen, stay open to differing points of view and, above all, respond appropriately rather than punitively.
Informal conversations can give leaders valuable information about the health of their organisation.
Exchanges that appear spontaneously within internal social networks are a normal consequence of employee engagement.
When gossip becomes so pervasive that it damages engagement or people's mental health, however, it can signal a need to re-examine how information travels through the organisation.
Internal communication processes genuinely work when people do not need to resort to gossip to obtain the information they consider important.
So, except where these exchanges are clearly destroying team morale, Allison Howell recommends that leaders stay attentive to what is circulating without systematically trying to control it.
Leaders who have tried to stop informal information from circulating generally know that the strategy ends up producing the opposite of the intended effect.
"Encouraging open sharing is a good thing," Allison Howell explains.
"You have to create a space where people have both the psychological safety and the mechanisms they need to take their feedback directly to their manager, to HR or to someone else they can speak to."
For executives and HR leaders, the challenge therefore becomes less about suppressing informal networks than about creating enough trust and transparency that people also have direct channels when a piece of information, a worry or a piece of feedback deserves sharing.
Gossip is not merely conversation at the periphery of company life. It can reveal organisational culture, the level of trust between teams and their managers, and the quality of internal communication.
Seen through talent management and sustainable management, understanding why people share certain information makes collective dynamics easier to analyse.
Personality assessment can round out that reading by helping make sense of people's motives, their relational behaviour and their possible reactions in situations of trust, uncertainty or competition.
For organisations, the real challenge is therefore creating an environment where people have enough psychological safety, transparency and room to speak that informal networks remain a source of connection rather than a factor of distrust.
An HR strategy attentive to behaviour, personality and team dynamics can help turn this information into levers for skills development, for coaching and for supporting leaders.
Workplace gossip is intrinsically neither good nor bad. Its impact depends on its intention, its content, the level of trust existing between people and how leadership responds to these exchanges.
Trying to make it disappear altogether is probably unrealistic. Treating it as a signal for making better sense of relationships, culture and what people expect can, by contrast, be particularly useful.
For talent management professionals, the challenge is connecting these behaviours to individual motives, to collective dynamics and to the organisational context. Personality assessment can then help make sense of what pushes people to share information, to seek status, to build bonds or to protect their colleagues.
That understanding lets leaders strengthen trust, develop more conscious leadership and build environments where teams can speak openly. In time, this capacity to listen contributes to lasting performance, to team development and to the organisation's success.
At Authentic Talent, we believe that objective assessment of talent and potential within organisations is a decisive factor in their future success. If you would like to discuss it with us, let's talk!
This article draws on an article published on the Hogan Assessments website: Is Workplace Gossip Good or Bad?
