3 Ways to Remove Gossip from Your Life
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This is a work topic, this is for your personal life, this is for organizations and for you as a human being.
Creating a zero-tolerance policy for gossip.
It is so cancerous, it is so incredibly toxic. Whether it’s for work or for you as an individual, create a zero tolerance policy for it. It is low integrity behavior. And still, people love to do it, some people thrive on it, some friendships survive solely based on trashing other people. But, if you’re aware of it, and you have the tools to respond to it, you can keep it out of your life.
If you think, “Well, I’m not a person who gossips,” here’s a self test.
“To be an audience to gossip is to participate in it.”
I would challenge you on this one. You might not be somebody who spreads gossip intentionally, but are you an audience to gossip?
To me, it is exactly the same thing. To be an audience to gossip is to participate in it.
If someone comes to you with gossip, you have the option to shut it down instead of perpetuate it. To listen, to be an audience, to be a conductor of gossip is to continue to facilitate that dynamic. When you shut it down, gossip does not take place.
So how can you stop gossiping?
I want to take a moment to acknowledge that it is hard to stop doing, especially because gossip is a bonding mechanism between you and other people.
So here's how you can stop yourself and start to create language and change your own behavior and habits around gossip.
Here are 3 actionable things that you can do if you want to be the kind of person to change this behavior and remove gossip in your life and in your workplace.
1. Ask yourself, “Would I be proud of that other person overhearing this conversation?”
If somebody comes to you with, "Guess what I heard," or they want to share some gossip with you about somebody else. Ask yourself, would I be proud, or would I not have this conversation or stop talking if they walked in the room? Would I want them to know that I'm being an audience to, or sharing this with somebody else?
If the answer that question is no, and you know it's no, because you're gossiping about somebody, don't do it.
2. Ask the question, “Would this person want me to know this?”
This one takes more courage, and I know this is hard to do, but this is important.
If someone comes to you and says, "Hey, guess what I heard," stop them and be say, "Hold on, time out. Would that person want me to know this? Would that person be okay with you telling me this? Would they be okay with me hearing this or knowing this information?"
This can be uncomfortable, especially if the person who's coming to you is someone who loves gossip because nobody likes to be called out.
If the answer is anything other than a yes, it’s a no in this situation.
Follow it up with, "Okay then, I don't want to hear it. I don't need to hear it. I don't want you to share it with me. I don't need to know this thing about that person. I'm not interested."
3. Ask somebody not to share something with you.
This is the hardest to do, especially if you're somebody who has loved gossip and it gives you a thrill setting fires and creating drama.
This is the language that I'll use with someone: "This might be uncomfortable, but I actually don't want you to tell me this thing. I don't need to know it, I don't want to hear about it."
Again, the person who you're saying that to, if they love gossip, they're going to be put out. That's them feeling highlighted for the fact that this is not an okay thing to do.
“‘I’m not available for that right now’ is such a powerful phrase for shutting down gossip.”
Start having the courage in your life to shut down gossip and just be say, "I'm not available for that. I don't think it's any of my business. I actually just don't want to hear that thing."
Really hard for me personally to get to a place where that's what I do and that's how I respond to people, but it also feels great.
The final point I want to make about this is a the metaphor of being a gossiper is being an arsonist.
You are lighting fires in other people's lives about other people, making people look bad to bond with somebody else.
There's only a couple of reasons in the world that people gossip.
“Relationships and connections that you have that other people shouldn’t be built on gossip, it’s not healthy.”
One is because they're addicted to it. It feels good, it's drama. And some people love drama, but to make somebody else look bad, or to bond and connect with somebody else, we build (phony) trust or rapport with others by trashing on people, which is really shitty behavior. Relationships and connections that you have that other people shouldn't be built on that, it's not healthy.
It is a burden to harbor secrets of other people in your friend group or that you work with.
You don't need to know about things going on in their lives. All of us have things going on in our lives, and they’re nobody else's business. It's really, really lovely and freeing to take on the mentality of, "I don't want to hear that. I don't need to know that, it's none of my business," and just carry on and focus having your hands full of your own life, your own problems, your own drama and deal with that first.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop
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