Teambuilding and the Gossip
I help companies with teambuilding. My objective is to help them create a fun team atmosphere with humor. Creating a fun work environment with humor can bring people together as a team.
The best way to ruin the team spirit is a gossip. You know the type; they are always in everybody’s business, having to know where everybody is and what they are doing. They go around telling everyone that someone left early, that person A is seeing person B in the finance department and generally getting other people in trouble. They go and tell someone’s superiors that that person isn’t getting their work done. Dividing the team.
The gossip creates an atmosphere of distrust among the team. The good team members feel that they always have to look over their shoulder to see if someone is spying on them. Not only is it NOT the gossips job to police everyone else, but it is none of their business. Most of the time the gossip doesn’t really know what they are talking about. Because they are snooping around they usually only get part of the story and then they add their own interpretation to it. The gossip can ruin someone’s chance of promotion, career and even personal and/or profession life.
There is a difference between a Gossip and two people sitting down and venting about something or someone in the office. Sometimes two members of the team will have an issue with someone and rather than blow it out of proportion they will sit down and vent to one another about the subject. This is done with two people who know each other well and can trust each other to keep it to themselves.
A good team leader will put an end to the gossip. One way to do this is for the team leader to say to the gossip, “you seem to have a lot of time on your hands I have a few projects I could use some help with”, until the gossip is so busy that they don’t have time to pry into others business. Another way is to check up on the gossip and make sure that they are getting all of their work done. Quite often the gossip complains about everyone else’s lack of production, when they are the one not getting anything done. Sometimes the team leader must be blunt and tell gossip it isn’t their job police everyone else.
Stop the gossip and you will have a more cohesive team.