How To Deal With Gossip In The Office

Filed in archive Noteworthy , Personal Development on July 18, 2010

© Poldavo (Alex)

There is always going to be gossip at work. You spend long hours with co-workers, and there's going to be the occasional cocktail happy hour and a colleague will usually be overeager to share some stories about other co-workers. How do you deal with chit-chat at work that comes along your way? Below are a few suggestions to make sure you don't end up being a victim of office talk as well:

1. Keep it confidential. You may have access to sensitive info and conversations at work and it will be to your advantage to keep them confidential at all times. Know when to respect privileged information, and if you have to break confidence, try to keep it to appropriate authorities.

2. Never gossip about your superiors. Don't share gossip about or with your boss or their bosses. It simply earns you no points to talk about them.

3. Keep it positive. Be careful what you talk about and talk about the negatives only in extreme cases.

4. Calculate the risks involved. Make sure you are in a confidential situation when you talk about people at work. Better yet, ask yourself first if what you are about to say can be mentioned in a conference room. If not, better keep things to yourself.

5. Have boundaries. Keep personal information out of the office and don't go prying into personal data from your colleagues as well.