Finding the Gold in Gossip: Channeling Employee Frustration Into Making a Better Workplace

Gossip between employees is rightfully derided as toxic, threatening to spread discontent and stand in the way of people working together to get the job done.  But employee discontent cannot just be ignored or wished away.  Instead, employee gossip presents a unique opportunity to look at the sources of dissatisfaction to engage in creative problem solving to make a workplace stronger.

I was once brought in with a group of other professionals to complete a project.  Everyone came in with great enthusiasm, but it soon became clear that our leader, the one who had assembled our group, was an ineffective communicator who had trouble managing the group in order to effectuate this leader’s original goals and vision.  

For several months, we all struggled to use our unique skills to complete our tasks without having a clear idea of what was actually expected.  As professionals, we all tried to keep our frustrations to ourselves, but eventually it became clear that we were striving to create the best work product possible in spite of our leader.  At that point, we began voicing our concerns to each other.

All the conventional wisdom about workplace gossip would warn us that this was the point at which everything fell apart.  But on the contrary, two wonderful things happened.  

First, an instant sense of community was created – the sense of community that our leader had failed to create and encourage.  For the first time in months, our team felt united behind a common goal.  By acknowledging that our leader could not articulate the goals of the project, we gave ourselves the opportunity to come together and work to define it ourselves.  That shared understanding allowed us to work in a more focused and effective manner to achieve these goals.

Second, by sharing our concerns with each other, we were able to engage in creative problem solving to develop solutions and work-arounds to ensure that everything worked more smoothly.  I was having a particular problem I felt was insurmountable, but another member of the team heard me and was able to fix it right away.  “Small victory,” he smiled, and we were both able to share a sense of success that fueled our ability to give even more of ourselves to this project.

At the end of our collaboration, the project turned out to be a huge success.  We exceeded our targets and goals, and were widely praised within our industry.

Had our team continued to struggle with our individual tasks and roles in silence, we never would have been able to produce work product that so exceeded our goals, work that we could be proud of.  Had we continued to shy away from communicating with each other for fear of being seen as “gossiping,” the project may have fallen apart.  

When employee discontent rears its ugly head, do not ignore it and do not try to squash it.  Instead, engage with it, perhaps with the assistance of a trained workplace professional, in order to understand where your workplace systems are falling short.  Once you understand and acknowledge what is not working, you can start to find ways that do work and turn your dysfunctional workplace around to produce something great.  There is gold in the gossip if you take the opportunity to mine for it.

Establishing Roles and Responsibilities and Setting Boundaries: Avoiding “Turf War” Conflicts at Work

Many workplace conflicts are avoidable, and there is no better example than the turf war. Turf war conflicts arise when there is confusion or misunderstanding about each individual’s duties and responsibilities in the workplace.  If who is doing what is not clear, that leads to unnecessary overlap, competition, and conflict.

While some managers condone this style of workplace warfare, misguidedly believing that increased competition will lead to better work product, the wiser managers understand that turf wars are counterproductive.  Like all forms of workplace conflict, turf wars lead to a decrease in employee engagement.  Furthermore, turf wars create collateral conflicts far beyond the workers involved as discontent spreads throughout the workplace.  Finally, overlap is inefficient, creating needless redundancies and hampering productivity.

I was called in to mediate a conflict between two front line coworkers.  The conflict had become seemingly intractable, and I was the second outside mediator brought in after their manager, their union rep, and another mediator had all failed to resolve their conflict.  After some initial probing, it became clear that these two workers had been engaged in a turf war for years.  Left unchecked, this confusion over who was supposed to do what had led to deep resentment between them, as well as causing frustration for everyone in their work unit.

Fortunately, once we established that the heart of their problem was a turf war, we were able to resolve their issues.  Working with their management, we were able to clearly outline who was responsible for what duties and responsibilities in the workplace.  Then we were able to develop a plan to help ensure that each person was held accountable for performing their own specific duties.  While these two workers may never see eye to eye, at least they could each go about their duties and stay out of the way – and out of conflict –with each other.  With their mutual threats of lawsuits resolved, the members of this workplace were able to go back to focusing on getting things done.

Employers should take the time to ensure that all employees, both managers and non-supervisors, have a clear understanding of what their individual roles and responsibilities are, and that those duties are clearly and effectively communicated and understood.  And if you do suspect a turf war, bringing in a trained workplace mediator is an excellent way to help resolve the issue in a time effective and cost effective manner.

Potential and Promise for the Mediation of EEO Conflicts

In our increasingly diverse workplace environments, different types of people are brought together to interact on a regular basis.  And when you are bringing different types of people, with different backgrounds and perspectives, together to accomplish goals, conflict arises.  Specifically, workplaces become a site of conflicts arising out of diversity, sometimes referred to as Equal Employment Opportunity, or EEO, conflicts.  These conflicts can arise between people of different genders, races, national origin, sexual orientation or identity, ages or disability.  The very diversity that ensures dynamic and productive workplaces can also sometime lead to misunderstandings, improper communication, or even intentional acts of discrimination.

Having spent seven years as a litigator with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I have had the opportunity to witness hundreds of these conflicts wend their way through the traditional avenues for resolving EEO workplace conflicts: administrative proceedings followed by litigation.  While this path can be appropriate and effective; indeed, sometimes litigation is the only way to resolve issues of workplace discrimination, this type of conflict resolution comes with very real costs.  Not only is this traditional process time consuming, routinely taking up to several years to resolve, and expensive, it also exacts a significant psychological toll on all parties involved.  

Finally, the traditional model of resolving EEO conflicts is an adversarial one: it demands that one party be deemed the victor, while the other is declared a wrong doer.  However, EEO conflicts are rarely this clear cut; the reality of conflicts is more nuanced than the law allows us to acknowledge.  By awarding 100% victory to only one side’s story, litigation denies the parties of an opportunity for dialogue that could result in actual change and progress in the workplace.

Mediation of EEO issues, especially when the conflicts are still in their early stages, can provide a better alternative form of resolution.  By shifting the goal away from determining winners and losers, mediation allows all parties to participate in addressing perceived wrongs, fixing problematic behaviors and crafting a solution that allows everyone to move forward.  

Unlike in litigation, where only one version of facts can be held to be true, mediation provides everyone with the opportunity to express their point of view, feel heard, and work towards developing a resolution that allows them to move forward.  Through the mediation process, both parties are asked to look at what has happened, consider what they want for the future, and make changes to move towards that future.  This is the very definition of progress, and it can happen in a way that saves everyone involved precious resources – time, money, energy, and soul.

A growing body of legal research is developing the idea of restorative justice as an alternative to the traditional model of winner-takes-all litigation.  Restorative justice brings parties together and allows the people who feel they have been wronged to confront their wrongdoers, and for those alleged wrongdoers to understand what effects, intentional or not, their actions have taken.  Then, the parties can work on developing a resolution that acknowledges that understanding and endeavors to make people whole.  

Restorative justice is a powerful model of conflict resolution, and the mediation of EEO complaints and issues in the workplace promises to address concerns that are traditionally dealt with in litigation in a restorative way.  In this manner, mediation has the potential to truly transform workplaces and achieve meaningful change and justice without the damaging effects of multiple years of contentious litigation.