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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2213 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ask Hubski: How do you guys work to avoid engaging in gossip at work?

You handled it one way. You didn't handle it the best way. You recovered. So did everybody else. Congratulations.

It still doesn't turn gossip into feedback, and it doesn't provide an argument that your interpretation of gossip is a valuable one.





_refugee_  ·  2213 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You don't know what the best way was. Your comment is a begrudging retreat to half-believing me. I didn't succeed; I must've recovered. Because if I had to recover, you were still right somehow.

Do you call a 10% raise and a 12% bonus a "recovery" reward?

My interpretation of gossip is that it is both vital to human life, valuable, and indispensible; while also retaining the very real potential to create a cesspool of negative emotions in a group of people when certain conditions occur. Which basically agrees with what you said. Except plus nuance.

Gorsh, that nuance must've just been so offensive.

-----------------------

"I agree on major aspects of what klein has to say"

"For the most part, I agree we're social creatures and talking about each other is a major component of interacting, of caring, and of life. I agree gossip is not inherently bad; we should embrace that we do it, and maybe not sweat over it so much (on the day-to-day)."

first comment

kleinbl00  ·  2213 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm retreating from nothing. You don't know what the best way was either, but what you did is not what I would do. Go ahead and quote yourself; the fact that you edit every post multiple times throughout the course of the day renders your quotes meaningless. You started from a position of disagreeing with my basic point, went to the mattresses over the idea that somehow gossip is feedback and now you're throwing paystubs in my face to demonstrate that you're a good person or something.

Congratulations on your raise.

_refugee_  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Feedback includes any information you get about yourself...Feedback is not just what gets ranked; it's what gets thanked, commented on, and invited back or dropped. Feedback can be formal or informal, direct or implicit... - Thanks for the Feedback, by Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen

It's almost like I believe gossip is a form of feedback because these two random Harvard Law Professors, whose speciality is conflict resolution and negotiation, who run a lab out of Harvard dedicated to studying these specific behaviors, and who literally wrote the book on how to respond to feedback well(did I mention this is an excerpt from that book? oh. that's what it is) told me that it was.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I admit, the book's from 2014. I'm sure it's possible in the past 4 years you've read something more researched and up-to-date than this my primary source. I'm sure whatever convincing article you must've read was probably written by people in an even better position to know what they are talking about than Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen (did I mention they're both at Harvard?) (running a research lab?) (dedicated to studying this sort of stuff?). (well, at least they were)

I'd love to learn more, if you've got any non-paywall links to the peer-reviewed and scientifically-based research articles which surely must help account for your certainty here! Please. Share around.

edited to add the npr book excerpt/article, because i already mentioned this book in this thread and still think others here might like to read it

https://www.npr.org/books/titles/441536239/thanks-for-the-feedback-the-science-and-art-of-receiving-feedback-well-even-when

oyster  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Note the article says “ I don’t like the way you look in those pants” and not “Terry doesn’t like the way you look in those pants”

I have to ask, did you actually stick up for the person in the moment ? Because doing the right thing in the moment is what actually defines your character. If somebody tries to talk badly of somebody I like I’ll offer them perspective and make it clear I’m not going to carry on with them. I won’t pretend to know the situation but most I’ve seen were somebody felt the need to bring the unknowing party into the equation were attempting to cover their own guilt over how they handled the initial situation.

_refugee_  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Here's one specific example:

PC was discussing other coworker, X. PC dished to the group that X got a divorce a few years back. Then within six months or almost immediately, X changed her name, moved to NY, and "completely changed" her identity. "You never hear about it because she never talks about it to anybody," PC tells us proudly. PC set off on a series of comments about how this must mean X was either crazy, or shady.

I look at my other coworkers. This news is surprise to all of us. My other coworkers have background in fraud investigations and police work. When they hear "name change," "relocation," and "refusal to discuss life before or why," those behaviors raise different flags for them. Certainly not flags of "shadiness" or "hiding from crime" or "being crazy."

Me, I have an aunt who did exactly what coworker X did. She's from my mom's side of the family and they're pretty nuts. Sometimes, I figure runaway aunt might be the sanest one of the lot. There's 8 of them.

So I'm sitting there thinking, I don't think people do that sort of thing for fun and if she doesn't want to talk about it she probably has a really good reason, and trading uncomfortable eye contact with my coworkers.

PC won't stop going on about it. It's clear she thinks this is very juicy, very engrossing gossip we must all want to speculate on. We don't.

And since PC's here with my other coworkers because she's tagging along with me, yeah I realize this is my responsibility to shut down. I see my coworkers are uncomfortable and I am too.

So I say ynno, probably what happened is none of our business. And, I've thought about doing exactly that too. PC pushes the scandalizing, surely-this-person-is-a-black-sheep narrative more. I say ynno, if i went through the bother of doing all that - changing my name, relocating to a totally different big anonymous city out of nowhere, clearly changing my life...if I did all that after a divorce...I probably didn't do that for fun, ynno?

Like maybe she had a reason for doing what she did? Like maybe that was a really bad divorce she went through. Maybe she had a really bad husband.

Or maybe, this is when I bring up my own angle, maybe her family sucks. Maybe she got fed up with their bullshit.

Or she just had been tired and tied down and wasn't anymore and she finally got to do what she wanted to do.

Maybe she always wanted her name to be X and just never had enough gumption to do it until then.

Probably, whyever reason she did it, it probably's not very salacious.

She works for a bank, we do bankground checks, I don't think she's hiding something.

I'm not saying this to silence, of course. PC is chiming in, my coworkers are chiming in, PC is toning down, my coworkers are agreeing with me. I'm not an idiot or overly confident about what I did there - I didn't solve the problem. I didn't stand up and say "How dare you," and since X wasn't there, it feels incorrect to claim I "stuck up" for her. She wasn't being directly victimized.

Then again, at this point, none of us know PC well enough to know if she's malicious, socially oblivious, or something else, either. We just know we're all coworkers, we're at a business dinner, PC is crossing lines for all the rest of us with her discussion, and we want that to stop and we want her to not repeat this behavior but with stories from other coworkers.

If a woman I work with divorced her husband and win 6 months reinvented herself, relocated, renamed herself, and all that - I don't care why she did it. I don't care if she had a mental breakdown - because unless you know for certain that's what happened, until that instant where she looks you in the eye and confirms she did all that frivolously and foolishly and not because, idk, her husband was abusive or became a stalker or she was in a real bad life situation at that time and she needed to restart, to get a fresh start -- I'm more inclined she did what she did because she had to, to protect herself, than because she overreacted to a little ol' breakup.

Sorry, is that just like the benefit of the doubt, or what? I don't want to speculate about something when it looks to me like a person probably did it to protect themselves.

And of course, this is a story. This is a retelling. It's not accurate in breath and quote, but it's accurate to what I remember. This is also the event (it was an uncomfortable dinner) where both my other coworkers thanked me/said they appreciated me stepping into the conversation the way I did, that they felt uncomfortable too, and in other words 2 independent witnesses corroborated my take on the evening. After that dinner, one of my coworkers expressed to management that the whole evening, what with PC's gossiping/PC's conversational tracks, had made them uncomfortable and that they felt PC was over the line. I don't know who, as the manager kept it anonymous in talking to me and honestly I don't care, both of them are awesome, but I know the only person who didn't feel uncomfortable that night was PC.

I know someone else complained because when my manager sought me out to ask if I had any experiences with PC, and I mentioned this event from this night -- my manager already knew about it.

That's what makes this a good example.

So, your call on how you feel about that, then.

oyster  ·  2205 days ago  ·  link  ·  

This is a different side of the same story you have been telling that I’m not actually talking about. You previously mentioned you felt the need to tell the person being gossiped about what had been said but this is about when a manager sought you out because of what another coworker brought forward.

kleinbl00  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

From six days ago:

    BUT IT'S NOT YOUR FEEDBACK.

This isn't you telling someone something. This is you telling someone something and then that person telling someone else their interpretation of that something.

And if you think those things are equivalent all the Harvard books in the world aren't going to help you.

I'll say this:

I've been polite. I haven't been condescending. I've deliberately minimized snark and aspersions.

You reply to me in this tone again and it will be the last time.

_refugee_  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·  

lol ok dad