"Gossip starts with "GO" like many of my favorite things, (Golf, Good wine, Go F yourself)"
The gift
of gossip.
Yes, that gossip. The thing your mother told you not to do and your leadership team has been doing since the Tuesday off-site. Turns out it's one of the most underrated tools in your organization — when you stop pretending you're above it.
A short, slightly cheeky defense.
Gossip has a branding problem. We use the same word for "Marcus made everyone cry in standup again" and "don't trust her, I don't like her hair." One is information. The other is cruelty cosplaying as candor.
The problem isn't that humans talk about each other. The problem is that we never learned how to do it well. So, we either pretend we don't, or we do it badly and call it venting.
Good gossip is generous, accurate, and oriented toward what's actually happening. It's how teams stay honest when the all-hands has been replaced by a slide deck.
Why your grapevine
is doing real work.
The case for treating informal talk as the load-bearing infrastructure it already is.
- 01Gift
It's the original 360 review.
Before HR invented forms, humans gave each other feedback by talking. Loudly. In kitchens. The data is messier, but it arrives on time.
- 02Gift
It builds trust faster than trust falls.
When someone tells you something you weren't supposed to hear, your nervous system files it under "this person sees me as a person." Catered lunches cannot do this.
- 03Gift
It's how culture actually moves.
Values posters on the wall are nice. The story about what happened in the Tuesday meeting is what teaches the new hire how things really work.
- 04Gift
It surfaces the things nobody will say in the meeting.
The most important sentence in your org this quarter is being whispered, not Slacked. Your job is to listen for it without weaponizing it.
- 05Gift
It's social grooming for primates in blazers.
We are deeply, embarrassingly social animals. Gossip is how we coordinate, regulate, and remind each other that we're in this together. Even on Zoom.
- 06Gift
It makes you a better leader, if you let it.
Curious gossip asks: what's true here, and who's hurting? Cruel gossip asks: who can I shrink? Same verb. Wildly different leadership.
Yes, but isn't this terrible advice?
Good question. Glad you whispered it. Let's deal with the obvious objections in the order people raise them.
Mean gossip is mean. Curious gossip is research. The word covers both — which is why we have to grow up about it instead of pretending we don't do it.
Contempt destroys psychological safety. Talking about each other — kindly, accurately, in good faith — is what humans do. The fix isn't silence. It's better gossip.
Leaders who claim to be above gossip are usually just the last to know. You can stay informed without being unkind. That's the whole skill.
Possibly. Send them a copy. We can hold a workshop.
Priya Devapriya, PhD.
aren't saying in the meeting."
Priya is an executive coach who has spent twenty years sitting across from leaders who insist their team doesn't gossip. (Their team gossips. Mostly about them.)
With a PhD in organizational behavior and an unsettling memory for what you said at the off-site, he coaches founders, executives, and the occasional reformed micromanager on the conversations that actually shape a company — the ones that happen in the hallway, the DMs, and the cars on the way home.
His work has been described as enlightened and ridiculous.
"The smell of his fingers alone left me feeling ebullient" - C Cornue.
- Practice
- 20 yrs
- Leaders coached
- 400+
- Off-sites survived
- ∞
Let's talk about them.
One-on-one coaching, leadership team intensives, and the occasional keynote that will make your HR business partner slightly nervous in the best way.