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Gossip, Slander, and Office Politics - Episode 24 · Profit and Principle

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about the last time you heard something about a colleague, a competitor, or a direct report that you didn't need to know.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe someone offered it to you without being asked.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was framed as a concern, as a heads up, as information you should probably have.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you passed it along also framed as a concern.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't think of it as gossip.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Gossip is what other people do.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: What you were engaged in was staying informed.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: You were keeping people in the loop.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: You were managing a complex interpersonal situation.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing about gossip in the workplace.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Almost nobody who participates in it uses that word.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It travels under better names.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: We call it things like information sharing, venting, transparency, cultural fit concerns.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: The language is almost always more respectable than the thing itself.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that's precisely what makes it so effective at doing damage.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Daryl, this is Profit and Principle.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: We've spent the last three episodes building a picture of healthy communication, the weight of your words, the courage required to give honest feedback, and the discipline of genuine listening.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is the shadow side.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when communication goes wrong not from silence, but from too much of the wrong kind of talk?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's call it what it is gossip, slander.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's the sideways conversations that define what we call office politics.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Scripture has a great deal to say about this, more than most leaders realize, and what it says is specific, unflinching, and directly applicable to the workplace you're leading.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: You'll walk away today with a clear diagnosis of what toxic communication actually does to an organization, what three passages say about your responsibility in it, and two concrete practices to address it.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let me describe what gossip and toxic communication actually cost an organization, because I think leaders consistently underestimate it.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: The most obvious cost is relational damage, the friendship or working relationship that doesn't survive when the person finds out what was said about them behind their back.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: But that's just the visible part.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: The less visible costs are larger.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: The first is trust erosion.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: When gossip circulates freely in an organization, every person in that organization makes the same calculation.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: If they're talking about those people when they're not in the room, they're probably talking about me.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: That calculation, made quietly by every person in the organization, produces a specific behavior.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: People become careful.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: They stop sharing real concerns, real ideas, and real struggles.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: They say what they think is safe.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And an organization full of people saying what's safe rather than saying what is true is an organization that has lost its capacity for the honest communication that actually drives good decisions.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: The second cost is leadership credibility.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: The leader who participates in gossip, the one who accepts it, shares it, who uses it to manage the organization's informal power dynamics, is a leader who has signaled something to every person watching.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Information shared with me is not safe.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: It will be used.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It will possibly be deployed against the person who shared it.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Once that signal is received, it cannot easily be unsent.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the leader who cannot be trusted with honest information is a leader who will eventually make significant decisions with systematically incomplete information.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: The third cost is what I call cultural drift.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Gossip and political maneuvering don't stay contained.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: They expand to fill available space.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: The team that has a gossip problem today has a dysfunction problem tomorrow.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: The sideways conversations that began as informal venting become the actual decision-making channel, the place where real assessments are made, real alliances are formed, and real power is exercised.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: The official structures become theater, and the leader who hasn't addressed it is usually the last person to realize it has happened.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a personality issue, it's a leadership issue, and it requires a leadership response.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take a look at what scripture says.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 1628 says this a dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon uses a specific word here that deserves attention, the whisperer.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't describe someone who yells or accuses openly.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: It describes someone who operates quietly, under the surface, in the register of private disclosure.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: The whisper is the mode of delivery precisely because it implies intimacy.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: It implies trust, something shared between only the two of you.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: The implied intimacy is part of the mechanism and makes the listener feel included, trusted, and specifically informed.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Solomon names the consequence with precision.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: It separates close friends, not just acquaintances, not just working relationships, but this has the power to dissolve the closest bonds in the organization.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: People who trust each other, ones who had built something together, who were genuinely connected, well, the whispered disclosure received and absorbed and acted upon can destroy what years of relationship have built.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon is naming this not as a dramatic edge case, but as the predictable outcome of a predictable pattern.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: For the business leader, this is a warning about the person in your organization who always seems to have information about others, who positions themselves as an informal clearinghouse of interpersonal intelligence.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: That person is not a resource.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: They are a hazard.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the whisperer's damage compounds precisely because it operates below the threshold of what formal organizational structures can see and address.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Staying in the book of Proverbs, let's look at Proverbs chapter 26, verse 20.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: For the lack of wood, the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is the most practically actionable verse in today's episode.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I want us to pause here and look at this image.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: A fire without fuel doesn't just diminish, it goes out completely.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: The absence of what feeds it is sufficient to end it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon is making a structural claim about gossip and conflict.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: They require active feeding to survive.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: The quarrel that seems to have a life of its own, that seems self-sustaining, that seems to keep reigniting no matter what you do, Solomon says it has a source.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Someone is adding wood.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Someone is keeping the information flowing, keeping the grievances fresh, keeping the parties in a state of agitation.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Remove that source and the fire goes out.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew word for ceases means to be quiet or to rest.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a word that describes grudging de-escalation.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a word that describes genuine peace.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon is telling the leader that the organizational conflict they've been managing and mediating and working around may not require sophisticated intervention.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: It may require identifying who is adding wood and removing the fuel source.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: This means the leader's role is not just to manage existing conflicts, but to create conditions in which toxic communication cannot thrive.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: That is an active structural responsibility.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: It requires both modeling, not participating in or receiving gossip, and intervention when the pattern is visible.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Let's flip over to the New Testament now and let's see what Paul writes in Titus chapter 3, verse 2.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: To speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is writing to Titus, who is leading a church community in Crete, a community Paul himself had described as having a reputation for difficult behavior.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: His instruction here is not aspirational generality.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a specific list of practices for people who have lived and worked in real, complicated, friction-generating proximity to other human beings.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: The phrase speak evil of no one uses a Greek word where we get our word blasphemy from.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: The basic meaning of the word simply describes damaging speech against another person.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's instruction covers not just false accusations, but the broader category of communication that damages the standing of another person.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Whether or not what's being said is technically true.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: The truth of a piece of information is not, by itself, sufficient justification for sharing it.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: The question Paul's standard forces is this.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: What does sharing this do to the person it's about?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: The positive standard Paul sets alongside the prohibition is equally demanding.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect courtesy towards all people.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: The word Paul uses here is often translated as gentle or reasonable.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: It describes a quality of fairness and accommodation.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's a refusal to push for maximum advantage in every interaction.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's the opposite of a political maneuverer who treats every conversation as an opportunity to advance their position at someone else's expense.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is describing a leader whose default posture toward every person, whether it be a colleague, a competitor, a difficult employee, a frustrating client.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that posture is one of genuine regard rather than calculation.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is a high standard.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is also a completely concrete one.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Every conversation is an opportunity to practice it or to fail at it.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a picture of how this plays out in a real organization.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: A regional sales team, consisting of 12 people and two managers, has been consistently underperforming for two quarters.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: The VP of sales is trying to understand why.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: She starts having one-on-ones with the individual reps.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: What she hears is a fog.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Each conversation produces slightly different information about the same set of interpersonal tensions.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Two senior reps clearly don't trust each other, but each tells a different story about why, and each story involves information about the other that they seem to have received from a third party.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: One of the managers is described differently by different people, depending, it seems, on who they last spoke to about him.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody is lying exactly, but the picture that emerges from any individual conversation doesn't match the picture that emerges from the next one.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: What the VP is encountering is an organization where informal communication channels, the whispered assessments, the hallway conversations, those Slack messages that exist outside any official thread, well, they have become the primary reality shaping mechanism.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: The official structures are still running, but the actual working of the team is being determined by a parallel system of information that nobody controls.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody audits it, and no one is accountable for it.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: So she does two things.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: First, she stops accepting information about people who aren't in the room.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: When a rep begins characterizing a colleague, she says, I'd rather hear that directly from them.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: What can you tell me about your own experience?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: That simple redirect, apply consistently, begins to starve the informal channel.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Second, she makes the standard explicit to both managers.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Information about team members is shared upward, not sideways.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Concerns go to the manager.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: The manager brings them to her.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: The informal channel is not abolished by decree.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's made unnecessary by a more reliable alternative.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: The wood is removed, and gradually the fire goes out.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: How do we put this into practice?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, two things.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, stop accepting information about people who aren't in the room.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is the single most impactful thing a leader can do to address gossip and toxic communication, and it requires almost no resources, only consistency.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: When someone begins offering you an assessment of a colleague, a characterization of someone's motivations, or a piece of information about a person who isn't present, redirect the conversation.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not harshly, not with the lecture, but with something simple.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe something like, have you had a chance to talk with them directly about it?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or I'd like to hear their perspective before I form my own view.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or even at the most basic, I'm going to stay out of that one.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you do this consistently, two things happen.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: The person in front of you learns that you are not a node in the gossip network.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the information you receive about your people begins to get more reliable because it comes from direct conversations rather than filtered accounts.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 2620 tells you what happens when the wood is removed.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: You are the one who removes it.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Next, apply the Titus 3.2 filter to your own communication this week.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Before you share information about a person who isn't present, whether it be in a meeting, in an email, a conversation with your own manager, run Paul's standard.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Does sharing this damage the standing of the person it's about?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a reason to share it that serves them or the situation?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it primarily serving my own need to process, to vent, or to position myself?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is harder than it sounds because a great deal of what circulates as professional information, something like concerns about an employees' performance, observations about a colleague's behavior, assessments of a client's reliability, well, these things sit right at the edge of this line.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Standard is not that difficult conversations don't happen, it's that they happen in the right room, with the right people and for the right purpose.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not sideways, not informally, and not as a whisper.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: These are deliberate, they are direct.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: They're done so in a way that it gives the person it concerns a chance to be part of the conversation.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say something before I pray, and I want to say it carefully.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you're leading an organization where gossip and toxic communication are entrenched, where the informal channel has become the real channel, where political maneuvering is a survival skill rather than an exception, the two steps I gave you today will not fix it overnight.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Cultures built on toxic communication are not dismantled in a week.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: They are dismantled conversation by conversation, redirect by redirect, by a leader who is willing to hold the standard consistently over time, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it means declining information that would be useful to have, even when the fire is still burning, and the process of removing the wood feels slower than you'd like.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: But here is what's also true.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: The fire does go out.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon's observation is not aspirational.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's descriptive.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Remove the fuel and the fire stops.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: You are not fighting something that cannot be beaten.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: You are removing something that cannot survive without being fed.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Keep removing it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray for every leader listening right now who is navigating a team or an organization where the informal channel has become toxic, where the whispered assessments and sideways conversations are doing damage that the official structures cannot see.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Give them the courage to stop participating.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Give them the wisdom to redirect without preaching.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Give them the patience to remove the fuel source consistently, conversation by conversation, even when the fire seems self-sustaining.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And where their own words may have been part of the problem, give them the honesty to see it all and the will to change it.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: May the teams they lead become places where what is said about a person in the room is the same as what is said about them when they are not there.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for giving me your time and attention today to listen to this episode of Prophet and Principle.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't already done so, I encourage you to go to our website, profitandprinciple.com.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: There you're going to find several different resources.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, you will find a one-page PDF that goes into a little more detail about this episode.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can use that in a personal Bible study or in a small group Bible study as well.
• 19:50
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• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, you can read our blog, which goes into great detail with this same information.
• 20:04
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• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And also have a favor, if you're finding value in Profit and Principle, I want to ask two things.
• 20:11
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• 20:13
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• 20:19
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• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: I hope we'll be back next week as we continue our communication block in Profit and Principle.