I’ve talked before about how toxic gossip is to your organization. You just shouldn’t let it into your organization at all. It’s poison that will kill your teams.

While reading Work Rules! (Amazon.ca) I came across this great approach, used by Google, for dealing with employees who complain or gossip about other employees.

The way we solve the “backstabbing” problem, for example, is that if you write a nasty email about someone, you shouldn’t be surprised if they are added to the email thread. – Work Rules!

How would your organization change if instead of just talking behind people’s backs about things they were brought into the discussion right away?

What if the problems between people just got solved and you didn’t have to intervene all the time?

How much more real work could get done?

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photo credit: s3a cc