By Art Dykstra, Tim Williams, and Elaine Porterfield

Understanding and managing the habits of gossip

Malicious gossip has ruined careers and cost organizations their reputations, not to mention their profits. Given our human propensity to talk about other people and social situations, what’s a leader to do?

The authors of You Won’t Believe This! have studied gossip’s impact on human groups through history, all the way up to current electronic social media.

• What’s the harm in a little gossip at work?
• What three factors come into play when social conversation crosses the line into malicious gossip?
• Do women really gossip more than men?
• What is the potential impact of cyber gossip on an organization?
• Most important, is it possible to eliminate or even significantly diminish malicious gossip in an organization?

You Won’t Believe This! goes beyond social science research and into the office, the arena where malicious gossip is more than just an interesting topic of study. The authors expose the real damage done to individual employees, teams, and the organization itself. They also offer tested strategies for working with team members who engage in gossip. In fact, they assert that it is possible to create a positive organizational culture where gossip is significantly less likely to rear its malicious head.

There is a social power greater than the habit of gossip. You Won’t Believe This! holds the key to unlocking the power of Positive Culture in your organization.

ISBN 978-1-892696-47-9
Hardcover
290 Pages