Egwono watched from across the room as Favour spoke animatedly to Bola and shook her head, already fully aware of what was playing out from past experience. Favour was the gist-carrier of the company and seemed to consider it her personal responsibility to know delicious tit-bits about other people’s lives, especially their personal lives. It was something she took pride in and felt gave her a career advantage over others. The problem was that Favour’s loose-lipped character had given her quite the reputation of being dangerous to trust so critical information was generally kept away from her. They all had signed non-disclosure agreements but nobody trusted Favour not to spill the beans to get ahead.
Favour on the other hand saw gossip as a useful strategy for advancement in her career. If she knew what could ruin others, it would be easy for her to negotiate and get whatever she wanted. Of course she knew that technical competence and soft skills mastery were important but honestly, they were too much work for her to start learning. Besides, negotiating with other people’s information had served her well in the past so as the popular saying went ‘there is no need to change the winning team’.
Bola knew exactly the cards that Favour was trying to play. She had spent a great deal of time filling her in on all that had happened while she was away on leave. She saw beyond the carefully crafted stories into the mind of Favour. She could tell that Favour must have come from a background where she had to fight by any means possible to survive and get ahead of her competition. She also saw that Favour was an intelligent young woman who was wrongly guided and feeling empathy for her, she decided to have a talk with her about it.
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She was right. Favour had grown up in a polygamous family where there was an intense fight for survival. Her father was wealthy but there was no organized way for the wealth to flow round his large family and each of her father’s five wives had to device means to be in the good books of their husband.
Gossip was a tool that was freely used to achieve this and had become institutionalised in their family, even though it wasn’t called gossip. It was seen as being ‘smart and wise’ and she had carried that trait through high school and college up until this time, where she saw it as ‘playing office politics’.
“Favour, you are such an intelligent girl and I really don’t think you understand how good you are. You were easily the best candidate when you were hired five years ago but after coming in, you seemed to have forgotten how you got in and rather than growing in technical and soft skills, you’re upskilling in gossip. Do you even have any idea the type of reputation you have built in this company because of your penchant for gossip? You are ruining your chances to advance into Senior Management because your ability to maintain confidentiality is being questioned.
I invited you out to lunch to let you know this because I believe that you have what it takes to grow, but you need to deal with this gossip matter. I will arrange for you to see a therapist so that you can get help and accountability to put an end to this for once and for all”.
Gossip is a very common tool that is deployed to gain advantage when there is perceived competition and is damaging both to the one who gossips as well as the victims. It is a sign of fear and insecurity and gossip reveals the wound in the soul of the one who gossips. We can get ahead by first getting to the root of the why people gossip and healing the dysfunction in the soul.
The more secure and unafraid we become, the more the desire to gossip is diminished. We can then develop ourselves technically and emotionally, increase in confidence and trust, grow our value and use that value as a better negotiating tool.
