LECTORAAT CHANGE MANAGEMENT – De Haagse Hogeschool

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by two very different magazines about gossip: the Dutch Vrouw Glossy, and the German business magazine Impulse. Both hit the newsstands this summer.

The Telegraaf’s Vrouw Glossy published a special edition about gossip and ‘juice channels’. In her article, ‘Help, ik ben een juice junkie,’ journalist Eva van Riet openly talks about her addiction to juice and her love of gossiping about celebrities with friends. “Is this a bad thing?” she asked me during an interview. “Should I feel guilty about it?”

“Absolutely not,” I responded, “as it’s in our nature as human beings to be curious about others, and to want to talk about other people.” In my book, Have I Got Dirt for You: Using Office Gossip to your Advantage, I even recommend employees to gossip about celebrities with their colleagues. Brad Pitt will never know (and certainly won’t care) if you’re talking about him with Bob from accounting. And it’s a lot safer to gossip about Brad Pitt than about your manager, who could eventually get wind of it.

I admire Eva’s openness in her article, as a survey at the beginning of the magazine shows that the majority of respondents claimed to dislike gossip. (I really find it fascinating that we judge so poorly a behavior that is so intrinsically human. And that there is so little nuance when it comes to gossiping.  Rumors, bullying, slander are too often synonyms for gossip).

The same survey indicates that 76% of respondents said they are absolutely not interested in juice channels, and don’t care much about the private lives of celebrities. Yet an interview with Yvonne Coldeweijer, who runs a very popular juice channel on YouTube and Instagram, reveals that while many readers openly claim to hate her, they still can’t resist diving into her content with great appetite. Indeed, many juice channels in The Netherlands (such as Life of Yvonne, Roddelpraat, and Farwynotsawry) have hundreds of thousands of followers.

However, I tell Eva, I certainly do not condone such juice channels. While gossiping about celebrities with friends and colleagues is rather harmless, spreading (very often fake) stories about them is another matter. Lives and reputations can be destroyed instantly, before anyone can have the chance to fact check. Contrarily to gossip magazines such as Prive and Story, juice channels do not follow any journalistic guidelines and do not take responsibility for any of the harm they may cause their subjects.

The conversation I had with journalist Wiebke Harms from Impulse Magazine was about the role of gossip in the workplace, whether it can be eliminated from the office (it can’t), and how managers can deal with it effectively. The most important step, I told her, is to distinguish between good and bad gossip, (or between gossip and rumors).

“For example, if two colleagues discuss a presentation by a third colleague, they can either praise the performance or complain about poor quality – both are forms of gossip. The colleagues are exchanging their views on a presentation they both witnessed. Rumors, on the other hand, arise when someone tells stories they haven’t personally experienced. People tend to embellish these second-hand anecdotes. These narratives drift further away from the truth, even incorporating deliberate lies. Rumors can never be good, but gossip can be.”

One of the most essential ingredients of good gossip is secrecy; a juicy story should remain between the gossiper and listener. And that’s exactly what the juice channels do not do, and in my eye, why they are such bad gossips!