Gossip vs Career - Stand Out From The Crowd

Dear loving people,

You hear it all the times and almost everywhere that “many roads lead to Rome”. The quest for success in life, involves going through gargantuan labyrinths of all sort with tact and tenacity. While a monthly salary is not necessarily equal to wealth, I consider it an important stepping-stone. He who talks salary, eventually talks career and thus, the place of career management.

One strategic approach to career management is to find effective ways to stand out on your job. Being good at what you do is obvious, of course, but great job performance alone won’t be enough to break from the crowd. One way to make sure you stand out and get noticed is by speaking up.

You may know how to do a great job in your position, but there is always room for improvement. Take time to look at how you do what you do, how people and processes work around you, and think about ways everyone could do it better. Come at it with a fresh perspective and find ways to improve efficiency or increase effectiveness.

Often times, great ideas are hidden in changing and challenging “the way we’ve always done it.” While small improvements may not be earth-shattering, over time, they can add up to big progress. And if you’re the employee who made the suggestion, you will stand out.

Here lies the trap! Some people and trust me, a good number of them in trying to speak up in order to stand out, use the slimy approach of gossiping. Just think of the damage gossiping can do. Not only can it ruin people’s reputations, it can ruin careers, and can make life pretty miserable for the person being talked about. There you go now, you soon find yourself trying to build a career by destroying careers.

The biggest problem with gossip is that you don’t always know what’s truth or fiction. Rumors can spread like wildfire, and trust me, they always do. Once they are out there, they can be very hard to stamp out. Also, can you trust your source? We all know who the office gossip is in our offices – and there’s always one person who seems to be at the cutting edge of what’s going on – but how much do we trust this person? How or why do they know so much about other people? Where are they getting their information? Who are they talking to? Chances are, as fast as this person is dishing out the gossip, you can be sure that he or she is also feeding gossip up to senior management at the same time and most of the time with inconceivable details and curves.

Gossip, like any other guilty pleasure, needs handling with care. Think about the image gossiping creates too. If you really cared about your career progression, it’s probably something you wouldn’t care to participate in. A gossip does not present an image of a serious professional keen to progress in his or her career. Rather it suggests an idler, someone who would rather spend time talking about other people than getting on with their own tasks, and often, someone who is quite malicious with it too.

On the other side of the coin, an office without chitchat can be one whole system that drains productive energy – it’s what keeps the camaraderie going and is a big part of contributing to your happiness at work. It makes you feel part of a team and pleased and flattered to be included. If people weren’t allowed to chinwag in the office, it would happen outside of work, so where do you draw the line especially as what some people consider to be good gossip, can turn toxic? The team’s best interests are subjective; employees can misinterpret rules, and sometimes what is best for the organization differs from what is best for the team.

As somebody who quests for success, who wants to stand out from the crowd, you must get your priorities straight. What do you want? To be successful at work? To get the projects you want? The raises, praises and promotions? Or to be known as the source for dirt on whomever? Sure, knowing the skeletons in the closets of various people may give you some leverage for a while, but that leverage is temporary and fragile, because as soon as those people can find a way to get rid of you, they will - Trust me on that. No one appreciates blackmail, emotional or otherwise period.

Will Rogers says, “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.”