The Art of Being an Ethical Office Gossip
The savviest people in any workplace tend to have a few things in common: sharp instincts, a strong understanding of peoples’ motivations, and excellent timing. They always have the right reactions to news and curry favor with the right people, making it seem like they’re master predictors of how an org can shift and change. All of this can look like intuition or exceptional pattern recognition. To their credit, part of it is. But more often than not, the “street smart” amongst you are building their careers on carefully curated and masterfully trafficked gossip.
None of us like to admit we’re gossips. We wouldn’t put it on a resume or bring it up at family dinner. Most of the people I know would denounce the title entirely— they “have no time for gossip.”
Respectfully, that’s a lie. Or it’s a career mistake. I have worked with dozens of senior leaders, including some outstanding ones, and I have never met an accomplished leader who turned their nose up at valuable workplace intel just because it was passed under the table. Most of the best leaders I know are at least half-decent at informal info-trading.
The problem is gossip gets a bad rap. It summons unpleasant memories of teenage mean girls and whispered betrayals. Ignoring the latent sexism in that reputation, it’s also unfairly essentializing. Most real-life workplace gossip is neither malicious nor nefarious, and the alliance networks that spread it are usually built on some of the highest-trust, highest-value relationships you can build at work.
Telling a colleague their project is getting axed or that a beloved leader is on their way out is almost always an act of solidarity, not mean-spirited sabotage. It’s still gossip—casual and off the record—but it’s not hard to understand why this type of info-sharing is materially different from dishing about an extramarital affair or revealing who’s been stealing Katie’s yogurt from the fridge.
Informal office information networks are tools of utility, not entertainment. Most of us working adults—although crucially not all of us—have learned the peril of spreading defamatory information just because we can. When we gossip, it’s more often because we suspect our leaders are obscuring, diluting, or distracting us from whole truths, stripping us of context-rich environments where we can make sense of what’s happening around us. For the average employee, gossip is their most potent antidote to bullshit-comms-team-approved messaging and dysfunctional information cascades.
Understanding that, let me pitch you directly: it’s worth learning how to be a good office gossip.
When done skillfully and with kind intentions, participating in office gossip can quite literally change your career. Great office gossips are trusted, appreciated, and equipped with information that creates the illusion of intuition and maturity. Get good at gossiping and you will be the person who always says the right thing at the right time.
And so I present to you, some non-exhaustive rules of the road for becoming an Ethical Office Gossip (EOG). You don’t have to flaunt it in an interview or tell anyone that’s how you identify.
But if the entire borough of Brooklyn can embrace non-monogamy, I believe we are ready to formally talk about how to be great gossips.
Here are the basics:
Rules for Ethical Office Gossips
Rule 1: Learn the types of gossip.
Not all gossip is created equal. EOGs need to be able to parse the type of information that comes their way to be able to share it responsibly.
Secretive gossip is the most common and most helpful type of office gossip. It’s context-building information like who’s leaving and why, or what a VP really thinks about the new strategy. Secretive gossip is the easiest type to traffic in because it isn’t career-ruining if it leaks, and sometimes it’s not even consequential. More often than not, secret gossip is just the version of the truth that comms and HR didn’t approve. Spread it tactfully and often.
Silly gossip is harmless, fun, and embarrassing without being humiliating. It unites us over the fact that the working world can be absurd! Untimely Zoom unmutings, the identity of the yogurt thief, and who wore their shirt inside out at the board meeting are all silly gossip. It isn’t of much practical use, but it’s great happy hour fodder and an absolute delight to receive.
Confidential gossip is the serious stuff that you could actually get in trouble for spreading. Think layoffs, executive departures, and acquisitions. It can be helpful and even career-shaping, but it must always be shared with caution. Share confidential gossip only with other verified EOGs who need to know it to succeed at their jobs or because you’re drowning trying to hold it alone. This type of gossip is not for beginners, but when you get good, it will start finding you.
Salacious gossip is precisely what you think it is, and you should avoid it altogether. If it comes your way, let it die with you. This is the type of character-condemning or even career-ruining information that actually causes harm. If you hear it and simply must tell someone, tell your wife, your childhood best friend, or your mom. Moms love salacious gossip, but it has no business traveling between colleagues.
Rule 2: Understand the informal network.
Gossip usually travels over well-worn paths, and you need to know what they are. Make yourself aware of who talks to whom, who’s loose-lipped, and where you have leaks. As a general rule of thumb, assume that if someone is sharing other people’s gossip with you, they are also sharing yours with someone else. Try to keep tabs on it and never share information if you have zero hypotheses about where it could end up.
Rule 3: Avoid gossip asymmetries.
Don’t spread gossip to the gossipless. Trading gossip is never about reciprocity and should be done generously--not transactionally--but people who are hungry for gossip because they have none are a threat to your network. Firstly, if no one else is trusting them with information, you should worry there’s a reason. Secondly (and more importantly), someone who isn’t responsible for high-charge info in their job doesn’t understand the gravity of holding it, and they won’t understand the stakes of sharing it. These people are nosy and undiscerning. Avoid at all costs.
Rule 4: Never narc.
Unless Legal gets involved, there is never a good reason to get someone else in trouble so you can get ahead. Exposing the gossip network for personal gain makes you the least trustworthy kind of person. If you must report something for moral reasons, protect your sources like your career depends on it. Theirs might. EOGs don’t mess around with others’ reputations, and they don’t sell out other EOGs for personal gain. Seriously, don’t be a narc.
Rule 5: Trust requires mutual risk.
There’s no clean-cut way to determine who you can and can’t trust at work. Your intuition will be right about some people, and at least once, it’s going to be wrong. However, as a general principle, when choosing to share information, remember this: secrets are safest when both people will suffer from a leak.
Sometimes, that risk is the collapse of the intel channel, more often it’s terminal relationship damage. If you’re being a responsible EOG, it should never look like someone losing their job or being irreparably embarrassed. But when trying to assess whether you can trust someone to keep a secret, consider what they have to lose and if they’re really in the blast radius with you.
Rule 6: Don’t gossip in public channels.
This should go without saying, but absolutely no Slack, no email, no Teams, no Zoom chat. Don’t even gossip in texts. If you must put something in writing, use an encrypted app like Signal and set the messages to disappear. It might feel excessive, but there’s not a good reason to leave a paper trail. So don’t.
Rule 7: Know when to say “I don’t want to know.”
EOGs know when to tap out. Sometimes your source will underestimate the risk of telling you something, and it’s your job to protect both of you. Other times information might feel too heavy for you to handle or might start feeling mean. Peoples’ lines around this stuff are drawn differently. Know where yours is and when you feel yourself getting pulled over it, you can always say “you know what, I don’t want to know.”
Rule 8: Tone is everything.
Tone is as essential as content. When gossip is silly, keep things light, not catty. When it’s serious, aim for informative, not alarmist. “Can you believe that….” sounds very different when uttered in the name of mischief, disparagement, fearmongering, and benevolent forewarning. Tragically, ethical gossiping is often fumbled in the delivery.
Rule 9: Keep things in perspective.
Inevitably, you will experience a gossip leak, but don’t get too worked up. Most corporate secrets don’t need to be secrets. Comms, legal, HR, and juvenile leaders will make information secretive in order to make it (and accordingly, them) feel more important. And when we make it whole departments’ jobs to anticipate and avert communication disasters, we lose sight of the fact that most information-leak-disaster scenarios are tail-end probabilities. As long as no one is insider trading, violating privacy laws, trampling on people’s trust, or grossly crossing the obvious line into slander… it’s usually not that serious.
Rule 10: Information is always less important than relationships.
The golden rule of being a gossip: no single piece of information is worth more than a deeply trusting relationship. Trust is a fragile thing that most of us are already reticent to give. When people share gossip with you, they are entrusting you with their reputation and often their own relationships. Do not violate that trust lightly.
Between you and me, the most valuable information in any company will always flow informally through the people most capable of holding it.
Becoming an ethical office gossip means becoming that person: trustworthy, discerning, plugged-in, steady, and consistently useful to others. That reputation is built over time and with great care, but it’s worth it. Because when you’re standing at one of the crossroads that counts, you’ll have all the info you need.
You just didn’t hear it from me 😉