Girlfriend, you won’t believe what I just heard. Don’t tell anybody, but …” How many of us thrive on hearing the ‘dirt’ about others? It’s called gossip and man, oh, man can it be fun to be the first to know.

The down side is gossip damages the reputation of the person being gossiped about, and to a lesser degree, damages the reputation of the person who spreads it. Gossip can be entertaining when it passes long positive and interesting information, but is dangerous when it demeans or endangers another person’s character. Once you develop a reputation as a gossip within your company, those in positions of leadership will avoid giving you sensitive, confidential, and timely information and you will be shunned by those in circles of power and influence.

Gossip takes away from the business at hand and steals time and productivity from your company as surely as stealing money from the office’s petty cash drawer.

Gossiping becomes a habit like any other daily behavior. While the image of people enjoying congenial chats around the proverbial water cooler may conjure up pictures of laughter and harmony among your associates, it’s not always that way. As soon as someone in your group begins maliciously gossiping about people in your office, they take the chance of damaging their career as well as the person being gossiped about; that is when gossip becomes an unacceptable professional behavior and a major etiquette faux pas.

There are times when passing along some salacious tidbit about someone seems too tempting to keep to yourself, so you whisper it with a conspiratorial admonition, “Don’t tell anyone, but…” After three or four people have shared the same information, the original story gets diluted by half truths and exaggerations and invariable some gets hurt.

People gossip about others because they think that having information and passing along hot scoops gives them some sort of power only known to insiders.

Do Men Gossip?

Surprise, surprise, surprise! Men are just as guilty of gossip as women, sometimes being worse. Women are more skilled than men at making gossip entertaining. A study found that 33 percent of men indulge in gossip almost every day, compared with 26 percent of women. What do men like to gossip about? According to Sharon Supriya, a famous Indian researcher, men gossip as much as women about colleagues they would like to go to bed with and (shock) they are interested in talking about potential girlfriends and sexual rivals, even those who already have a girlfriend or partner. Men also spend more time talking about themselves than women. They call the conversation ‘networking.’ Men mostly gossip with work colleagues, and female friends; women prefer to “dish dirt” primarily with female friends and relatives.

Men gossip about work, politics or other highbrow topics less than 5 percent of the time, unless women are present.

Men and women love to read, watch and talk about celebrity gossip. Men love to watch gossip shows. If you don’t believe it, think about ESPN. It is the gossip heaven for men.

Gossiping about others also keeps an individual from looking at themselves and their own life. Those who gossip may be bored, petty, immature, or just nasty people who enjoy passing along information about other people’s weaknesses, foibles, and idiosyncrasies. They need an audience to satifsy their desire to draw attention to themselves as they trash others. Listening and providing such people with an audience makes you guilty of having the same weak character they have.

Benefits of Gossip

There are many articles on the net that talk about ill effects of gossips and the plight of gossip victims. However, do you know that there is a place for gossip? Scholars say that gossip fulfills an important role in our daily interactions and it is essential for human survival as gossip unites people, calms them, warns about bad behavior and even entertains them.

Gossip is a social skill, not a character flaw (unless a person is really socially on tilt). It’s only when you don’t do it well that you get into trouble. However that doesn’t give us the freedom to talk anything about anybody. One has to keep in mind to watch what he or she says about others because you would not want false information floating about you the next day.

From an etiquette standpoint, if you want to look poised and professional at all times, keep yourself above the gossip fray.