conflict
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Three Antidotes for Gossip

Gossip Is Like Poison

Dave Ramsey said in his entreleadership blog post here that gossip is like poison.

A few years ago I was visiting friends where we were gossiping about a certain person, (myself included unfortunately.)

At one point during the conversation I said “yeah and I am the only person who has ever called this person out on their behavior, I am the only person who cares enough to actually say something to them”. Which was true, I have gone to this person before in an attempt to call them out.

In response to this: “Yeah but there is no point in saying something to them…they are never going to change”

That struck me, it was then that I realized the foundation of gossip. The foundation of gossip is abandonment, she might as well said “I don’t care about them and, I dont care enough about them to help them change.” Long-term gossips don’t really want people to change, I think they need people to feel superior too.

I felt discouraged after I left my friend’s house. This conversation had broken down respect and trust in the people I was talking to. And still the person we were talking about had not changed.

Gossip is a relationship poison which spreads like wild-fire in organizations from top down. It doesn’t only poison the victims but also the gossips.

Three Antidotes

If you are a gossip yourself or hate to see gossip here are three antidotes to this poison. Anyone can learn to use them.

  1. Go to the people being gossiped about and gently ask them rather than talk about them. If your relationship is too shallow to do this then there really is no point in discussing further. It is a waste of time and energy. Begin to care about how you spend your time and energy.
  2. Shoot it down when it starts, this takes a little courage and might start a fight, Dave Ramsey does this in his organization by immediately calling the victim into the room. He starts to ask them about the issue openly.
  3. Simply walk away, this is the easiest tactic that most people use to stop gossip. If done right this can be very effective.

In any case it takes self-respect and insistence on openness to stop gossip both in yourself and in others.

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Lead Your Family by Knowing It’s Season

Family life can be chaotic, it can be stressful, it can be expensive and it can be wonderful.  A family needs vision and leadership just like any team or group of people. One way to do this is to recognize the seasonal nature of family life.

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Families go through seasons, seasons of change, seasons of development, seasons of victory and seasons of difficulty.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,  a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.    (Ecclessiastes 3:1-8 – NASB)        

Leaders of families can embrace these times  by training and emphasizing life-lessons in seasons.  As the head of household ask yourself ‘what is the most important thing for our family in the next six months?’ what struggle is nagging the family? what weakness can we work on together?

Once your most important thing is identified, the next step for the head of household (ideally a dad and mom) is to communicate this most important thing, communicate often and with regularity until the season changes.

For example, my family (with young children) is learning how to control our anger. We are learning to be slow to anger and not quick to anger. We learn about anger, we learn about patience, we learn about the effect of anger on others and we learn how to help one another to be slow to anger.

What season might your family be in now? leave a comment below!

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Turning Your Working Teams into Creative Mobs

 

 

 

Creative people are all over the place.  Most people are able to create but when they team up things get ‘complicated’ and  problems can arise.

Organizations with teams of creative people are not always able to create up to their potential.  Competition, incompetent leadership, low morale, office politics all can work against the “creative mob.”  The power of a mob is shocking, especially when they work together, when they’re organized and united.  Mobs can work together to quickly do what only large groups can do, destruction of property, sending messages, building homes, or impacting politics.  But, when a mob competes and is fractured it ceases to be a mob and is just chaos.   Imagine the possibilities of hundreds or even thousands of creative mobs working together, cooperating and not competing.

Nothing would be impossible for them.

Individual Creativity + Organizational Health = Large Scale Human Creativity

 

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