Socrates and Gossip

Photo credit: Eye for Ebony

There is a Jewish proverb that cautions that what you don’t see with your eyes, you should not witness with your mouth. There is also a Turkish proverb that warns that anyone who will gossip to you about someone else will gossip about you with others.

According to a 2009 study conducted by Dr. Nicholas Emler with 300 volunteers, people spend up to 80 percent of their conversations discussing other people and their habits. Interestingly, Dr. Emler observes that gossip has some social benefits like offering a means for people to connect and learn more about others that they have never met. Ladies and gentlemen, this evening I would like to share with you the history of gossip, how to tell the difference between gossip from a good conversation and how to discourage gossip.

Back in the early days in England, gossip was a good thing. It meant companions at child birth. Yes, the group of women that attended a childbirth session to support the midwife or the expectant mother was actually referred to as the gossip. The verb “to gossip” was first used by Shakespeare in a birth scene to describe the idle talk that the relatives of the pregnant woman had as they waited on the midwife.

However, with time, gossip evolved into a conversation that involved rumors or hearsay about the affairs of others. Mary Gormandy, author of 101 Human Resource Management Tips cautions that gossip has serious consequences to human relationships and development including the loss of trust, reduced teamwork and productivity.

So you might be wondering how do we tell the difference between gossip and a good conversation. To help us understand this, I would like to share with you the story of the great philosopher Socrates. Has anybody heard that story about Socrates and gossip? Socrates was once stopped by an acquaintance as he walked through the markets. “I’ve something important to tell you,” the acquaintance said. “It’s about your friend.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Socrates said. “But, don’t tell me just yet. I run all information through a Three Filter Test to ascertain if I want to know it.” The man looked somewhat puzzled as Socrates continued, “First is the filter of truth. Whatever you want to tell me, have you seen or witnessed it first-hand?” “Umm…I actually heard it from someone,” the man said, “and, it is from a trusted source.”

“Alright. But that does not pass my first test,” Socrates added, “since you don’t know whether it’s true.”

“Second is the filter of goodness. Is that a good statement you want to make about my friend?” “Not really. That’s the reason I wanted—” Socrates interjected, “So, you want to tell me something bad about someone but don’t know if it’s true.

The last is the filter of utility.” He continued, “Your statement about my friend, is that going to be useful to me? ”Not really as such. I just wanted to share”

“Well, if the information is not necessarily true, it is not good, and, it is of no use,” Socrates concluded, “please, I don’t want to know about it.” Therefore, according to Socrates, a good conversation includes information that the speaker has experienced first-hand, speaks positively of the subject and is useful to the recipient of the message.

Mary Gormandy advises that if gossip comes your way, rise above it. So the next time someone approaches you with gossip and you want to discourage him or her, do the following. First, find out the speaker’s intention. For example, feel free to ask him: why do you want to tell me something about Sandra? This way you rack his brains and make him understand you are a responsible person. He might say something like, I just wanted to make you laugh or I just wanted you to be amazed at what happened to Sandra last week. After this proceed to ask them; would you stand by your word if I reported back to Sandra whatever you want to tell me? If they answer to the affirmative, give them a choice to proceed.

Eleanor Roosevelt would not have put it any better when she said –small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events and great minds discuss ideas. Ladies and gentlemen let us take up the challenge to be more mindful of our conversations because words once spoken cannot be recalled.

The Abilene paradox: Go along to get along?

Photo credit: Christina-Wocintechchat

Last week, one of my sisters posted her new hairstyle on our WhatsApp group. How do I look? She asked. Within a minute my other sisters had posted Wow! Nice! Chic! Fantastic. All the good words. My sister’s natural hair is long and silky so when she put a short weave, I thought Oh no! It looked bulgy, rough and seemed to be weighing a tonne on her. But guess what, I put up a thumbs-up emoji for her. Perhaps you have done that too before? Told someone something completely different from what you felt or thought? Perhaps not. But what does my sister’s hairstyle have to do with you? Just like I shared a false opinion with her not contradict my other sisters, so sometimes we go along to get along with the majority.

In my research I sought to find out: was there a name to that kind of behavior and what would be the consequences of that behavior to an organization? In 1974, Jerry Harvey, a professor of management science at the George Washington University went out together with his family through the sweltering heat of Texas 170 kilometers away to catch a bite in a town known as Abilene. On returning home, each of the four family members discovered that none of them had really wanted to go but had tagged along with the presumption that the other had wanted to go. The fact that four sensible people provided an opinion opposite to their true thoughts and feelings led professor Harvey to study the behavior. He termed it the Abilene Paradox and from his research, it affected up to eighty percent of employees in an organization.

So what makes an organization to be caught up in a situation where it collectively makes a decision contrary to the thoughts and feelings of individuals? According to Prof. Harvey, people naturally want to belong in a group. People also assume that there could be repercussions for sharing alternative ideas. During one of my meetings with an organization that advocated for social justice, one speaker listed rape as a minor offense. My eyes popped-out, my head boiled, I wanted to shout. But wait! no one else seemed to have noticed and I imagine contradicting a popular colleague would have caused me alienation. I shut up embarrassed and let it pass. 

The Abilene paradox can have serious consequences on organizational resources. In a project I was part of, our team developed a mobile phone app to help communities report social injustices. The initiative was great as it would have saved the organization travel costs. The project was set for piloting with 2,000 with a benevolent fund of twenty thousand US dollars. This included funds for software development and community training. Over coffee, my colleague and I noted a huge gap. Many of the women had basic phones with no space for the forty MB app. But we dared not to dampen the team’s spirit. The project was in the final stages and the team was excited about it. But as you can imagine, the fifty-thousand-dollar project failed at the piloting stage. 

Rooting out the Abilene Paradox keep teams motivated and take ownership of work projects. Rossbeth Canter, a professor at Harvard Business School suggests one-way managers can encourage team members to express what they really think is to present them with two or three options. And then allow them to analyze the pros and cons of each option and come up with a collective decision. Rossbeth further suggests that when running a project, managers must include checkpoints to permit their project team to pause, regroup, and consult before moving forward. Todd Ballowe suggests that managers should assign leadership roles to different team members for diverse ideas and create avenues to voice an opinion. This include talking to people on one on one, creating an anonymous hotline or conducting a private vote.

Frank A Clark says and I quote, "we find comfort among those who agree with us and growth among those who don’t." Organizations hire people like you and I for our unique knowledge and expertise. That expertise goes to waste when we hold back opinions when key decisions are being made. I now take steps to voice my opinions more backing them up with data. Why not take up the challenge too. You never know, you could save your organization twenty thousand dollars.