Gossip Is Great! (Pass It On!)
7th March, 2010 - Posted by janebeard - 1 Comment
Forget what your mother told you. Gossip is good. And it ought to be in your next presentation.
Yeah, gossip can be dangerous. But it’s always riveting and often useful. If you haven’t learned something interesting at the water cooler (or on the water cooler replacements of facebook and Twitter), you aren’t paying attention.
The fact is, our brains are hardwired for gossip.
When we lived in villages as hunter-gatherers – and that’s most of humanity’s existence, as it happens – we had to know where we stood with the rest of the tribe. Would we be left behind in the next move? Who gets the next stoning – me, or somebody else? It was matter of survival for us to know as much as we could about who was up and who was down.
The very fact that you are here today means that your ancestors were good at gossip, since your genes didn’t die out along the way.
Brain scientists can tell you about the parts of your brain that light up when you are in the presence of gossip, and how your eye sight, hearing and even your heart beat change in response.
But you don’t need scientists to tell you what you experience at least weekly. Remember back to the last time you sat on a plane, or stood in line at Starbuck’s and heard That Tone of Voice that accompanies the words, “So THEN I said to him…” You heard most of what followed, didn’t you?
Gossip is such a powerful tool. And it’s time to be using it on your audience. If you have a message you really want us to hear, gossip it. Especially if you want us to spread the message after the presentation.
It’s all in the intention you hold as you speak the words. The content doesn’t have to be salacious – as long as your intention to gossip it is clear. It doesn’t have to be actual gossip (“Did you hear about Katie?”). It can be any words, spoken as if it’s gossip-filled:
- “This new search function will let us work smarter and faster than we could have imagined even a year ago!”
- “We’ll be dividing up the functions and re-assigning how sales leads get distributed, so you’ll want to understand how to make sure you get your fair share.
-
- “We’re charging off more business to non-paying customers than we budgeted for, and we have to turn things around fast.”
Imagine those sentences spoken the way you’d expect to hear them spoken in a meeting. Now go back and infuse them with, ”You can’t believe this amazing secret/inside tip/emergency no one else knows about.”
Hear and feel the difference?
Don’t get stuck on whether the message is gossip worthy or not. You can infuse the energy of gossip into any message, including, “Now we’ll take a ten minute break.” It’s the intention to make us listen that matters most.
So tune out your Mother’s advice, and your mentor’s admonitions. Gossip at us, at least once a meeting. I promise it will be something we’ll remember after the meeting is over…and maybe even share with others.
Pass it on.
1 Comment
Meredith Self
March 16th, 2010 at 3:11 PM
Great point. I like the blunt and non-apologetic way you describe this.
I just read Half the Sky, by Kristoff and Wudunn. They mentioned a study where people were far more likely to get involved from hearing a single emotional story, than statistics or a combo of emotional story and statistics. Make it personal, the study proved.
So…I’ll share the story and the stories of others for motivation.
Thanks!
Meredith
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