My boss is a gossiper. She gossips to me about a team member of mine. I’ve worked at this company for two years. The first year it wasn’t bad, but she gradually started to say negative things to me about my colleague. The sad part is I believed all this stuff at first. As I started to hear more, I couldn’t handle it. I told HR the truth and was advised to speak with my boss’s immediate boss. He said it was inappropriate and he would address it with her without mentioning any names. Our team includes only four people, and I feel my boss will know who complained. Do you think this was the right move on my part or should I have not done anything at all?
To read the answer, click here: Dilemma of the Month: My Boss Gossips
Instead of going to HR or management initially why not put on your big boy pants and nicely tell your manager that the feedback makes you uncomfortable? Although managers should not do this, sometimes people fall into bad habits and an adult, 1:1 wake up call can both be scripted and have better results than asking somebody else to deal with it for you.
I agree. That being said, my boss gossips, too. I honestly think it’s just his way of trying to develop relationships with his employees. Personally, I haven’t got the nerve to complain about it to him. And, I have actually gained knowledge from it that helped me in my job, so maybe not all gossip is bad.
I had to do that. I told her I didn’t feel comfortable knowing about the performance details of other workers. I told her that my coworker would probably hate knowing that others were hearing information from the boss about him as much as I would hate it if someone were told my performance shortcomings. I added that last part because it seemed likely that I too was being gossiped about. She was a pretty decent person in general and seemed to take it okay. She stopped slanging my teammates in front of me.