Michael was worried. Rumors that the current quarter would be even more difficult were spreading so rapidly that he couldn't see any way to deal with them. He turned to face Lou. "Unless we come up with a plausible story, we'll start to lose people in a couple of weeks."
The common metaphors
about rumors are misleading"It has to be more than just a plausible story," Lou replied. "It has to be true. If it isn't true, our credibility will be shot."
Lou is pointing out the First Rule of Rumor Management: Credibility Is Your Most Powerful Tool. If even one of your rumor-squelching stories proves wrong, squelching the next rumor becomes much more difficult.
Two common metaphors for rumor generation and propagation are the "rumor mill" and the "grapevine." Both are misleading.
- The rumor mill
-
The Boott Cotton Mills and Eastern Canal in the Lowell National Historical Park. Photo by Andrew Donovan courtesy the U.S. National Park Service.
- The grapevine
- This metaphor suggests that rumors propagate along a linear path. To listen to rumors, you just plug into the grapevine. The actual rumor propagation medium is a tightly connected network of personal relationships. Rumors propagate far more rapidly over this network than they would over any linear structure.
Cutting the grapevine or shutting down the rumor mill doesn't work, because there is no grapevine and there is no rumor mill. Rumors can pop up anywhere, and spread by hopping along personal relationships, fed mostly by anxiety and worry. Here are five strategies for managing organizational rumors.
- Credibility is your most powerful tool
- Credibility can't quell rumors or limit their formation. But it can launch the Truth. Be clear, be early, and be right.
- Repair your credibility when it gets tattered
- Repairing organizational credibility often requires replacing management or reorganizing responsibilities. If you choose neither, then publicly delegate responsibility to a new high-visibility subordinate of anyone you choose not to replace.
- Be judicious about openness
- Many believe that openness prevents rumors. While secrecy does stimulate rumors, openness limits them only if it reduces anxiety. Openness can even make things worse, if it adds to anxiety.
- Leave no voids
- When people worry, they make up what they don't know. When we say nothing about a topic people are worrying about, we leave a void to be filled by rumors.
- Anticipate anxiety
- If you know of a probable source of anxiety or worry, get out in front of it. Don't wait for rumors to form. Take mitigating actions early, and make those actions known.
Even if you do all this, remember that you're not in charge of what people worry about. People might still worry — it's their choice. They might not believe you, or they might not hear you. Listen for the rumors and use what you learn to adjust your actions. Top
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Related articles
More articles on Emotions at Work:
The Focus of Conflict
- For some teams conflict seems to focus around one particular team member. The conflict might manifest
itself as either organizational or interpersonal issues, or both, but whatever the problem seems to
be, the problem is never the problem.
Taming the Time Card
- Filling out time cards may seem maddeningly trivial, but the data they collect can be critically important
to project managers. Why is it so important? And what does an effective, yet minimally intrusive time
reporting system look like?
Be With the Real
- When the stream of unimportant events and concerns reaches a high enough tempo, we can become so transfixed
that we lose awareness of the real and the important. Here are some suggestions for being with the Real.
Scope Creep and Confirmation Bias
- As we've seen, some cognitive biases can contribute to the incidence of scope creep in projects and
other efforts. Confirmation bias, which causes us to prefer evidence that bolsters our preconceptions,
is one of these.
Quips That Work at Work: I
- Perhaps you've heard that humor can defuse tense situations. Often, a clever quip, deftly delivered,
does help. And sometimes, it's a total disaster. What accounts for the difference?
See also Emotions at Work and Emotions at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming February 12: On Substituting for a Star
- Newcomers to work groups have three tasks: to meet and get to know incumbent group members; to gain their trust; and to learn about the group's task and how to contribute to accomplishing it. All can be difficult; all are made even more difficult when the newcomer is substituting for a star. Available here and by RSS on February 12.
And on February 19: Yet More Ways to Waste a Meeting
- Experts have discovered that people have been complaining about meetings since the Bronze Age (3300-1200 BCE). Just kidding. But I'm probably right. As an aid to future archaeologists I offer this compilation of methods people use today to eliminate any possibility that a meeting might produce results worth the time spent. Available here and by RSS on February 19.
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