Episode 5 | ICM Talks and Gossip | Interview with Dominique Darmon on her newly published book

(upbeat music) - Hello everyone. My name is Naceli Garmosarappu, and today I am here with a senior lecturer at the Hague University of Applied Sciences, who has recently also become an author of a very exciting yet educating book called "Have I Got Dirt For You?" using office gossip to your advantage. And the author that I'm speaking about is of course the one and only Dominic Darman. Welcome, and thank you so much for joining me today. - Thank you very much, Naceli. Thanks for having me here. - Of course, the pleasure is all mine. So firstly, would you give a brief introduction of yourself to anyone who might not know you yet? - Sure, yeah, I'm Dominic Darman, and I've been working at ICM for the last 10 years. And so before that, I was working in television for Canadian broadcasters, for a variety of Canadian broadcasters. - That's awesome. - So your experience goes from wall to wall, I guess we could say. - Yeah, you can say that. That's the advantage of being a bit older, I guess. - That actually brings me to my first question. Since you have such a broad experience, having taught so many exciting classes and courses, what exactly made you decide to write the book on gossip out of all topics? - Yeah, sure, it sort of started off a bit as a coincidence because I was teaching corporate communications a while back on nearly like maybe eight years ago. And then it was talking to students, we were having discussions in class. And we were always talking about, I'm sure you remember that from your communications classes, you know, the flow charts. - Yes, of course. - How information flows from top down and bottom up, and you talk about that. And then it was also the discussion came about, well, what about the grapevine, the role of the grapevine, and how that distorts information. So we started to talk about that in class. And then I just threw that in, you know, what's the role of gossip? And then suddenly I saw the students were becoming very animated by it. And then I thought, actually, this is interesting from a communication point of view. So I started to do a little bit of research on it. And I found that there's actually quite some literature written about gossip and organizations, you know, as part of organizational studies or organizational behavior. So then I had a little bit that idea that this would be maybe something nice to research. - For sure, for sure. I think we can also say gossip is everywhere around us. - Of course. - Absolutely, everyone uses it. - Yes. - But I don't think it's necessarily something people would see as a very academic thing to do. It's usually seen as something quite negative. - Yeah. - Why is gossip actually that important and that beneficial? - Yeah, it's interesting because as you say, gossip has a horrible reputation because when I started to do the research on it, you just Google gossip or office gossip and you see a lot of articles that are written saying that you should stay away from gossip. You shouldn't do it, you know, that for managers, you know, how to get your employees to stop gossiping at all costs in the US. They even have these rules on to restrict gossip. So it's quite a big deal. And then at the same time, you found other articles that were saying, yeah, it's actually part of our human makeup. I mean, it's part of our genes to gossip. And then like in, you know, Noah Yuval Harari's sapiens in that book, he even says that that was the way, the thing that made us that distinguished us from animals is your capability to gossip. Because a long time ago, if you didn't know which tribes to avoid and where the dangers were and who you could trust and who you couldn't trust, yeah, you could, yeah, it would be a question of survival. If you didn't do it, you wouldn't survive. So it's sort of like it became part of our genetic makeup to gossip properly. So that's also, I found that really weird because on one hand, it's such an essential communications tool when you think about it. And then it's a little bit dismissed. It's something bad or something that you shouldn't be doing or something kind of. So yeah, it's, I found that contradiction quite interesting as well. If you never gossip or people who don't gossip at work are kind of socially inept. I mean, they're not really there and they're not really part of a group or they're not really part of the corporate culture. And so that's career suicide to stay away from it. On the other hand, studies show that if you're constantly gossiping and you're in front of the water cooler and you're blabbing nonstop, you're also going to be viewed in a negative way. So there's this kind of middle ground, like a little bit in between, which I call the sweet spot of gossip. And that's the optimal amount of gossip that you want to be doing, yeah. - Yeah, I guess perhaps the negative view that is laid on gossip maybe comes from it's a little twin called rumor. Perhaps because I think I can speak for a lot of people. I at least used to think that gossip and rumor are the same exact thing. You said that gossip is very, very essential actually. You mentioned that rumor is best to stay away from. So what is the difference? - Right, so sure, let's just start off with gossip. Even within gossip, I mean, there are, you know, gossip can be used in a very positive way, right? For instance, if you want to learn the rules of the corporate culture, you want to warn somebody, you want to protect a colleague, okay, all these reasons, then it can be very good. But of course, if you're using it to push forward an agenda or to backstab a colleague, you know, that's very bad. But generally speaking, like gossip is more first-hand testimony, I see what happens. I always use this example, you know, like if you see, yeah, let's say your classmate Joe is at a bar and you see him flirting with the waitress and you watch it happen, and then the next day you tell a friend, your friend Anne, you say, hey, guess what, I saw Joe last night and he was really flirting with this waitress, you know? You're gossiping, because you saw it with your first hand, you saw it with your own eyes. Maybe you'll exaggerate, maybe not, okay? So we're hoping that it's more or less pretty close to the truth. But then if Anne goes and tells another person, she's flirting a rumor because she didn't see it with her own eyes. And then that's where the interpretation and the false accounts kind of creep in. And after the fourth or fifth story then, it's like poor Joe's been having a full blown affair or sexually harassing the waitress or all these things and that can be nasty. Also another thing that's really important is that usually gossip has an author. Like if I tell you the story, you know who I said, okay, yeah, well Dominique saw that, so okay, so you know the author. And then afterwards, if I've been exaggerating, you can slap me on the hand, say you're such a drama queen, you've been exaggerating this, it's not good. But the problem with rumor is that it often, the author gets lost. It's often I heard or people say or, and the stories that will remain nameless, write that kind of thing. And then so therefore you protect yourself and that gives you much more liberty to spread the wrong things as well. - Sure, I guess we could say one of the things that people do wrong when it comes to gossiping is perhaps using a source that they don't even know is true. - Absolutely, yeah. But I'm assuming there's a lot more things that people do wrong when it comes to gossiping. - Absolutely, that's why there's a whole book about it. Yeah, 'cause it's, there are many ways that you can make faux pas or make mistakes. But as you say, for sure, first of all, always figuring out who's the author and to what extent, how close they are to what actually happened is a first step by the credibility aspect, who's telling you the story. If people say, "Oh, I've heard," or, you know, people say, and then my alarm bells tend to go off. It's probably not, it might not be really true. And maybe it's harming that colleague or that person. So then you're a bit more careful. - Would you say that is the most common mistake that people make or is there something else that's-- - There are lots of, it's hard to find which one is the most common mistake. I mean, that's the big one. It's also, and that's again, the thesis throughout my book. It's not just the amount that you gossip that can make or break a person, right? It's also, yeah, who you gossip with. So sometimes trusting the wrong people. You think that you have a clique with a colleague and then you share too much. And then you don't know maybe that colleague has an agenda and then it's gonna use what you're saying, you know, to get forward their agenda or to prove to management that they're right or whatever. And then they might, they're not thinking the effect it has on you. So sometimes trusting the right people is an issue. Also culture plays a big role. - Oh, of course. - And that's also the rules. There are sort of these hidden rules of how to gossip. And that changes a lot from one culture to the next. They're trying to build trust with someone and you think, oh, wow, I'm really sharing because I wanna show that I trust you, that I wanna be friends with you. And then you're going like, whoa, my God, if she speaks that way about someone else, how is she gonna talk about me? And so then you're losing the trust. So those are things, I think, where people make often mistakes. - For sure. - Yeah. - Is there a particular incident where you, for example, have made a horrible mistake? Was it a thing or you got caught maybe even? Or anything like that? - Several times, actually. And I think that's also what made me think about the book as well in terms of coming with tips because I thought especially from the cultural point of view, I certainly made mistakes. And as a Canadian, for instance, and I also, that's an example, I like to use a lot, is the, you know, you talk to, I see two colleagues talking about it and they're, we're very, Canadians tend to be very low contact. So we like to spell things out, we wanna know things exactly. So if they were going, oh, you have to work with Jane and then the eyebrow goes up and I was like, tell me, what did she do wrong? And I wanna know everything. And then they immediately saw me as very indiscreet. So that's something that it took me a while to realize that maybe the Dutch tend to be a little bit more, they'll, a hint or an insinuation is enough. And if you push too much, you come across as indiscreet. Yeah, and then also the vocabulary, for instance, in France, people use nicknames, they might compare people to animals. Like as a, and they say, oh, this reception issue is such a bulldog, she didn't let me do the, and then it's not, it's no big deal. And I said to something like that once to a Dutch colleague, and I could see her was really shocked, like how could she speak like that? - Yeah, I think probably as a Canadians, also that people think Canadians are these sweethearts, we never wanna harm anyone. - Yes, yes, and maybe people expect, yeah, certain behaviors or have certain stereotypes of certain cultures, and then they're surprised when you, yeah, 'cause it's, in that way, they can be, they're not direct, but they're very, they like to spell things out a lot more. So you have to know that, and if you don't, yeah, it can be confusing, yeah. But there's also just, if I can just add something, also it's more like there isn't a recipe, or it's really much about getting you to think about certain attitudes, reflecting, and thinking, considering the differences, or considering certain situations. And then I think by just being aware of that and reflecting on it is a good start. So yeah, it's not like there are fast rules, absolutely. - Yes, of course. - All right, so I think to sum up, we can say there's a lot of details that go into actually gossiping the right way, and it is a fine art, I could even say. - Absolutely. - There's a lot of things you need to take into consideration to find that sweet spot of gossip. - Yes. - Well, now I know where that spot lies, and if you wanna find out how to gossip the right way and actually use it to your advantage as well, then have I got the thirst for you using office gossip to your advantage? - Here's your ticket to it. - Thank you very much. - Thank you so much for coming once again. - Thank you, Natalie. (upbeat music)