Office gossip, an essential skill

Managers who chat and interact with staff are the most effective, writes Fiona Smith.

If you are constantly off having coffee with a colleague, chatting in the tea room and swapping office gossip over the printer, you are not a slacker. Not at all, in fact you are likely to be a high-performing manager.

This piece of excellent news comes from the Right Management human resources consultancy, which recently conducted some research on behalf of a large financial services organisation that wanted to find out what sort of behaviour distinguished high performers from the rest.

What Right Management found was that the best managers are those who spend the most time getting to know their staff, briefing them and reviewing their work.

The regional general manager of Right Management, Bridget Beattie, says the results were surprising.

"I think it debunked some of the myths about people who are always going out for a cup of coffee," she says.

These high performers are actually developing their teams and building capability within the organisation - but they have sometimes been seen as "mavericks" because they do things in a highly social way.

Office gossip (who is being promoted, who is leaving, the swings and roundabouts of the business) can be viewed as idle chit-chat, but it is actually an important source of information for those who want to work effectively.

It is not just about being a political animal, it also tells you who is the best person to go to when you want to get something done and also the strengths and weaknesses of your organisation.

And, anyway, try to stop the small talk: a range of studies has confirmed people devote anywhere from a fifth to two-thirds or more of their daily conversation to gossip.

The important thing to remember is that this "keeping in touch" has a purpose. We are not talking about character assassination, we are talking about the office grapevine.

Right Management's research shows high performers spend almost twice the time on "relationship management", up the corporate ladder and down to their own direct reports, than lower performers.

"People want to know what is going on, what is expected of them and how they are going," Beattie says.

They plan coaching, feedback and performance management sessions for their staff and also focus on relationships with clients by spending more time with them in sales and business development meetings.

In that particular organisation, the high performers spent three hours a week chatting, managing and supervising, briefing and reviewing.

Those workers judged as "medium" spent two hours doing those things and poor performers spent less than 10 minutes.

The workers' performance was judged on such measures as revenue generation, team outputs, customer satisfaction and other key performance indicators.

Beattie says that the amount of time that managers spend on "people issues" is a sliding scale, depending on their level within an organisation.

"But as a CEO, if you are not spending one-third of your time on people leadership, then you are probably doing a disservice to your people," she says.

Low performers tend to keep their work to themselves, spend more time in internal meetings, on spreadsheet reporting and general administration.

Beattie says they get bogged down with the technical aspects of their work.

Because they do not spend the time transferring skills and knowledge to their team, it becomes difficult to delegate.

Beattie says this could be because these people do not realise how important it is to massage relationships and keep staff on track, but it could also be that their employer is not giving them the time to do these things.

It is too early yet to tell what impact this knowledge will make on the financial services company that was researched, but Beattie says "the word has spread and it is making a big difference".

Dropping by for a natter is clearly a great way of keeping in touch, but Beattie says the research also shows there is a limit.

"If they do it too much, it becomes irritating," she says.

Published: 17 July 2007