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Gossip can make
or break careers
Sociologist Ronald Burt, a
professor at the University
of Illinois, said people who
avoid work cliques do best
By Barbara Rose
Chicago Tribune (KRT)
Worried about what people say
about you at work? It's more than a
paranoid's concern.
Reputations are built as much by the
stories people tell about one another as
by the quality of their work.
"Good work has the duration of
morning dew," sociologist Ronald Burt
told managers at the University of
Chicago Graduate School of Business'
52nd annual management conference
in mid-May. "It's not enough to do
good work."
Reputations flourish not simply be
cause you do good work but because
people tell stories about your good
work, said Burt, Hobart W. Williams
Professor of Sociology and Strategy.
How widely this gossip circulates is
influenced by your position in work
place networks.
Some people work in tightly defined
teams and seldom communicate with
people outside Others talk to people in
many networks and carry ideas from
one part of an organization to another.
These so-called network entrepre
neurs have a wider view of the organi
zation and are judged to be smarter and
more creative. They get better evalua
tions, get paid better and fired less of
ten, Burt's research suggests.
"Creativity is no more than finding
someone more ignorant than you,"
Burt said.
Positive buzz shows up in paychecks.
A study of senior executives at an
investment bank found a correlation
between executive bonuses and posi
tive constituencies—or clusters of peo
ple who spoke well of them. A single
standard deviation higher on the curve
added $700,000 to their bonuses, while
a notch lower cost $350,000.
Reputations are important because
people are inclined to accept ideas from
those they trust. But you can't "own"
your reputation, Burt said. "You are the
object of your reputation."
"What we do when we tell stories is
to strengthen ties with one another," he
said. "The person we're discussing is
grist for the mill."
If the person asking an opinion of
someone seems to be looking for a neg
ative spin, we're likely to offer unflatter
ing stories — and vice versa, research
shows.
Network entrepreneurs come off bet
ter even when the gossip takes a nega
tive drift, according to research. Burt cit
ed a study of "character assassination"
that asked why a person made it hard
to get a job done.
The situation rather than the person
was blamed 50 percent of the time
when the person discussed was a net
work entrepreneur. By contrast, the per
son was blamed 70 percent of the time
when the subject was someone who
worked in clique, where the velocity of
gossip is high. Some words used to de
scribe the person included "charlatan,"
"back-stabber," "nasty" and "ill-tem
pered."
(c) 2004, Chicago Tribune.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/
Tribune Information Services.
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