You’ve probably had this happen: A team member walks into a room, and the conversation stops. Everyone suddenly gets very interested in their coffee. You may observe this and watch the way it stings…or maybe it’s happened to you as a leader. Even the most confident team members feel that bite and the disconnect rippling through the room. It may be tempting to brush it off as gossip, or as out of your control. Unfortunately, persistent side conversations are rarely just chatter. They’re how people make sense of things when they feel unseen, uncertain, or unsure of where they stand with their leader or manager.
Leaders shape the conversation, whether they mean to or not.
A recent paper in the Leadership & Organization Development Journal emphasizes that the informal things leaders say about employees, strategic decisions, or often other leaders or managers directly shape how much people trust them. Depending on your style and culture, those everyday side conversations can erode trust and decrease productivity.
This matches what I see in my coaching work. Most of the leaders I work with are thoughtful, capable people who care deeply about their teams. It’s not intentional, but often under pressure, we stop noticing the small signals we’re sending. Informal talk is never going away. The question worth asking is what kind of conversation your presence is inviting.
What tends to set it off
Across the research, and in my own years leading teams in healthcare, life sciences, and finance, a few patterns come up repeatedly:
- People need a clear understanding of why things happen, especially around promotions, recognition, and workload. When the reasoning isn’t obvious, they fill in the blanks themselves, and the stories they tell usually are about favorites and politics.
- When words and actions drift apart, people watch what we do as leaders far more closely than what we say. A small gap between the two can feel huge to the people on the other side.
- Speaking up feels risky. If raising a concern feels like a gamble, people stop coming to you and start talking around you, leading to further miscommunication.
I’ve been thinking about “trust in the workplace” because it keeps coming up in my coaching and consulting practice. Recently, a client told me she’d been reading the book Dealing with Difficult People. She felt isolated and convinced she was the problem, then later realized her coworkers felt the same way. As they compared notes, they learned that their manager was having side conversations with each of the team members, and trust dissipated.
This isn’t a “soft” problem.
It’s easy to treat gossip as annoying but harmless. However, the research links it to lower trust, weaker psychological safety, less cohesive teams, and poorer performance. It tends to grow in exactly the conditions leaders can influence most: unmet needs for connection, a lack of transparency, and confusion about expectations.
The research also makes it clear that the answer isn’t to crack down on gossip. Suppressing side conversations will drive them further underground. Steady, consistent leadership that gives people clarity and makes it safe to come to you directly will really make a difference in organizational culture.
Where to start
If you’re noticing side conversations and a lack of productivity on your team, I invite you to reflect (without judgment) on three things: how might your decisions feel unclear to the people around you? When have you participated in gossip with team members or other leaders, and when has that potentially impacted others? Where have your values and behaviors started to drift apart?
It can be uncomfortable to answer these questions alone. As a high-achieving leader, you are probably carrying a lot, and it’s easy to miss what’s right in front of you when you’re moving fast. Coaching can help; together, we can look honestly at how you’re showing up, how your team is responding, and how to build an environment of trust, clarity, and confidence.