05.05.04 The 2nd Practice for Avoiding Negative Gossip : Be Proactive

Be Proactive

One way to avoid participating in negative gossip is by being proactive; which refers to discerning those situations that are likely to spark off negative rumours, then taking appropriate action to circumvent them before they happen.

On a personal note, I proactively advocate for ‘zero-tolerance to gossip’ by advising mentees to present their concerns to God rather than gossiping against people; especially since they (mentees) can never be sure that their words will not be forwarded through the grapevine, moreover in a ‘spiced’ or distorted format. It is therefore difficult for mongers to cross my ‘anti-gossip boundary’; and much as that could happen, such an occurrence is quite rare.

When it comes to Nehemiah, we see that he was very proactive by avoiding participating in negative gossip against his opponents. He must have prepared for the gossip-fueled resistance that he would face from the enemies of Israel; and probably, that was why he chose to inspect the city at night in the beginning, to evade triggering more rumours at the very inception of the project (Nehemiah 2:11-16).

Looking at Aaron’s narrative in Exodus 32, my view is that he should have proactively presumed that the children of Israel would get impatient and fuss about Moses' absence since grumbling and stiff-nakedness had almost become the norm, as disclosed in Exodus 14:11-12 and 16:3. The rumour that Moses would not return had saturated the camp to the extent that, apart from the Levites (Exodus 32:26), everyone had been infected by it; and given that there were hundreds of thousands of people in the camp, the negative rumour can’t have circulated overnight. This means that Aaron had enough time to proactively arrest the rumour and reject the community’s request for an idol.

In the case of JuaLink, had Director Eliya been proactive enough, he could have predicted that Lulu would badmouth Faraja given the publicity officer’s gossiping habit and her crave to become ‘publicity manager’ soonest. With that suspicion, Eliya could have preemptively blocked all potential information gaps by keeping Lulu and her teammates promptly posted about the developments regarding Faraja’s recruitment. That way, since all members would have been well-informed prior, Lulu’s false allegations that Faraja had been hired as a result of her love affair with Eliya would have fallen on deaf ears. Thence Eliya and others would have avoided any entanglement in Lulu’s negative gossip regarding that matter. On a positive note, Neema was proactive enough, since she terminated any close association with Lulu as soon as the young graduate foresaw that the publicity officer could infect her with the ‘gossip vice’.

Therefore, be alert when taking part in discussions with peers. To be more specific, proactively scan your environment as well as team members. What situation is likely to provoke negative rumours? What can you do to prevent that kind of gossip from erupting? In case you find yourself in the middle of a ‘negative gossip’ discussion, where does the talk seem to be leading to? Can you participate without being dragged into that rumour? Can you excuse yourself before the conversation gets hotter or deeper? If you sense that the conversation is metamorphosing into negative gossip, avoid further involvement otherwise it could be too late for you to unravel yourself from that talk.