Speaker 1: What's up, CultureDrop, Galen here. I got a fiery topic for you, and this is gonna be one that not all offices can send to everyone else, because I'm gonna say shit stuff, and this is about how do you shut down toxic talk and bullshit inside a workplace? Let's roll. Man, I love topics like this. This can never be revisited enough, because there's something about human beings that love this stuff, and I love to talk about shutting it down. Here you go, and what I'm gonna give you is two things that you can say to shut down people coming to you with gossip, toxic rumors, and just garbage about other people in the workplace that you do not wanna engage in for a number of reasons. Before I share these very two effective ways to deal with those things, I wanna talk about why. Why does this matter? Why do you care? And there's a number of benefits to shutting down this kind of thing. Number one, reputation. You do not wanna be a person who is spreading and causing this kind of stuff inside workplaces, inside teams. Also, it's a bad look to be associated with the people who love drama, love gossip, rumors about other people, and just creating static and bull inside offices and teams. It's bad for your reputation. It's a bad look for you. Also, another benefit is that whether you know it or not, these are the kinds of things that cause negativity inside you. When you have rumors and you're spreading things, it might feel exciting to do, but the truth is you are learning things about other people. You're doing something that is ultimately cruel. It's mean to talk about other people. It's mean to judge other people, whether you like them or not. It's not appropriate and it's cruel and it's a mean thing to do. Lift people up if you speak about other people. Don't punch downward. If you have a problem with someone or you don't like them, either avoid them or go and resolve that with that person. Don't be the kind of person that makes their life worse by spreading rumors and gossip. It sucks. Okay, so if that resonates with you and you do wanna shut these things down, here are two great tools, some language that you can use and you can share with people to turn these things off when people come to you to be the place to send and spread this kind of stuff. Here's what to say to be the place that gossip goes to die. First of all, someone comes to me with some kind of thing, some toss, like, oh, guess what happened? I don't wanna talk about Jay or whatever. It is this. I have absolutely no opinion about that at all, period. It's a great way to shut that down. Be like, I have no opinion about that at all. I have nothing to add. For bonus points, include, I don't have time or space to care about that. It's none of my business. Lovely word tracks. These are things to say, yes, they feel awkward to the person who's like, I wanna share this gossip with you. I have absolutely no opinion about that at all. I don't have space for that. It's none of my business. Not interested in hearing it. I care about you, but no thank you. Second one, and this one is a little bit better as a redirect to nudgingly send someone in the right direction, which is, I'm happy to have this conversation to help you formulate what you wanna say to that person to go directly and sort this out with them, but I'm not here to just have you complain. So if the goal and point of this is just to have me hear all these problems and take no action, like, not interested, but I would love to help you formulate the conversation, help you talk through what you wanna say to this person to go directly to them and have this conversation with them. I think it's really great. It's like a nice little gentle nudge to be like, what I am here for is to help you formulate that conversation, to help you figure out what you're gonna say to go and approach this person that you're having a problem with. Very productive, very nice way to shut them down, those two things. And here's an actionable thing, which is write those two things down on sticky notes and put them on your computer monitor or on your computer desk or somewhere close by that you have access to them. One that says, I have absolutely no opinion about that at all. And the other one that says, let me help you formulate the conversation to have with that person. Like, put those up so that when people come to you to spread and gossip and like negative talk about other people and stuff like that, you can just shut it down immediately. Good for you, good for your reputation, good for your heart, because like, don't be the kind of person who engages in that kind of stuff and participates in that kind of stuff. It sucks. Okay, cool. I love you. Go be awesome. Thanks for watching and tuning in. Subscribe to our channel. We put a lot of content on here. You can also subscribe to the Culture Drop mailing list and get these emails in your inbox every Tuesday morning. Follow our social media channels. Put a lot of free content out about just being more awesome and building great teams.