Keep Your Ear Down to the Ground
Grapevine communication is the informal exchange of information in businesses and around them. It’s the blood system of companies of all sizes. Wise leaders and managers recognise and understand the different types of grapevine communication, and appreciate their importance.
This article explores grapevine communication and its benefits for businesses and their people. Rumours and gossip can have a negative impact, on both individuals and organisations. But whether you’re a boss or a colleague, what matters most is how you react to what you hear. So think about how the grapevine can help you be pro-active and make a difference, as well as the downside.
Don’t You Know That I Heard it Through the Grapevine?
If you’re a leader or manager, you shouldn’t necessarily dismiss grapevine communication as idle chatter. It’s a human need. As the pandemic has shown, our wellbeing suffers if we can’t interact with colleagues as we’re used to doing.
So where does the grapevine’s name come from? In the American Civil War, a grapevine telegraph was a gadget used for communicating. From there people started talking about the “grapevine” as a source of information, especially gossip. And the expression caught on, eventually inspiring Marvin Gaye’s classic song.
Is the Grapevine Vertical or Horizontal Communication?
Business communication is described as vertical when it’s between people of different status levels. So by its nature grapevine communication is horizontal. It’s governed by social and personal relationships, rather than officially recognised rules and formalities. And it’s no ‘respecter of persons,’ that’s for sure!
Grapevines stretch in all directions, up, down, and sideways. In businesses, grapevine communication does that, despite the different authority levels. One benefit the grapevine brings to businesses is that it enables us to discuss work problems openly and solve them. And as a result, we become more productive. As we mentioned earlier, the grapevine is also important for our wellbeing. When we chat, we listen to other people’s problems and validate each other. And that’s good for everyone.
But the grapevine can also be bad, for individuals and teams. Be careful who you tell your secrets to because gossip is valuable social currency. Confidences can get shared indiscriminately, and vulnerable people suffer. On the plus side, if bullying and victimisation is happening in workplaces, hopefully, the grapevine will flag it to leadership. And then they can make the workplace better.
Why Does the Grapevine Develop?
- Employees’ emotion: In uncertain times, or where relations are poor between managers and employees, you need to be aware of people’s emotions.
- Informal and peer groups: These will form in every business, and people will talk, particularly about the boss.
- Exceptional information: When there is news of any kind within the company, you should communicate it properly. Otherwise, the grapevine will do it for you, and not necessarily pass on the messages you want.
- The job: Some people who are close to bosses hold important information, and can play an active role in feeding the grapevine. American leadership expert Keith Davis says secretaries to managers are four times more likely to be key grapevine communicators. That’s compared with other employees.
- People who are talkative and suspicious: Individuals like this will play an active role in channelling information through the grapevine.
- The organisational climate: In today’s more relaxed business culture, businesses allow their employees to communicate with other frequently. But this also encourages them to activate the grapevine. It’s not being melodramatic to talk about toxic workplace cultures, where the grapevine is out of control. And that isn’t necessarily the employees’ fault. The grapevine is more often a product of the situation than the individuals. It could be a sign that leadership needs to change its style. We’ll come back to this.
Not A Lot Of People Know That… They Do Now!
Leaders and managers often discourage chat in the office because they want people to get on with their work. And exciting gossip definitely distracts us from doing that. But here’s a significant stat. According to the American Management Association, up to 70% of all organisational communication comes through the grapevine.
If you’re a remote boss – in a different location, or remote in your behaviour- grapevine communication may not reach you. Or if it does, it could be very slow. If that’s the case, it’s best to get close to your team and listen. That way you’ll get some valuable insights into how people see you. And maybe they’ll also come to see you as a charismatic leader, who’s interested in their people.
Being concerned about how you come across is an important part of self-awareness. And as the organisational psychologist Dr Tasha Eurich says in her book Insight, self-awareness makes great leaders.
You Tell Me That it’s Evolution
Speaking of psychologists, they will tell you that grapevine communication meets our human need for connection and attachment. And like those two drives, it seems the grapevine may have developed as a way of ensuring our survival. Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has a theory that verbal gossip evolved as a method of building strong social relationships. In his words, you can rely on a member of a social alliance to help when you’re under attack.
Of course, in a work environment, you can’t always be sure who your allies are! If you’re under attack from your boss or your colleagues, word will get round. You can’t necessarily count on people’s sympathy in that situation. So make listening to the grapevine and learning from it part of your self-awareness strategy.
Understanding the Grapevine Ecosystem in Your Business
As we’ve said, grapevine communication is informal chat between bosses, colleagues, team members. It also takes in external partners and others we come into contact with. Face to face, it includes chats by water coolers, in kitchens, smoking areas, car parks – wherever people meet. The grapevine goes way beyond that, taking in phone and email threads. And it positively flourishes in social media, virtual chat, WhatsApp groups and the rest, growing as new tech emerges.
The grapevine goes on when people work remotely, as we’ve learnt working from home. But there’s nothing like being together in the same place, for it to really thrive. However you feel about commuting, part of the buzz of coming into work is connecting with the grapevine.
4 Types of Grapevine Communication:
We communicate informally in businesses in various different ways:
- Single strand chain: Messages pass from person to person until they reach as many people as circumstances allow. Some people will be out of the work bubble, for whatever reason. Single strand is a simple, uncomplicated way to communicate with colleagues. But there’s a downside. The more people involved, the more filtering and distortion you should expect. There’s a children’s game called Chinese Whispers. The whispered message passes down the line and gets hilariously mangled. It’s not so funny in business, though, particularly when the message is important.
- Gossip chain: Here, one person at the centre seeks and shares information with others. The message will probably get out rapidly, and the motives for sharing it may not be totally honourable. Also, it‘s unlikely any nuances or back story will be passed on with it. So like with social media generally, extreme interpretations tend to get amplified.
- Probability chain: Here, information gets shared randomly. And the recipients share the information equally randomly. Think message in a bottle.
- Cluster chain: This is how things go viral on social media. Almost every social media challenge follows this process: someone relays information to a few people, who each pass it onto select people.
Grapevine Communication is Good For The Business. And For You.
These four ways that grapevine communication happens, share many characteristics. Asking colleagues what they see these characteristics being, will probably produce a list like this:
- Huge impact.
- Extensive.
- Flexibility.
- Speed.
- Large audience.
- Opinions.
- Rumours.
- Suspicions.
- Indiscreet sharing.
- Unsaid information.
- Contradictory information.
- Distortion.
Be A Boss Of Grapevine Communication
The negative implications of these last four characteristics are a fact of business life. Leaders and managers need to be aware of them, and act as necessary, because the grapevine can lead to problems. Here are some examples:
- Employees and others might feel they don’t need to follow the necessary formal authorisation procedures.
- People may not understand a brief, or misunderstand information that’s been shared, leading to wasted time and effort.
- People who become too comfortable with others can disclose sensitive information.
If the Grapevine Gets Overgrown, Cut Through it with Two Way Communication
If rules and set procedures aren’t being maintained and communicated, the grapevine can take over. Leaders and managers need to step in and exert their authority. Effective two way communication is the best way to get back on track:
- Ensure people follow formal authorisation procedures.
- Give clear briefs and check they fully understand shared information.
- Provide full and sufficient feedback.
- Ask people to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements.
If you sense from the grapevine that things are slipping, don’t wait for it to build up to a crisis. Put your charismatic leadership skills to work:
- Be pro-active in how you go about it. Step in and say how you want things done.
- Use your listening skills, and be supportive.
- People may have personal issues that affect their window of tolerance, and may need help and support. Don’t let them turn into problem employees: help them turn things round.
- Empathy is important. Be empathetic, firm but kind, and you won’t come across as authoritative and overbearing. Instead, you’ll inspire people to do their best for you.
Speaking of empathy, these days, businesses take employees’ mental health and wellbeing seriously. And that makes good business sense. Burnout and stress is bad for individuals and teams, and for productivity. The grapevine benefits individuals because they:
- Feel included and part of a group.
- Become more efficient and self-aware.
- Listen well to others.
- Solve problems or clashes with each other and their managers.
- Share their concerns with others.
- Identify if colleagues need help.
- Reach out and support others, without having to go through an official process.
And Finally… How to be Proactive About the Grapevine
In these articles, we often refer to Stephen Covey’s book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. One of the habits is being pro-active. You can “Do a Stephen Covey” and be pro-active about the grapevine.
Here are 5 ways you can actively make the grapevine benefit your business:
1. Provide Real News to the Grapevine Originators
As a manager, you probably know the people in your team who are in on the gossip. Without making it glaringly obvious that’s why you’re doing it, provide them with real news. That way they will transmit ‘real facts’ to the grapevine channels. And hopefully, this will eventually resist the transmission of rumour, untrue and distorted messages and the rest. But whatever you do, don’t give them fake news. That’ll make things even worse!
2. Consider the Grapevine as a Pulse Feeling Tool
As we said at the start, the grapevine is the blood system of businesses, of all sizes. So use it to receive feedback from the employees. But don’t make it feel like you’re carrying out an investigation, that’ll lead to an ‘us and them’ situation. And that’s giving the grapevine Baby Bio!
3. Contradict false rumours
As we said, the grapevine can get overgrown, and leaders and managers need to step in. This is where inspirational leadership and empathy come to the fore. Try to understand why false rumours are starting. Again, without coming across like an official enquiry, it might be time to do some asking around. Is it because you’re not using your official communication channels enough? Are you using them effectively? Are you and your manager colleagues seen as aloof and unapproachable, and not mixing with the employees? Maybe think about team building and building your personal presence.
4. Allow Workers to Take Part in the Decision Making Process
Look into doing a bit of democracy leadership. By the way, this doesn’t mean you’re handing over the keys to the business to the workforce. You’re still the boss. The characteristics of democracy leadership include managers inviting and supporting group members in sharing ideas and opinions, even though the leader retains the final say over decisions. It also means encouraging and rewarding creativity and innovation. Group members will feel more engaged in the process. They will be more involved and committed to projects, and are more likely to care about the end results they achieve.
5. Develop a Better Business Climate
This is a bigger ambition. We mentioned democratic leadership just now. Building a better business climate calls for leading by example. Of the different leadership styles Daniel Goleman identified, affiliative leadership is the one most conducive to better workplace communication. This makes it particularly effective in times of stress and uncertainty, like we’re seeing at the moment. And leading by example delivers results when teams aren’t getting along well. It fosters communication and flexibility, and results in high levels of trust. You won’t shut the grapevine down, but you will make it a lot more favourable.
Getting involved in your informal communication network like this comes naturally to some leaders, particularly in times like these. But beware. You may promote harmony and heal rifts in your team, and then find you need to improve poor performance, even let staff go. But as long as you stay firm but kind, word will get out on the grapevine that you’re a compassionate boss. Good luck!
Action: For even more useful content on communication, check out our ultimate guide on communication skills.
