We emphasize over and over how important it is to speak to someone directly.
And not surprisingly, we had a manager ask, “But what if I’m talking to someone else as a sounding board? Or a team member wants to use me as a sounding board? Shouldn't I be available to help them?”
Sounding boards are sneaky.
At their best, sounding boards help you work through a concern, consider your contribution to the situation, assess your assumptions and triggers and mold your phrasing. A genuine healthy sounding board will insist on follow-through communication and will check in afterwards.
At their worst, sounding boards become dark corners of veiled gossip.
Your sounding board understands and relates. You receive validation and do nothing because you feel better and righteous. Nothing has been resolved and your sounding board's perception of the person you spoke about has changed without that other person having an opportunity to their experience or intentions.
In this instance, you have just gossiped (or if you are the sounding board, you have just unwittingly participated in gossip.)
To gossip is to diminish the listening of another person in someone else - to diminish how they are perceived, heard, considered. It creates a bias towards that person - again, without that person having a chance to speak up for themselves.
In addition to gossip, nothing gets resolved. The frustration will continue. Instead of supporting you in repairing the relationship, your sounding board has reinforced your commitment to being right.
Another possibility is that your sounding board, with the best of intentions, will offer to speak to the person you’re struggling with on your behalf. This doesn’t work. It simply encourages cumbersome and troublesome triangulation. Intentions get misrepresented. Facts get twisted. Understanding further away.
Let’s say you’re the sounding board. You want to support your co-worker, and you don’t want to gossip. What do you do?
“Hey Marco, I know you’re frustrated with Susie. I’d struggle with this too. You really need to talk to her directly. We’re all in this department together and when the two of you don’t get along, it impacts all of us. I know you two can figure it out. You’re both smart, capable people with good intentions. I want what’s best for you and the team. If you want to talk through how to have the conversation with her, I’m happy to help. But I don’t want to talk about Susie unless you’re going to reach out to her directly.”
And remember, as a manager, if someone on your team brings a concern to you regarding a co-worker (not something egregious like harassment) and asks you to keep it confidential - do not pass it along. This is the worst form of triangulation and will cause a lot of mistrust on your team. Instead your job is to coach and guide your team member in talking directly to their teammate regarding their concern. Remember, if it was important enough to bring to you, it's important enough to talk to their co-worker directly. It's clearly impacting their working relationship and thus the work.
If they are unable to work it out, the team member should tell their co-worker, "Hey, we haven't been able to get this resolved, I'm going to ask our manager to meet with us and help us to get this worked out." This way nothing happens behind anyone else's back.
When a team promises to give one another the common courtesy to go to one another directly first regarding any concerns, before going to a supervisor, tremendous trust is built within a team.
Here's to creating a team agreement where team members promise talk to one another directly first ;)
