MAKING SENSE OF THE GRAPEVINE

A grapevine is a climbing shrub bearing berrylike fruit that is shaped by the farmers growing it.? Before they form into their full growth, the farmers pull up and spread the grape stems along a set frame to shape and spread their direction of growth so as to give the forming berries their best chance of survival and to maximize their production. The pace at which the growing stems spread across the frames they have been laid against is quite spectacular, so much so that it is common for farmers to claim that they spread and formed a bush of fruit vines literally ‘overnight’. The common phrase ‘I heard it through the grapevine’ stems from this pace of growth and originates from the era of the American civil war (12 April 1861 – 9 April 1865) in reference to war news that was spread from one end of the country to the other by word of mouth, traveling and spreading at the pace of a growing grapevine. Today the grapevine refers to news or rumors spread by way of verbal gossip bearing no proven truth and originating from no known source.

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Grapevine news plays out in interesting ways in corporate settings. Often when a news story is not well documented and controlled before it is allowed to disseminate, by the time it does the rounds, the form in which it gets to the final recipient is quite different from the form in which it was first spoken. In an organization this will inevitably lead to miscommunication which could give rise to dire consequences, and when this happens, both company performance and reputation will be put at risk. The challenge though is that grapevine news is an un-avoidable part of corporate culture. Humans are communicating beings by nature, so in a setting comprised of humans from different backgrounds, communication between them is inevitable, giving rise to informal news. This means that the best that corporate leaders can do is find ways to ‘work with’ the grapevine rather than try to eliminate it altogether.

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The first place to look in doing this would be within the corporate culture. How much do you as a leader value transparency in the organization that you lead? How much do you practice, and emphasize the importance of, open communication with the teams, in so doing ensuring a culture of openness. How approachable are you as a leader and how comfortable with discussing ‘uncomfortable’ issues with you are the people that you lead? By driving a culture of transparency in the organization one ensures that most of the corporate gossip is grounded in fact, and is inevitably less detrimental to reputation than it otherwise could have been.?

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Corporate culture can sometimes be influenced (positively or negatively) by particularly influential individuals in the organization, and it is not un-common to find these same individuals responsible for most of the corporate gossip that finds its way around, or even for driving the culture of corporate gossip itself. Where this is the case and you can identify these individuals, it would be wise to seek them out and try to influence them positively, in so doing influencing the ‘news’ that they will be responsible for spreading.?

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Rather than trying to manage or control grapevine news, some leaders opt to make use of it, and there are several ways this can be done. For instance, it can help one determine the mood of the organization, ?and learn what employees are concerned about. Where the corporate culture does not favor open communication, people will tend to use informal channels of communication to voice out concerns, and this communication inevitably finds itself on the grapevine, and when picked up by the leaders will give a solid indication of what matters need to be urgently addressed. Furthermore, by observing how different individuals relate to, and deal with grapevine news, the grapevine can be used to identify natural leaders as well as to weed out those that may not be good for the organization. Budding leaders will tend to seek the truth out of informal news that that they hear and when they determine it, to counter the false news that is making the rounds, while negative individuals will be happy to further enhance the falsehoods.?

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In closing, grapevine news, just like grapevines themselves, can grow to be ‘wild’ and ‘thorny’ if not constantly ‘tended’. Grapevines that are allowed to grow wild don’t offer the best fruits, and this is metaphorically true for grapevine news. It therefore pays for leaders to be aware of what is making the rounds and address the issues in such a way as to guarantee a positive outcome. This calls for conscious culture shifts that will allow for positive vibes rather than toxic banter to make its way across the organization’s airwaves.