office gossip brings dis-unity in working as a team, so in as much as I dont take part in it, I try all my possible best to stop my college from making it part of their work and stop such atitude.

I have to handle this very differently now than I did when I was management. It has always been my habit to deal directly with gossipers to address their behavior and ensure they understood the meaning of "toxic work environment" and our HR policies and ensure they understood that they had a choice regarding their behavior and interactions with their coworkers and would be held accountable. This included social media gossip and harassment which was occasionally a thing that happened as they all knew each other outside of work & had for many years. Conversely, we also discussed genuinely how being the topic of workplace gossip would affect them and how they would want it handled. It usually staunched the negative behavior. I told them if they had issues or needed to vent that I had an open door policy, ensured confidentiality and would be happy to help them work through any work place issues.

Now that I work as a team member, I have confronted 2 coworkers and explained to them that I enjoy working together with everyone on the team & am not comfortable with them gossiping about others and that toxic behavior like that puts them in a very negative light and I would hate to see them alienated from a pretty great team dynamic. I am very friendly and caring in these conversations and once they got over their surprise at being called out (one on one, in private) they have changed their ways.

I also am certain never to overshare or blur the boundaries between being a coworker vs a friend.

Yes!!! Then as follows, "Damn I hate my life" or "what is this all for". Then you get home and see your family involved in their own little problems expecting you to solve their problems and then you turn to see man's best friend sitting at the door wagging that tail with unbelievable excitement and true love gleaming all over. You know you are home.

Transactional

I agree with both democratic & transactional. Both management styles tend to please the employees & boost the morale. Consequently that will increase the overall efficiency.

You need to be smart. Smart enough that you should have gone to college for a career that doesn’t break your body. You have to be able and willing to learn from people who don’t respect you. You have to spend tens of thousands of dollars on tools to get started. You have to keep buying tools your entire career.

You have to be brave enough to do work that you won’t know how to do till you’ve done it.