If my supervisor speaks to other employees about my personal matters in a negative way to make them upset with me is that defamation or slander?

I was off work for 3 days due to a death of someone close to me and while I knew I would not receive the company's bereavement pay, I was also told that I could take the 3 days and use my accrued personal time off hours to receive pay for them. While I was off however, the supervisor on my shift said things during the preshift meeting to many of my coworkers that were shared in confidence and had nothing to do with work and he is the only one who knew these things as we had been friends. They were negative things. Can I sue him for defamation or slander?
I do have other employees that were present during his speech about me that are willing to write statements in detail about the incident