REFUSE TO LISTEN TO GOSSIP Gossip is passing on information when you are neither part of the problem nor part of the solution. It may be human nature for people to talk about each other, but that doesn’t mean you have to put up with it. It is impossible to create a unified team with a bunch of gossips. Gossip pushes people apart instead of pulling them together, and everyone knows you can’t trust a gossip. Gossip is unfair to everyone involved. It’s unfair to the gossipers because they must toil in a problem situation with no hope of resolution. It’s unfair to others who hear the gossip because it undermines passion for their work, confidence in their leadership and belief in your vision. It’s also unfair to you because you aren’t given the opportunity to address a problem within your business. That’s why there is a no-gossip policy at Dave’s company. Gossip is defined as, discussing anything negative with someone who can’t help solve the problem. If you’re having computer problems, and IT is slow about helping you, you don’t complain about it to the sales rep in the break room. You talk to your leader because he or she can and will do something about it. If a team member is discovered gossiping, they receive one warning. After that they’re fired, and, yes, Dave has fired people for gossiping and will do it again to keep it out of his company. Negative stuff will happen. Thats inevitable. The negatives may be about a person or a process. Either way, those issues need to be handed to a leader. If youre mad at your manager, talk to another leader about it. Complaining to your teammates is disloyalty, and it fosters a negative spirit that will trash the organization. Dave and his team have a motto: Negatives go up; Positives come down. Team members love it. They not only adhere to it, they enforce it. They are, after all, the real beneficiaries of that policy. They can point to that rule with pride, and cut gossip off before it has a chance to do any damage. Practice God’s method for conflict resolution “[FIRST] Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him ALONE: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. [SECOND] But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. [FINALLY, THIRD] And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” (Matthew 18:15-17). The Message Bible says, If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love. (Matthew 18:15-17, The Message). What Dave Ramsey says about Gossip from his book EntreLeadership: I can’t stand gossip. I have done it and I have seen people do it, and gossip is gross. In a company culture gossip will destroy all the good things you work so hard to create. There is no possible way you can have unity with a group of gossips. The very nature of gossip is the opposite of unity. It is the seed of discord. Instead of pulling people together, gossip pushes them apart. Everyone knows inherently they can’t trust a gossip. Gossip about the company, or about leadership, is a particularly evil form of disloyalty. And it is suicidal when the person gossiping is hurting and running down the place and the people who pay him so he can feed his family. Why do people want their own company to fail? I hate gossip so badly that after putting up with it at the start I decided to have a no-gossip policy in our company. You are not allowed to gossip and work for me. If one of my leaders or I catch a team member gossiping we will warn them once, then we will fire them. Yes, I have actually fired people for gossiping, and I will again. Gossip is evil, it is insidious, and it is contagious. Stamp out gossip if you want unity. Proverbs says, “Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles.” (Proverbs 21:23). People who work on our team will have frustrations. They will have problems, and they will get upset. If they don’t have any of these things happening we probably don’t need them. Most of our hires are brought in to grow something or fix something, which means problems either way. When they get bumped around or frustrated with leadership or a team member, they need to know how we define gossip so they can avoid it. We know team members are going to have problems. It is how they handle them that matters. Problems or gripes are fine, but they must be handed up to leadership. Problems or gripes that are handed down or laterally are by definition gossip and run the team member the risk of being fired. We had a man who was constantly struggling with his leader. They clashed and both were talented. He made the mistake of sharing his frustrations with the sales support person in the group. We warned him once, and then he decided to share with two other people, so he doesn’t work on our team anymore. The sales support person can’t do anything to help him with his frustrations, so that is gossip. I had a young lady who was processing orders whose computer was trash. IT had done a poor job getting it fixed or replaced, so she had a legitimate gripe. But she made the mistake of sitting with our receptionist and venting for fifteen minutes as to how management didn’t care and IT was incompetent and how could Dave let this go on. My receptionist has never fixed a computer or budgeted to replace a computer, so she could do nothing to help this stupid little gossip. If she wants her computer fixed she should try seeing someone who can make that happen. Hand your negatives up and your positives down. Otherwise it starts to sound a lot like gossip. Gossips are usually the most small-minded of people anyway. People of greatness don’t have time to gossip. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Small minds talk about people, mediocre minds talk about events, and great minds talk about ideas.” The good news is that quality people also hate gossip. Once you have a culture that openly hates gossip and values the awesome environment created by a “gossip-free zone,” the whole team will self-police, which is a big help. If a new or errant team member begins to gossip, other team members will remind them they will get fired for that and “none of us do that here.” I have had that happen many times in our company and it is really fun to watch people bend to positive peer pressure. If you want a fabulously unified team and all the good stuff that brings, you will have to work unbelievably hard to keep gossip out of your organization. amazon/EntreLeadership-Practical-Business-Wisdom-Trenches-ebook/dp/B004YWDK70/
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 03:18:29 +0000
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