05.04.11 The 9th Driver of Negative Gossip

9. Lack of Personal Accountability

The lack of personal accountability deals with the failure to report to ‘oneself’ (and relevant others) about the accomplishment of designated activities. The shortcoming can propagate negative rumours since the gossipers lack the discipline to monitor themselves against the expectations of the employer and other colleagues in the workspace. For instance, should the gossipers be placed in an environment where there are no performance management systems, processes or procedures, the mongers will hustle to broadcast rumours rather than executing their job duties since there is no framework or people to account to.

Recalling my personal encounter with the defamatory gossip about us, it is also possible that the officer who disapproved of our mystery shopping visit composed the rumour to run away from being held accountable for the service delivery flaws that our assignment brought to the surface.

In the case of Nehemiah’s project, we see how a negative gossiping habit drove Shemaiah to compromise his accountability by giving false prophecies (Nehemiah 6:12).

Looking at JuaLink, one of the reasons that turned Lulu into a chronic gossiper was the lack of personal accountability. That explains why Faraja’s insistence on job descriptions and workplans drove an irritated Lulu to resent the new manager’s interventions, since the publicity officer had no choice but to account for her time through submitting those plans. To rephrase, Faraja’s strict interventions were conflicting with the ‘job-description free’ environment that Lulu was used to, as the new interventions eroded the publicity officer’s ‘gossiping time’ and interfered with the rampant ‘zero-monitoring of work done’. Lulu was not the only one who lacked personal accountability at JuaLink. The other was Obed, as manifested by the fact that he could find time to gossip even when important human resource tasks such as the formulation of job descriptions were lagging behind or on hold.

Another obvious way that the lack of personal accountability could drive someone to engage in negative gossip is through irresponsible talk; where the member speaks carelessly without weighing the impact of his or her words. To be precise, some people either forget or are unaware that they will be required to account for every careless word they speak. Apparently, Jesus issued a warning to that effect in Matthew 12:36. That scripture reads (CEV): ¹³I promise you on the day of judgment, everyone will have to account for every careless word they have spoken.