05.07.09 The 7th Organisational Consequence of Negative Gossip : Fostering Distrust in the Workforce, Team or Community
Fostering Distrust in the Workforce, Team or Community
Looking back, I must frankly admit that we lost trust in some of our clients to the extent that today, we have to check twice before taking what they say as ‘gospel truth’. That is unfortunate since initially, we would have been ready and willing to declare that those particular clients would keep their word without any reasonable doubt, but not anymore. To be honest, we have had to remind ourselves on several occasions that cursed is he who trusts in a man for help (Jeremiah 17:5-7).
Nehemiah had his share of distrusting people within his work environment. To recap and as mentioned elsewhere, the bible reports how gossip-letters would be ferried between Tobiah and the nobles of Judah since not only was he a son-in-law of a high-status Jew, Shekaniah son of Arah, but Tobiah’s son had married a Jewish woman. So, whilst the in-laws were sending letters to Tobiah, updating him about the latest in Nehemiah’s project, they would tell Nehemiah of Tobiah’s goodness on the other hand; as Tobiah continued to send intimidating letters to Nehemiah behind the scenes. Therefore, I wonder if Nehemiah ever trusted those nobles again, after uncovering what they were doing behind his back (Nehemiah 6:17-19).
In the case of JuaLink, it was negative gossip which led members to distrust the employer to the extent of believing that the board could sell the Agency without caring about updating staff; which, as you already know, pushed the star performers to flee to Bidacom Africa Media.
Therefore, negative gossip commonly breeds distrust within the workforce, team or community. This augurs with a warning in Proverbs 11:13 which reads (GNT): 13No one who gossips can be trusted with a secret.... The vice creates a culture where people are suspicious of each other since they cannot really know which workmate will gossip against who, what, where and when. Such distrust generates information gaps since team members can no longer share their opinions freely, sincerely or genuinely.
Another problem with that kind of distrust is that staff can no longer guarantee that if supervisors were to hear dirty rumoursabout team members, the superiors will not take action against those members before checking whether the rumour is true or not. This creates an environment where team members feel insecure, threatened, exposed and unprotected. As already mentioned, such a situation can be costly to the organisation since star performers would rather leave than work in an environment where distrust is rampant.