Accountability is something we take seriously in the office. When someone does something wrong or is not in line with our values in the team, we call them out. We confront those people and serve them by telling them to do what is right instead.
As of late, I have had the chance to do that to a couple of individuals in the team. How they react and make up for it makes a world of difference and reveals the heart of those people.
This is why I just love God’s Word. It gives unsurpassed wisdom even in dealing with, managing and leading people – which is critical for business.
“Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. “ – 2 Corinthians 7:8-10
In this verse, the apostle Paul confronts the believers in Corinth who were in the midst of the most sinful people during that time. They realized their mistake and repented. This godly sorrow led to real change in their lives that resulted to them doing amazing things for the Lord.
However worldly sorrow is being sorry that you have been caught. This will result in you doing the same mistake again or, worse yet, making sure that you don’t get caught doing the wrong things next time.
One of those people I confronted had worldly sorrow. The person was sorry for being caught and then proceeded to ever-so-subtly share his/her ill-feelings to other people in the team. Causing a form of divide in the team.
Small minded people that listen to gossip such as that, will of course, empathize with this person (our team scores very high on the empathy scale as we are a 100% millenial/centennial team). While people with the mission at heart will know that what this person is doing is wrong and proceed to spit the gossip and gossiper out.
The amazing thing about our team culture is that it automatically detects cancer cell employees and attacks it until it is expelled from the body.
It is just sad that cancer cell employees, like real cancer cells in the medical industry, are cells that have turned rogue, causes the entire body to get sick through its toxicity, and just wouldn’t die.
And like real cancer treatments, where you have to undergo therapy and lifestyle change to get better, you also have to go through the painful process of losing a friend and reminding others that this ‘friend’ is causing all of us at work to get sick by influencing our environment to become toxic.
A person who is earning from his job to feed himself and his family, and is trying to bring his own company down through ill-feelings, gossip and slander is one of the worst people to have in your circle of friends. Because the moment that person has some form of ill feelings towards you, he will gossip about you too.
So why would you want to keep them anyway?
If I know something in my journey to success in business, it is to routinely check your circle of friends to be a circle that helps you succeed, not a circle of gossip and gossipers.
My advice to people who have ill-feelings towards being confronted by management is this: Instead of finding out who was responsible in ratting you out for the wrong things you did, sincerely repent and change and learn from the confrontation. Otherwise, you will be better off looking for another place to work.
Some other place where a culture of gossip is the norm.
