Our Zero-Tolerance Policy on Gossip

One sure-fire way to diminish a company’s success is to allow gossip.

Gossip is harmful across industries, and it’s especially dangerous for wedding and special events venues. It puts companies like ours at risk of leaving a negative impression that they may not be able to reverse. Venues typically get one chance to win over customers and their guests. If that perception is tainted, the opportunity for word-of-mouth referrals, critical in our industry, is lost.

Gossip undermines the very things that contribute to successful venues: responsive service, a positive atmosphere, effective communication, and a professional team that’s committed to working together to delight customers and guests.

The Bell Tower on 34th has a zero-tolerance policy for gossip. It’s toxic and goes against everything we work to achieve here, so we take a proactive approach to preventing it.

Gossip Has No Place in Our Business

While most people have an idea of what gossip is, we try to be clear about what it is we will not tolerate.

So, what is gossip? It’s talking about someone else when that person cannot speak for themself. It usually involves the spread of negative information, complaints, or rumors, but it also could involve sharing personal details about someone without their knowledge or consent. I once heard gossip described like this, “If you’re saying something behind someone’s back that you wouldn’t be comfortable saying to their face, you’re gossiping.”

And why is it so harmful? No matter what type of company it occurs in, gossip seriously undercuts morale. It fosters tension and erodes trust. It’s highly distracting.

At The Bell Tower on 34th, gossip is contrary to our main goal: delivering excellent events that no one will ever forget.

Our ability to consistently deliver excellent events is closely tied to our core values, including being loyal, trustworthy, on time, self-starters, dedicated, and calm under pressure. Gossip is not in alignment with those values; it works against them.

To live our values, our people must know they have one another’s backs. Gossip only would create rifts among team members and create an atmosphere ripe for conflict, distractions, and miscommunication.

What’s more, gossip would make our people less dedicated to excellence, and less attuned to customers’ needs, because it would shift employees’ focus from shining at work to the topic of their gossip—or concerns about becoming a subject of gossip themselves.

Without a proactive approach to preventing it, gossip would contribute to a stressful, negative environment that would make attracting and retaining good people difficult.

Gossip would also interfere with who we strive to be as an employer. We want to empower our people, to support their dreams, and help them be the best they possibly can be. We don’t want to subject them to a negative work environment or chip away at their confidence.

Our Approach

We are looking to our employees to help us curtail gossip before it gets a foothold here. I’ve told our leadership team that if they notice someone failing to adhere to our company policies and procedures, including our stance on gossip, to hold that person accountable.

Ideally, we’d like employees to communicate directly with one another, which is the opposite of gossiping. If a team member sees a policy being broken, they know they have our blessings to ask why it’s happening.

That said, not everyone is comfortable with such direct conversations. If that’s the case, we’ve told our workers, they are to take their concerns to a manager or, if they prefer, directly to me.

I also expect those in positions of responsibility to model the kind of behavior they want to see.

Ultimately, negative behavior—and gossip most definitely is an example of this—simply has no place in a venue people trust to deliver one of the most joyful and important days of their lives.

About the Author:

Roger Igo?is the founder and CEO of special events venue,?The Bell Tower on 34th, along with?Excellent Events, and?Venues in Houston. He is the author of “Keep On Going, The History of The Bell Tower on 34th,” a former radio host, a graduate of CEO Space International, and an alumnus of The Disney Institute.