‘I heard it on the grapevine’ the old song goes. But the grapevine has the potential to cause your business strife, misunderstanding and ruin! In effect the rumour mill and gossip are dangers you cannot ford to ignore. People who indulge in these behaviours are like muggers – they leave you feeling you have been robbed!

Many small business owners and managers are so busy that they fail to take notice of the poison disseminated through their organisation like a cancer silently consuming all before them.

Have you ever noticed how some people seem to gravitate to negative thinking, gossip and innuendo? The amazing thing is that these people are the first to raise their hands for more money and less responsibility. They come to work on your business thinking they do you a service only to silently erode staff morale and confidence in your business.

You can take action and protect your business.

Mugging Matters

You can identify the mugger. They have some identifiable traits.

• Always seems to be busy but don’t get much done
• Spend time on personal emails, forwarding them to your employees
• Where there is trouble there they are
• Indifferent
• Unhelpful
• Difficult
• Arsonist – start fires (rumours) that you have to put out
• Narcissist
• Meddler
• Often has unsolvable personal problems

Preferred Environment

Muggers prefer an environment where communication from management to workers is not clear and regular.

They appear to gravitate to problems and problem people. Trouble and strife are their best friends.

They fill the vacuum of personal dissatisfaction by involving themselves with other individuals who are problematic and are not solution focused.

Modus Operandi

The mugger is an artful person weaving their craft while causing your business potential loss of clients and profit.

They are sometimes recognised as caring people but below the veneer of caring lies a self serving attitude that has nothing to do with genuine care.

Respectability is there armour but look closely and you will see the double way they live.

Involving themselves in others problems is really the sign of a busybody, without the being busy about your business.

Dealing with Muggers

Dealing with muggers takes time. Its time you must invest to protect your most valuable assets; your people and your business.

Take heart, take action, deal decisively!

Muggers are disempowered by clear management and worker communication. Clear communication of the foundation that disempowers the mugger! They prefer to live on the shade and not the light. Do some of the following

• Have regular meetings with your employees
• At the first sing of rumour or gossip find the source and confront it.
• Go to the mugger yourself and say their appears to be a problem
• If you are making changes in the workplace: communicate
• Update your employees by email weekly
• Have an open door policy and be approachable
• Build a team environment
• Have a zero tolerance for gossip
• Build trust in your people
• Be genuine
• Take time for people

Muggers have no place in your business. Take action today. For other helpful articles visithttp://www.biz-momentum.com

Philip Lye is te founder of Biz Momentum providng strategic human resource management to assist your business grow. he is an expert in Worplace Conflict and provides practical solutions to this troubling phenomenon.

Prior to starting Biz Momentum Philip weas CEO and CFO of several companies. Visit http://www.biz-momentum.com for further information.

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