Wicked Leaks

SABOTAGE

"Wicked leaks" from your organization are most often revealed to customers both verbally and non-verbally.  This is just like the infamous “Wikileaks”… only these leaks are about you and your business.

Your disgruntled staff’s “tells” are given away with looks, glances, rolling of the eyes and outright truth-telling.  The most dangerous employee is one who is assisting your competitors by driving your business away. They are not loyal to your organization... only loyal to themselves.  

They are damaging the relationship with your customers with stories that support their claims of poor service. “You think this is bad?  Let me tell you what it is like working for him/her….”

I work all over the globe and I hear these stories from purportedly loyal staff.  I talk to strangers on the telephone and they give their secrets to me, an unknown person.  Imagine what they say to each other… and to your customers whom they encounter more often than someone like me.

Get the picture?  You can do what you like, but these stories persist. You can’t make people behave.   But you can determine who you are paying that is misbehaving and sabotaging your image.  There should be no room for disloyalty. 

The actual word, “Sabotage” comes from an act of defiance or intentional sloppy work.  There is a story that some employees of a factory threw their shoes (called “sabots”) into their own machinery to slow down and stop work production for the very company they served.  Whether that is the true source of the term is debatable, but the image of poor, disrupting work is the result.

My dentist in South Carolina is great!  He has a cheerful staff.  They love working for him.  Actually he started out working with another dentist.  The other guy had a terrible personality, according to the staff.   He didn’t “click” with his staff and they made sure people knew it.  It didn’t take long for him to be worked out of the office.  No matter what he did, he couldn’t overcome the things being said about him BY HIS OWN STAFF.  By the way, you haven’t experienced fear in a dental chair until an unhappy hygienist is venting while probing your teeth!

Your customers know whether your people like working for you or not.

Have you ever been tipped off by an employee as to how they don’t like their job?  Has anyone ever complained about their company to you?  What was your reaction as a customer?  Did you keep the same opinion of the company or their boss they told you about?

Constant nagging, complaining or poor attitudes with customers are signs that your culture is sick and in need of reinvention.  If you don’t know this yet, trust me, your customers do.  They get it regularly from your own people.