A few years ago, I walked into a 12-person startup in Utrecht for what was supposed to be a financial audit. Instead, I found a funeral. Not a real one, something quieter, more insidious. There were no tears. Just nervous silences, fake laughter, and side glances during meetings. The founder greeted me like a man holding a vase already broken. “Something’s off,” he whispered. It wasn’t cash flow. It was gossip. By the end of the month, two key people were gone, the culture had cracked, and the business never recovered.
THE WHY
If you run a small team in the Netherlands, between 3 and 20 people, your company is not just a business. It's a social organism. Trust isn’t just nice to have; it’s the infrastructure. Gossip, that soft but constant erosion of alignment, doesn’t just damage morale. It severs the very ligaments that hold a micro-enterprise together: mutual loyalty, clear governance, and the ability to self-correct. And because small companies lack the institutional padding of corporates, decay begins invisibly, but spreads fast.
THE NUMBERS
Let’s get pragmatic:
- In teams under 20, a single toxic player can reduce productivity by 20–40%, not by underperforming, but by distracting others.
- According to a 2024 survey of Dutch micro-enterprises, 72% of business owners reported losing trust in at least one key employee due to gossip or informal alliances.
- The average cost of replacing a mid-level employee in a micro-team? Around €9,500 in direct and indirect costs (onboarding, lost time, rework, legal exposure).
- But the intangible cost, client distrust, team fragmentation, leadership burnout, rarely makes it to your profit & loss sheet.
WHAT NO ONE TELLS YOU
Loyalty is not blind obedience. And gossip is not always malicious.
Sometimes it starts with good intentions: “I’m just venting,” “I don’t want to cause trouble,” or the Dutch classic, “Even eerlijk zijn.” But when complaints are off-channel, repeated, or triangulated (you talk to A about B instead of to B directly), they begin to mutate into an underground network of mistrust. And here’s the hard truth:
Most gossip in small companies is a symptom of weak governance, not just bad behavior.
People gossip when:
- They feel unheard.
- There’s no safe feedback loop.
- Leadership appears inconsistent, unclear, or emotionally absent.
In other words: if your people are whispering, your structure is already leaking.
DECISION COMPASS
Ask yourself, right now:
-
What do I tolerate in silence?
(Your silence is often mistaken for approval.) - Do I have a formal way for people to raise concerns without drama?
-
Are team roles and decision rights clear, or are they “understood”?
(What’s understood is often misunderstood.) -
Who always knows “what’s really going on”?
(Hint: they may be your informal power broker, useful or dangerous.) - When’s the last time I reinforced the why behind our mission, not just the what we do?
FINAL REFLECTION
Every entrepreneur says they want loyalty. Few ask what earns it. Gossip thrives where clarity is absent, courage is avoided, and small wounds are left untreated. Loyalty, on the other hand, demands visible structure, transparent boundaries, and a culture where truth has a home.
A small company can survive a bad quarter.
It won’t survive chronic silence in the corridors.
Build your governance not as bureaucracy, but as a form of love:
Love for the people who walk in each morning, unsure if they still belong.
Co-Creator of Xtroverso | Head of Global GRC @ Zentriq
Paolo Maria Pavan is the structural mind behind Xtroverso, blending compliance acumen with entrepreneurial foresight. He observes markets not as a trader, but as a reader of patterns, tracking behaviors, risks, and distortions to guide ethical transformation. His work challenges conventions and reframes governance as a force for clarity, trust, and evolution.
