Dear Brother Aslam U Alakum,
Today i have a question related to daily life issues. Its related to back biting. Before puting the main question i would try to explain the situation.
Actually i am working in a services company. Our work is to provide services to major operating companies. In other words you can say the operating companies are our customer or clients. So we have to provide them the services according to the contract and in the mean while we have to make visit and meetings with them to keep them happy with our service quality. For this purpose our company arranges service quality meetings with them and get feedback on our service and personals. Our company have several departments or product lines. The department in which i am working is comprised of only three people. My supervisor, myself and a person working under my supervision. Because of the nature of our job we have to make frequent visits to costumers.
My supervisor just came last year from another competitor company and joined us. He does not like me to visit costumers, even its written in my job contract and other departments and our managers want me to visit costumers. But as boss does not encourage me to visit so i don’t make frequent visit.
As we are the key people to get business and our attitude can spoil the business also , although i am dealing with the technical issues but even the we have to be a good understanding of selling.
Every one in our office, my boss’s supervisor does not like him. Now the problem is today i went for meeting to customer as my boss left for vacation last week. while visiting the customer, one of the person was not having good comments regarding my boss. He was not happy with my boss’s attitude and there was another person who was not happy with my boss’s attitude. while coming back to office i went to one of company’s managers office to tell him the outcome of my visit and meetings.
During meeting i got emotional and i told him to get feedback from customers for my department. Now he knows that in my department we are only two main people. So he asked my me what do you mean. Should i get feedback for you i said yes and for other people also. Infact i was trying not to use the name of my boss. In the meanwhile our companies’ MD also came in the same room. He got stuck in our conversation and started taking interest. He said tell me the name. Actually both were trying to push me to utter the situation and name. Because only they would have the evidence and proof to take action. I told them that i dont want to back bite anyone but if it is professional only then i can say name of the person whom the customer is not happy. they said it is professional because, due to one person they can’t let 700 people to suffer. Then i told them the name.
After that they asked me to tell them the feedback provided by the customer. In the mean while i did realize that it might be wrong. so I asked to contact three people within the customers to get feedback.
Now i am sure they will take a strong action against my boss. if they will not then i will be the person who will be cursed by my supervisor.
Anyways that will be the outcome of today’s talk ..but my problem is not this.
My problem is, i am continuously thinking that i might did wrong i should not do this. ……….The purpose to send you this emails in detail is know if it was a back biting or not. if it is then what i should do now.
Regards
A Brother
Doha, Qatar
Dear Brother
Wa alaikum us salam wa Rahmatullah
If you tell negative facts about a person to someone in order to protect that person, it is not backbiting. Backbiting means to discuss negative information about a person in order defame him.
Since your supervisor is making a loss to your company and you informed your company due to your sincerity with the organization, it is not backbiting. So what you did was right. In my opinion, you should have asked respective people to directly talk to the person who complained about your boss. In such case, you might also be protected, as you’ve conveyed the message of your customer.
wassalaam
Muhammad Mubashir Nazir
Don’t hesitate to share your questions and comments. They will be highly appreciated. I’ll reply as soon as possible if I know the answer. Send at mubashirnazir100@gmail.com.