I was sitting in the bed of my truck eating my lunch in the winter sun in grocery a parking lot yesterday when two women came out of a Starbucks and headed my way. In route, they ran into a third woman who one of them knew heading into the same Starbucks and they greeted each other with a bunch of loud and excited warm welcomes – “Hey! Great to see you! How long has it been?” etc. They were only about 4 or 6 car spots away, so their energy got my attention. I smiled and looked down trying to look like I was ignoring them. After only a few words the three parted ways, and the pair walked past me. Sadly, though, after they passed me one of them said to the other, “Ugh! I can’t stand that bitch!”

A surefire way to lose your credibility is to talk about people behind their back. This is true in both personal relationships with friends and work settings with other coworkers. I once worked with a woman who would talk about her peers when they weren’t in the room or, more often, after they left a room. She would ridicule them or feign disbelief about something they said, and would try to be funny or uber-critical to the rest of us still in the room, including her supervisor. It was disappointing that he accepted her unprofessionalism, a move that reflected poorly on him. Often she lacked the expertise to even know if the person she was bad mouthing knew their stuff. No one was spared. As she’d pass comments, I usually wondered what she said about me after I left the room. I’m sure I was a target at times too, but what did she know about Parks & Recreation – an industry where we value people? She clearly didn’t know how to treat people with even basic respect and dignity. I didn’t trust her one bit. I hated working with her. I’m not sure how she got the title or position she had, but she had no standing or credibility in my eyes. You may know someone like this.

Creating or allowing a workplace culture that negativity, disrespect, gossip, bias or deceit is acceptable is a recipe for killing a company. One of the most obvious signs of a company struggling with culture is high turnover of employees. It’s not usually money that people leave an employer for, it’s usually poor management, a negative culture, uninspired work, and feeling devalued. Most people want to be treated well at work, want to respect and trust their peers, want to look up to their leadership and see brilliance, want to be trusted and respected in return, and want to be free to perform their duties without interference. These are some of the qualities of a healthy company culture, qualities you want to build and model as a leader.

There are always moments of conflict, disagreement and stress within a work team. These moments can be positive and produce a good outcome when debate and discussion are a healthy mix of perspectives shared with the same goal in mind, the best solution to a problem or situation. What’s key in these healthy work teams is the leader’s ability to recognize when such a discussion is healthy and to bring the group to consensus about the solution while making each person feel like they’re valued and contributed to the decision. That is an art of leadership that takes time and patience to develop and put into place.

There are several aspects to developing this art and using it effectively. You need to know your people: What makes them tick? Are they passionate about your industry and their work? Are they challenged by their work? What are their goals? What is their personal life like? What’s important to them? What part of their job do they struggle with that you can help them? What do they do for fun? What motivates them? Do they like recognition? The better you know the people on your team the better you can involve them in aspects of the operation according to their abilities and goals and in turn receive more commitment and effort from them. This builds slowly as you get to know your people and they learn to trust you and that you have their interests at heart too.

When you want a culture of commitment, effort and trust, your success depends on being trustworthy yourself, modeling integrity, treating people respectfully, and genuinely caring about their success too. We can all see through someone else’s bullshit. People don’t feel you care when you don’t know their name. Start there. Don’t blow your credibility and reputation and therefore your ability to lead by having bad habits of your own. Clean up your act or people will clear out.