Do you know how many people are directly affected by the work you do? I ask leadership teams this question and they usually answer with the number of people they employ – 75 or 100 or 120.

“How about your vendors, employees’ families, and all your customers?” I ask. Some light bulbs start turning on, and they’ll guess a couple thousand.

Even a couple thousand is a low number. Your work and your team make a huge difference. A number of years ago, my team crunched some numbers and determined that the average company of 100 employees directly affects 10,000 people. This includes all of your staff, your families, your vendors and partners, your customers and their teams, and then all the work you do in the community.

I was recently with the leadership team of a proud company that had a big challenge. They had been experiencing declining sales and profitability. The senior leadership team understood the gravity of their situation, but they couldn’t get the mid-level managers and the frontline employees to see a need to change day-to-day habits.

Like many companies, the culture of the organization had become stale. The employees had a lackadaisical, “So what?” kind of attitude: “So what if this order is not shipped on time? So what if the customer complains?”

Some people are great at avoiding conflict in the workplace. All you need to do is keep your mouth shut or yield to the strongest voice in the room. If I am describing you, I want you to consider how damaging that behavior is for both you and your team. I also hope to give you some simple, practical suggestions for becoming a healthier fighter.

Two epidemics kill cultures: end runs and unresolved complaining. Both waste time and energy, and are ultimately toxic to the health and productivity of your company. Luckily, these epidemics can be cured by asking a simple, powerful question.

What do you say when one of your team members asks you to keep something confidential? There’s a dangerous workplace situation that all leaders and managers find themselves drawn into from time to time. I call it the “confidential complaint” trap.

This happens to me when I’m working with leadership teams. Someone will stop me in the hall during a break and say, “May I talk to you for a minute, NOT in the room with the group?”

There’s a natural inclination to say yes to this kind of request. As leaders, we all want to be approachable. We may also want to find out what’s going on inside our organization. But promising blanket confidentiality for run-of-the-mill complaints can be a dangerous slope because it is diametrically opposed to creating a healthy workplace culture.