Building Psychological Safety in the Workplace: Lessons from Walters Group and BrainRidge Consulting

Full Webinar Transcript

Transcript lightly edited for clarity and readability while preserving the speakers’ meaning and conversational tone.

Welcome and the Great Place to Work Effect

Anne Cesak: Good afternoon. Welcome everybody, and thank you so much for being here today. This is our June Insights webinar — thank you for making the time to join us. My name is Anne Cesak. I’m a Senior Consultant here at Great Place to Work, and I’m also a Certified Human Resources Leader, and I’ll be your host today. We have a panel conversation today — a conversation with HR and leadership pros — and it’s an opportunity to hear some practical ways that people apply learnings in the workplace. Before we jump into our panelist conversation, just a couple of notes.

Anne Cesak: We have a Q&A. If you have any questions, please pop them in there and we’ll make time for them at the end. Also, our producer is behind the scenes today, so if you have any technical issues, or just want to pop something in the chat, she can help you out with that. So, as I mentioned, this is our Insights webinar, and this is our June session. We’re going to be talking about the Great Place to Work Effect. This is a continuation — it’s something we’ve been talking about all year. The Great Place to Work Effect, really boiled down, is: how do great leaders build trust? Trust shapes culture, and culture drives performance. And each month we focus on a specific high-trust leader behaviour.

Anne Cesak: When we look at the Great Place to Work Effect, it’s really simple: great starts with leadership. We’re going to be talking a lot about leadership today when it comes to caring. Leadership creates experience, experience shapes culture, and culture drives performance. To build that out a little bit, we look at nine high-trust leader behaviours: listening, speaking, inspiring, caring, developing, thinking, sharing, celebrating, and hiring. Leadership creates experience — that day-to-day experience that employees have at work. We look at that in terms of trust in leadership, taking pride in the work that we do, the camaraderie we experience with our colleagues, and, importantly, the “for all.” It’s one thing to be a great place to work, and another to be a great place to work for all, where everybody feels valued and included. Culture, I like to look at as the outcome of the behaviours we reward, encourage, and ignore. It’s the norms and traditions in your organization — how things get done around here. And ultimately, culture drives performance. Whether you are a for-profit business, a non-profit, or a charity, you have performance metrics you track — profitability, productivity, efficiency, customer satisfaction, social impact, market resilience, talent acquisition, talent retention. It really comes back to the impact of leadership on the performance of the organization. So today we’re talking about caring, and specifically psychological safety.

Meeting the panelists and defining psychological safety

Anne Cesak: Let’s meet our panelists. I’m pleased to be joined by Natalia Strelbytsky, Vice President, People and Culture at Walters Group — a family-owned steel construction company founded in 1956 that designs, fabricates, and constructs commercial and industrial projects throughout North America, headquartered in Hamilton, Ontario. Also with us is Rahul Goel, Founder at BrainRidge Consulting — a technology consulting firm headquartered in Toronto that specializes in delivering innovative IT and AI solutions to leading financial institutions across the Americas. When we talk about psychological safety, let’s define it. At its core, it’s: do people feel safe to speak up, ask questions, admit mistakes, and challenge ideas without fear? Sometimes it can be conflated with mental health or mental wellness. Natalia, let’s start with you. In your experience, what does psychological safety actually look like in a normal workday at Walters Group?

Natalia Strelbytsky: Thank you, Anne, and everybody else. It’s a pleasure to be here, and I’m glad to talk about this topic — it’s top of mind these days. It’s one of those things that when you have it, you don’t think about it — like when you’re healthy, you don’t think about the doctor. It shows up in everyday, ordinary moments, and it looks different for everybody. For somebody, it could be asking a question in a big meeting and feeling safe to do so. For somebody else, it could be challenging how something has been done here for many years. Or it could be showing emotion; it could be being vulnerable. I’ve worked at places where I was told to “tone down my passion,” so you can’t be yourself. There’s an expression: you hire an employee, but a human being shows up for work. So for me, this ability to be yourself, to show yourself, is psychological safety.

Anne Cesak: Thank you for sharing that — I love that quote. Rahul, what about you? What does this look like?

Rahul Goel: Thank you, Anne, and thank you for having me here. We’re in the consulting business, which is mainly a people business. As Natalia mentioned, if we have employees who feel at home at work, where they can openly speak and talk, and they don’t feel pressured when they have to ask questions — that’s what it is for us, day to day. Especially in technology consulting, where we have long working hours, we make every arrangement for our employees so that they don’t feel homesick at work. It’s a small thing, but bringing it to our employees and conveying that this is the most important thing for us actually helps on the ground. This is not something we can measure; it’s something you see and feel when you talk to someone. And we’re very proud to be talking about this, because it’s not just for the consulting business — every business needs to talk about it.

What it feels like — and what its absence looks like

Anne Cesak: I want to go back to a couple of things I’m hearing. It’s being able to be yourself — and people are complicated. It’s not having to leave yourself at the door and have somebody else walk through. When you go to work, it’s not having to put on a mask, because that is exhausting. That human piece, that “home” piece — many of us are probably different people at work than at home. Natalia, you said you feel it, and you know when it’s not there. Could you elaborate on what it looks like when it’s not there?

Natalia Strelbytsky: When it’s not there, it probably shows up in different shapes and forms, but you can certainly feel the tension rising. It’s very tiring when employees have to check themselves at the door. You become a persona and not a person. You wear a professional hat and constantly have to be someone else. Eventually it just wears you out, tensions rise, and patience goes down. When that happens, in a project-based business like ours, things start falling through the cracks, and eventually it shows up in profitability. That’s how it shows up.

Anne Cesak: Somebody just commented “anxiety on a Sunday night” — absolutely, the Sunday-night scaries. Rahul, any examples of when you can tell it’s not there?

Rahul Goel: It’s the motivation we see on the ground — the motivation to go above and beyond, not just doing what they’ve been asked to do; the innovation. And this is a criterion I have in our office: it’s when people are speaking up and enjoying themselves in their social settings. The best days for me at work are when our employees are in the office and there’s a lot of noise all around. If no one is speaking, if it’s dead silent, I don’t see that energy, and I feel like something is wrong. So for me, it’s seeing motivation, people talking to each other, and everyone going above and beyond.

Anne Cesak: That’s a really interesting point — because when people aren’t speaking up, that’s where you miss the ideas, the innovation, and where you also miss people raising risks. In organizations where physical safety is a high priority, if people aren’t comfortable speaking up, there’s a risk to the employees and to the business. If you’re not seeing people connecting and building on each other’s ideas — whether in person or on Teams or Slack — that could be a red flag.

Poll: how safe do employees feel speaking up?

Anne Cesak: I’d like to launch a poll and get a sense of what’s going on in participants’ workplaces. In your workplace today, how safe do employees feel speaking up about concerns or mistakes — very safe, somewhat safe, not very safe, or not safe at all? We’ll give you about 30 seconds, and then we’ll share the results. And this is your perception around that safety.

Anne Cesak: Here are the results: 20% say very safe, 56% somewhat safe, 22% not very safe, and 2% not safe at all. Good to see that not too many feel “not safe at all” — but there’s that “somewhat.” That can mean there’s some uncertainty: maybe sometimes it’s safe to speak up, maybe sometimes it’s not. In my experience, leaders always say, “I have an open door, I encourage people to speak up” — but then it’s the reaction to it. Natalia, where do organizations get stuck when it comes to creating a psychologically safe place to work?

Where organizations get stuck

Natalia Strelbytsky: I think it’s hard to do if you treat it as an HR-driven program or a training initiative, because people don’t decide to speak up based on the workshop they went through. They decide to speak up based on their experience. It’s a lived, everyday experience rooted in leadership actions and behaviours. The leader says, “My door is always open, come tell me whatever you want” — and then somebody gives them feedback and they get immediately defensive or dismissive, even unintentionally. That person will probably never do that again. So it can be a problem if HR is driving it but the leaders don’t live it.

Anne Cesak: Absolutely. Rahul, what do you want to build on that?

Rahul Goel: I echo Natalia. It’s not an HR initiative. We’ve done a lot of HR initiatives, and after that we realized it’s a leadership thing. And one important thing is that admitting mistakes is one thing, but building on top of that is another. Many times we, as leaders, do not admit mistakes — we take wrong decisions and try to fix them. Organizations that let their employees make mistakes, and build on top of those mistakes to help them grow, are the differentiators. The second place organizations get stuck is that there are different personalities in the room. The more talkative employees, who present their ideas better, are the ones who get heard. So getting to the employees who often don’t speak up — getting feedback from all directions, from the lower levels all the way up to leadership — makes a huge difference.

Speaking up across cultures and personalities

Anne Cesak: We’ve got a question: how do you overcome the idea of speaking up with people from cultures where that might not be as acceptable? It’s about being a great place to work for all. Rahul, how do you ensure you hear from everybody when there are people who, for whatever reason, don’t feel comfortable doing that?

Rahul Goel: One thing is that leaders have to make sure they’re listening to everyone, not just the one speaking more than others — identifying those individuals and motivating them to speak up, so the perspective is built through all the people in the room. The second thing, which we do quite a lot, is coffee chats and other social engagements, monthly, where we put up a list of names and people come up. So anyone from different cultures comes up, and we have these sessions within the company. Those two aspects help people speak up and open up.

Anne Cesak: Natalia, did you want to add anything?

Natalia Strelbytsky: Two great points, Rahul. You have different personalities and different levels of comfort. One is permission to speak up — literally give them permission. You might say, “Who needs permission?” but vocalizing it sometimes helps: “I want to hear from everybody.” Maybe tap people on the shoulder — they don’t love it, but it challenges them a little. I also love sticky notes — I’m the queen of the sticky-note exercise.

Anne Cesak: When you want ideas in a session, you may not be comfortable speaking up, but you’ll be comfortable writing down that great idea. It creates an environment of co-creation. One size does not fit all — whether it’s the sticky-note exercise, an anonymous survey, or employee groups. Somebody’s saying “multiple channels for speaking up — in a group, one-on-one, email.” It’s always a great idea to talk to employees about what would help them feel safe to share. Natalia, how do you make this part of your culture, versus a workshop? How does it become part of the everyday?

Making it part of the culture

Natalia Strelbytsky: With workshops, you go and learn something, you get fired up, and then you go back to an organization that maybe hasn’t changed. So how do we sustain any learning? Part of it is education. At Walters, part of our new-hire orientation, day one, is this conversation about speaking up and the butterfly effect. We’re a project-based business; in the project life cycle, there’s something you notice early, but you wonder, “Is it even my job to speak up?” So you let it go, and inevitably it shows up later and costs more to fix. We tell our new hires: speak up, because it will help us fix something sooner. Then, invest in your leaders. It takes time; it’s not going to change overnight. Give them the skills and tools to manage reactions, build connections, and build trust with their people. And look at your core values. We’ve done a core-value refresh, and “build trust” is one of our core values. So there are multiple ways to make it part of the culture, not just a stand-alone workshop.

Anne Cesak: Rahul, what are your thoughts on that?

Rahul Goel: It has to be a culture within the organization, and sustaining anything only comes if we practice it every moment. For that, we coach leaders, and they coach their teammates, and so on. In our software-development business model, we have a lot of retrospectives and reviews on how projects went, and this is part of our performance metrics. One thing we coach our people on is building your own brand — it’s not the company’s brand, it’s your own. You’ll build your brand, and you’ll speak up and think aloud, because that’s key to innovation. We measure against that each performance cycle. We also run a pulse survey to see how people are feeling. And in my Monday-morning meetings, I ask people to express their feelings before the call in one word — happy, bored, tired. It helps a lot on the ground.

Rebuilding trust and recognizing the behaviour

Anne Cesak: Natalia, in an example where somebody did speak up, called out a risk, or offered a suggestion that was not well received — perhaps trust has been broken. How can leaders rebuild that? Or maybe a new hire comes from an environment where speaking up was not acceptable. How can leaders create that sense of safety with somebody who’s had a bad experience?

Natalia Strelbytsky: I read somewhere — I can’t remember who said it — that it takes years to build trust and you can erode it in five minutes. It won’t be easy. That’s where vulnerability comes into play, on the leadership side, where you own it and have that conversation with the individual. You have to take the time to create those moments where you allow and invite the feedback, and manage your reaction. The work starts with you, as a leader. You have to acknowledge that it might take time to build the trust — but it starts with you.

Anne Cesak: One of my favourite expressions is “what gets recognized gets repeated.” Rahul, how do you recognize people for demonstrating that behaviour?

Rahul Goel: Someone literally asked me: “This whole project was based on this thesis, and the thesis is wrong — now how shall we reward that?” meaning the person who brought it up. If we don’t bring these issues up earlier, if we don’t reward it, if we don’t make this a place where people can freely speak about their mistakes, then we’ll see the catastrophic effects of those failures. So any mistake — whoever brings it up — we tell them, “Yes, thank you for bringing this up,” and “it’s never too late.” At the same time, you need a fine balance. There’s a saying: you make a mistake once, learn from it, and next time make a different mistake — don’t repeat your mistakes. That’s the culture you build.

Anne Cesak: Along those lines, share examples. There’s the expression about celebrating failure — broadcasting, “Hey, we tried something, it didn’t work, here’s what we learned.” Or, “Last month, one of our colleagues called out something that wasn’t going well, and this is what we did about it.” So you normalize the behaviour and the conversation around speaking up.

Closing the loop and measuring progress

Anne Cesak: Let’s do another poll. What is the biggest barrier to psychological safety in your organization? Is it manager reactions, a lack of processes, a culture of blame, or “nothing changes when people speak up”? Pick the one that really resonates.

Natalia Strelbytsky: I’ll speak about the Great Place to Work Trust Index. Why do it if you’re not going to implement some changes? That’s what will prevent people from giving you feedback. We hear it all the time: if nothing changes, then why bother? So when you ask for feedback, it’s a loop, and you have to close the loop. We’re very intentional about it at Walters — not just a survey, but more in-depth conversations, and then closing the loop about what you can or can’t do, and why. Say someone brings an idea forward — maybe a safety issue — and it goes down the chain, and it turns out everything’s fine, but they don’t hear back. We’re intentional about closing the loop, even if the answer is no.

Anne Cesak: Rahul, did you want to add anything?

Rahul Goel: One thing about the survey: our results came in one year, and the team was really happy. I had to get them in a room and ask, “Should we be really happy, or are people afraid to say otherwise?” What’s the real reason? Are these questions relevant to them? Many times, questions are designed so we get the answers we want. So when someone raises something, it doesn’t matter how busy you are as a leader — you convey, “Yes, we’ll look into it, we’ll act on it.” We make sure we ask these questions in different ways, so we get the real answers, not the ones we want to hear.

Anne Cesak: Great call-out about asking the right questions. On closing the feedback loop — one tactical thing leaders can do is exactly that: you brought this forward, here’s what happened. Because if you want someone to feel safe, it’s taking action. And even if it’s to say no — that’s an answer. “No” is a complete sentence: “For these reasons, we will not be implementing that, but thank you for raising it.” How would you measure that psychological safety is improving?

Rahul Goel: I don’t know whether this is the right thing to say, but leaders get to hear more bad news. Meetings have more voices; you’ll see more people speaking up. Retrospectives are more candid, and mistakes are discussed openly, not in closed rooms. Ideas are being challenged; the status quo is being challenged. If you see all this happening, that means it’s improving.

Anne Cesak: Leaders get more bad news — I love that. Natalia, anything to add?

Natalia Strelbytsky: I’ll share an example. A couple of years ago at Walters, we noticed quite heavy silos — whether it was COVID or work-from-home related. We couldn’t afford that, because we’re a project-based business where we work together toward a common goal. So we did some cross-departmental, paid off-site lunches to showcase different teams, what they do, and the challenges they face, to build empathy and understanding. Then you start seeing people collaborate more, because they build relationships and trust, and issues get brought forward. I joke that I can sense the tension in the organization by how fast the chamomile tea is going in the cafeteria, and how often my chocolate jar needs replenishing. But it’s both data and qualitative. You’ll likely notice turnover goes down. You’ll see more people raising their hands for challenges, because the risk goes down. So: more internal promotions and transfers, less turnover, less tension, more collaboration.

Tying it to business outcomes

Anne Cesak: How do you help leaders understand that this is not an HR initiative — that psychological safety is something they create? Either one of you can take that.

Rahul Goel: I think it starts from your own room, your own meetings, and it cascades. If you make your immediate leaders feel that psychological safety is of the utmost importance in this organization, they will cascade this to their team members. But at the same time, it doesn’t start just from the leaders — it can start everywhere. It can start from small groups, coffee chats, and so on.

Natalia Strelbytsky: For me, it’s counterintuitive. If you want to help your leaders understand why psychological safety is important, don’t talk to them about psychological safety as a term, in a stand-alone way. Talk to them about the workplace culture — how we get things done around here. Talk to them about business outcomes, and tie it to business results. In construction, we have to make decisions fast, because it’s a very practical, fast-moving, safety-sensitive industry. So if people aren’t safe to speak up, you’re really going to hurt your profitability. You have to help them see it not as “psychological safety,” but as the cultural elements where psychological safety is embedded in how we get work done.

Anne Cesak: You both used the word “trust.” How does psychological safety relate to trust? I don’t think you can have one without the other. If I don’t trust my leaders or my colleagues, it’s hard to feel psychologically safe. So how do you build trust? Communicating with people, being transparent, ensuring people feel appreciated, collaborating, involving people, encouraging idea-sharing. Helping people understand the impact is huge, because you can’t exist in a vacuum in your role.

Final advice

Anne Cesak: We’ve got about two minutes left. If you could give one piece of advice to founders, leaders, and HR pros looking at psychological safety, what would it be? Rahul, I’ll go to you first.

Rahul Goel: One piece of advice — hold your leaders accountable for the environment that they create.

Anne Cesak: How do you do that?

Rahul Goel: Different teams have different cultures within the same organization, and it’s the leaders and team members who build the culture of that team. So you make sure your leaders know that the culture they’re living in is the best culture within the enterprise — by mingling more with their team members, creating an environment of trust, and making it a fun place to work through social chats, coffee chats, lunches, and dinners.

Anne Cesak: We didn’t even really get to the impact of fun and being social on psychological safety and trust. It’s a big part. It’s not having a team-building event “just because” — there’s a purpose: to build relationships and connections and support psychological safety. Natalia, I’ll give you the last word.

Natalia Strelbytsky: Mine will be slightly different. Rahul, I love what you said about holding leaders accountable, because HR can’t do it alone — we don’t own that culture. But I’ll say to HR professionals: you’ve probably heard the joke, “Oh, HR’s in the room, we must be in trouble.” Start with yourself. Make sure people don’t just come to you when there’s trouble. Build connections. Have allies at all levels of the organization — employees, frontline leaders, executive leaders. Those connections will help you understand what is really going on and stay close to the business. You can do a survey once a year, but that’s not enough. So as an HR leader, it’s critical to get outside the HR bubble and build meaningful connections with employees and leaders, to understand what is going on.

Anne Cesak: Such a great point. Thank you — what a way to finish. Thank you, Natalia and Rahul, for your participation today, and thank you to everybody who joined. We’ll see you back in July for a webinar in partnership with Indeed, conducted in French. In August, I’ll be back hosting a panel on our next leader behaviour, recognition, and how to improve the employee experience without big budgets. Thank you, everybody. Enjoy the rest of your day. Take care.