Earlier this month, I had the privilege of joining Paul Batz on the Good Leadership Podcast to debrief the May 2026 Good Leadership Breakfast featuring Andrea Walsh, CEO of HealthPartners. Andrea leads an organization of more than 27,000 people through one of the most challenging periods in the history of American healthcare. What struck me most was not the scale of what she manages, but the clarity of how she thinks about the one thing that makes all of it possible: building trust in the workplace.
Trust is not a soft concept. It is, as Andrea framed it, the foundation. Without it, accountability does not hold, teams do not function, and change does not stick.
Trust starts at the origin
Andrea made a point early in the conversation that I keep coming back to. She talked about how the culture of an organization is often embedded in its origin story, and how HealthPartners was founded on a simple but powerful idea: people need to be able to access care, and if they cannot afford it, access does not matter. That founding accountability has shaped the culture of the organization for decades.
It is a reminder worth carrying into any industry. The organizations I work with through Versique that have the strongest cultures are almost always ones where people can connect their daily work to something bigger. When the “why” is clear, accountability becomes something people hold for themselves, not something imposed on them from the outside.
You cannot point fingers if you are on the same team
One of the most quotable moments from Andrea’s talk was this: you cannot point fingers at others if you are on the same team. She was talking specifically about the relationship between physicians and administrators at HealthPartners, two groups that in many healthcare organizations operate in tension with one another. At HealthPartners, they are structured as diads: clinicians and administrative leaders leading together, side by side, at every level of the organization.
The lesson translates well beyond healthcare. In my work helping organizations find and place HR and leadership talent, I see the same dynamic play out in companies of all sizes. Silos create blame cultures. Shared ownership creates trust. When people are genuinely in it together, with common goals and shared accountability, the dynamic shifts entirely.
Calm is a leadership skill
Andrea’s second success habit was one that generated a lot of conversation: she creates calm during crisis. Her response was characteristically self-aware. She acknowledged that staying calm is her instinct, but also recognized the risk: that people can misread calm as being out of touch with the severity of a problem.
That kind of self-awareness is rare and important. Knowing your strengths means also knowing where they can work against you. The best leaders I have seen are not the ones who project certainty in every moment. They are the ones who can hold steadiness and humanity at the same time, staying focused on the path forward while acknowledging that the path is hard.
Involve people and they will learn
A quote shared during the conversation has stayed with me since. It came from a placard at a zoo: tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I’ll remember, involve me and I’ll learn.
Andrea’s entire approach to leadership is built around this idea. Whether it was including physicians in decision-making, connecting teams across the organization, or amplifying the stories of people doing meaningful work, her instinct is always toward involvement. People trust leaders who bring them in, not ones who hand down decisions from above.
Gratitude is a two-way street
The bonus success habit that came out of Andrea’s peer interviews was gratitude. She put it simply: you get what you give and you give what you get. The leaders and teams that practice genuine gratitude, for their colleagues, for the work itself, for the people they serve, tend to perform better, stay longer, and build something more durable.
I am a mental health advocate, and I believe strongly that gratitude practice matters not just for team performance but for the wellbeing of the individuals doing the work. It is one of the simplest things a leader can do and one of the most overlooked.
What I took away
Sitting in that room with Andrea Walsh reminded me why culture work matters so much to what we do at Versique. The organizations that attract and retain great talent are not always the ones with the best compensation packages or the flashiest perks. They are the ones where people trust their leaders, trust their teammates, and believe the work they are doing means something.
Trust is not built in a single meeting or a leadership offsite. It is built through consistency: through showing up, involving people, staying calm when things are hard, and recognizing the contributions of others.
