The Hidden Cost of Hiding: Authentic Leadership, Imposter Syndrome & Workplace Safety

Safety Heroes — Episode Transcript

Bryce Griffler: The Cost of Hiding — Authentic Leadership & Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Mousa Yassin [00:00:00]

Hey everyone. I'm so excited about today's conversation — I'm talking to Bryce Griffler. Bryce is the co-founder of Safety Is For Everyone, and he's someone I consider a real gem in this industry. He embodies authenticity, the power of knowing yourself, and the impact that operating from a true, genuine place can have on the people around you. I've learned so much from him.

Mousa Yassin [00:00:41]

Before I even get Bryce to introduce himself, I want to share something he wrote — a piece called "Bryce's Core Motivations and Philosophy." There's a quote in there that really grabbed my attention. It goes: "I am not just a simple cog in a machine. I am not employee number 789054. I am Bryce Griffler — an engineer by background who was raised Jewish and enjoys cruise vacations. I attended the University of Virginia, and I am gay. I have a brother and a sister, and my parents divorced when I was 13."

Mousa Yassin [00:01:27]

You hired Bryce Griffler because all of his experiences, his upbringing, his background, and his culture culminated to make him the person he is. Bryce's personal journey as a gay man and EHS professional deeply informs his mission. From a young age, he recognized that everyone is different — and that perspective became foundational to his approach to safety and inclusion. Bryce, I'm so glad to have you here.

Bryce Griffler [00:01:55]

Thank you so much — and thank you for reading that. It really has stood the test of time. It remains accurate, and yes, it can be uncomfortable to talk about, but it's true. Our culture, our background, our upbringing, our socioeconomic status — all of it is what makes us who we are. That's what we bring to work. We can say "leave your emotions at the door" all we like, but that's not how it works. It comes with us whether we like it or not. Otherwise, we'd just hire people based on their resumes.

Bryce Griffler [00:02:29]

This is why we do interviews. This is why we have real conversations. So thank you, Mousa — I'm glad it resonated.

Mousa Yassin [00:02:36]

Absolutely. As I grow as a person, I keep realizing that one of the most important things I can do is understand who I really am — and be an authentic version of that. When I started working, I naturally built this different persona. Now my mission is to collapse the gap: you shouldn't be a different person at work versus with friends. How do you bring your true self everywhere you go? When I read that quote, it's just so powerful. Seeing that you've been on that journey and come out the other side — that helps all of us. So how did you get here? How did you find the courage to take this path? And what obstacles did you face along the way?

Bryce Griffler [00:03:52]

It is very much still a journey — I certainly haven't figured everything out. I think it goes back to my time as an engineer. I was obsessed, and continue to be fascinated, by how things work together rather than just how individual parts function. I worked as an engineer for a while and had the opportunity to serve on an advisory council to the CEO of a defense contractor. There was a moment where I was presenting to the CEO's leadership team, sharing all the data on why, as a company, we need to embrace people as full human beings — not just what we expect them to be. Here's why the data supports that. Here's the competitive advantage.

Bryce Griffler [00:04:34]

And then one leader looked at me and said, "Yeah, but why are you talking to us about this?" She kept looking me up and down. It was uncomfortable. I said, "Well, I just shared all the data, all the studies..." She wouldn't let it go. She said, "Yeah, but why you?" And then it clicked. She was getting at: do you have the background, the lived experience, the context to understand what it means to be in an underserved community? To be without privilege?

Bryce Griffler [00:05:36]

In that moment, I had a realization: there is so much work to do here. Everything about us — our background, upbringing, culture — shapes who we are. We all carry privilege and we all carry bias, and the degree to which it shows up in us shifts every single day. In that moment, I said: I'm going to keep doing this. I'm going to keep having these uncomfortable conversations, and I'm not going to let it go. And it evolved — many conversations in front of rooms, many moments of vulnerability. But even if just one person came up to me afterwards and said, "That resonated," or "Now it makes sense," or "I didn't realize how much more I could do as a leader" — that was enough.

Bryce Griffler [00:06:58]

As professionals, we build these shells we think we need to protect ourselves. And then there comes a point where we start realising we need to dismantle parts — or all — of that shell in order to keep growing. There's an inflection point where you think, "This is now going to hold me back." And you look back — hindsight being what it is — and you ask: why did I keep this shell on for so long? That's really what the turning point was. A senior leader challenged me and said I shouldn't be talking about inclusion. And honestly? That just motivated me to talk about it more.

Mousa Yassin [00:07:20]

Wait — I'm actually the best person to be talking about this!

Bryce Griffler [00:07:25]

Exactly. And I could have simply said, "Because I'm a gay man and I know what it's like to be a minority." But I don't think that would have served anyone. So instead, rather than play that card, I said: we've talked about all the data. Let's talk about it some more.

Mousa Yassin [00:07:45]

I love that. And it's like taking that moment and saying — okay, I've got work to do. Because realising there's a blockage between you and who you really are is just the first step. Then it's a constant journey of self-discovery, making sure you're not performing or creating different personas in different contexts.

Bryce Griffler [00:08:15]

In the world of environmental health and safety, we're constantly assessing risk. We're making decisions about controls, about the path forward. Being your authentic self carries interpersonal risk too. Every day, we have to choose which parts of ourselves to expose. We conduct a rapid risk assessment: if I bring this part of myself to work, to my community, to my friends — what could happen? It's uncomfortable. But it's a perfect parallel to EHS, because we're literally assessing risk every single day.

Mousa Yassin [00:09:01]

Absolutely. Bryce, for the listeners — can you walk us through the organisations you've worked with and the kinds of roles you've held?

Bryce Griffler [00:09:09]

Sure. I started in engineering. And I'll be honest — after a while, I got frustrated. I was no longer truly engineering, innovating, or creating. It had become a lot of paperwork and simulations. I was looking to leave. But the organisation had invested in my development and wanted to keep me, so they moved me into environmental health and safety. I knew a little about safety from a systems engineering angle, but occupational health and safety was new territory. And to make things interesting, they made me the lead auditor for the division.

Bryce Griffler [00:09:44]

So here I was — someone who knew next to nothing about EHS — travelling the world telling our operations what they were doing well and what they needed to improve. Great setup, right? I took a lot of crash courses: US regulatory law, ISO international standards, risk approaches across very different kinds of operations globally. But the thing that stayed with me was that I'd never actually run my own operation. I was showing up at manufacturing plants and telling people what to do when I'd never had to do it myself. That wasn't lost on me — and it was frequently pointed out.

Bryce Griffler [00:10:23]

Eventually I did get the opportunity to lead my own operation — and to put my money where my mouth was. As it happened, it was the very plant I'd worked at as an engineer, designing the vehicles and systems that were now being manufactured there. A full-circle moment. It was a union facility, a very traditional environment, a plant that had been running since the early 1960s. A 24-hour operation. And I was working there when COVID hit.

Bryce Griffler [00:11:39]

That was BAE Systems — a heavy manufacturing environment. After things started to stabilise with COVID, I moved over to a data centre hyperscaler: AWS. To this day, I have trouble truly understanding the scale and footprint of that organisation. It's extraordinary. It was a fascinating place to work because I was building systems from the ground up that would impact operations worldwide.

Mousa Yassin [00:12:14]

And when you joined AWS, it was still very much in the midst of COVID — though a different kind of reality by then. Joining a hyperscale data centre business must have been quite a shift.

Bryce Griffler [00:12:29]

It was. By around 2021, organisations had mostly figured out how to operate with COVID. We understood the restrictions, social distancing, masks — vaccines were becoming available. The rapid learning and pivoting had really happened at BAE Systems. My plant there was classified as critical national infrastructure, which made things interesting when the governor's office called and told us to shut down.

Bryce Griffler [00:13:10]

We hadn't shut that plant down in almost 20 years. It's not one building — it's 30, 40 buildings. There's no off switch. You can't just walk away. We were there late that night figuring out how to do it, and we successfully got it down just before midnight.

Bryce Griffler [00:13:40]

And by Sunday, we'd been identified as critical national infrastructure — so we turned it straight back on.

Mousa Yassin [00:13:45]

Love it. And now, from AWS to Google — do you feel like you've developed a particular specialty, or are you still across every part of EHS?

Bryce Griffler [00:14:04]

My specialty has very much become management systems — which, funnily enough, is a beautiful full-circle moment to my systems engineering background. Everything connects. If you have an incident, does your root cause analysis feed into your training? Are your objectives adjusted accordingly? Did you fix the training, but forget to update the policy? Was there a competency gap? Why wasn't that caught in your internal audit? To me, it's genuinely beautiful.

Bryce Griffler [00:15:00]

My specialty is the Plan-Do-Check-Act continuous improvement lifecycle. I could talk about it for days.

Mousa Yassin [00:15:08]

As you describe it, you sound like a tech product manager working in safety — someone who sees how it all connects and is constantly thinking about optimisation and cohesion.

Bryce Griffler [00:15:22]

Exactly — and streamlining. If we can reduce SLAs, reduce days to delivery... yes, all of it.

Mousa Yassin [00:15:31]

Automate all the paperwork. There's so much opportunity there. Before we go deeper into diversity and inclusion, I want to touch on data centres — because there's enormous investment flowing into that space right now. From a safety perspective, what opportunities or challenges excite you most?

Bryce Griffler [00:16:04]

It's a genuinely new industry. Think about all the other spaces we work in — construction safety, transportation, public utilities, manufacturing, aviation — there are well-established professional bodies, best practices, consultants who know the playbook. For most use cases, the answer is on a shelf somewhere. Data centres are moving at a completely different pace — unlike anything we've seen before.

Bryce Griffler [00:17:01]

From an EHS standpoint, we can't go to the usual professional societies and get an immediate answer. There is no industry-standard playbook for how to build and operate at a data centre hyperscaler. So we're building it now. We're the ones creating those professional societies, sharing what we've tried, inviting peers to the table. "Have you tried this? It worked for you too? Okay, maybe this is best practice." Consensus standards don't exist yet. We're innovating as we go — and it's exciting when it works.

Mousa Yassin [00:18:24]

It's like an industry being built from the ground up, by people who've learned from the mistakes of every industry that came before. And there's real collaboration happening because everyone faces the same challenges. Super exciting from where we sit too.

Bryce Griffler [00:18:56]

The pace of change is unlike anything else. In construction, how you approach trenching hasn't changed dramatically in 20 years. In data centres, six months later there's a new technology, and suddenly that impacts your training programme, your other programmes, operations and maintenance. People who are comfortable with change genuinely thrive there. It's uncomfortable for many, but it's a great place to be if you can embrace it.

Mousa Yassin [00:20:35]

Agreed. Now, going back to diversity and inclusion — particularly within safety, where you're not only thinking about physical safety, but about whether people feel psychologically safe, whether they can speak up and intervene, whether the culture enables people to be their best selves. How does your work in the DEI space intersect with what you bring to safety culture?

Bryce Griffler [00:21:31]

Two things stand out for me. The first: if you don't feel safe to be your full self, you're probably not going to speak up — whether that's about a near miss, a hazard, or a problem on the line. If you want to know where your next incident is going to happen, look at the people doing the work. The worst thing you can hear after an incident is a worker saying, "I knew that was going to happen." And we hear it often.

Bryce Griffler [00:22:26]

If that worker is treated as employee number 489702 — hired just to turn wrenches and nothing more — they're not going to raise their hand. But if we embrace them as a person, acknowledge their experience, their skills, their tenure, and commit to following up when they raise an issue — they will. If their supervisor didn't act on it the first time, or the second time, but their skip-level does — that matters. That's how you change the dynamic.

Bryce Griffler [00:23:25]

The parallel works in other ways too. Imagine a single mother who needs time off because her usual childcare has fallen through. If she feels like she was just hired to do a job, she's going to give the minimum explanation. But if she feels valued as a person, she can say: "Look, I'm a single mum, my mum is unwell, she usually looks after my daughter — can we work something out?" That conversation changes everything. We're so conditioned to keep the personal out of work, but shifting that paradigm — actually understanding each other's lenses — is where inclusion becomes practical.

Bryce Griffler [00:24:51]

You see the world one way, I see it another way. The frustrating and beautiful part is that we're both right. How we reconcile that is by understanding each other's lenses. And that takes me to the second piece: bringing diverse perspectives into the room when you're solving problems. This is less about psychological safety and more about deliberately building teams that will look at things differently than you do.

Bryce Griffler [00:25:45]

It's fast and easy to get together the same group of people you've worked with for 15 years — same school, same background, same contractor list. What's hard is pulling in the person who just joined from a completely different industry, or inviting the colleague who always disagrees with you, or deliberately choosing people you know will create constructive conflict. That's uncomfortable. But when you take a problem — say, a light curtain that simply doesn't work for your use case and you can't find anything off the shelf — the usual suspects will give you a fast answer. The diverse room will give you a better one.

Mousa Yassin [00:27:32]

It's interesting, because as you describe it, I immediately imagine the pushback — managers protecting their timelines, worried about disruption. How do you break through that? And how do you help the person who feels like their job is just to clock in and go home, who has no idea how much value they actually bring?

Bryce Griffler [00:29:18]

The number one thing organisations fail at is articulating the actual problem. Too many of us jump to the solution. When I go to a line supervisor and ask for their time, I don't say "We're going to brainstorm." That sounds fluffy. Instead I say: "In the last six months, you've had 19 hours of downtime related to this issue. I want to help you fix that. How can you help me? Who's your subject matter expert here?" You show them their problem — with their data — and you tell them you're there to help solve it. That's how you get buy-in fast.

Bryce Griffler [00:30:54]

And once you get people in the room, the other piece is making sure they feel valued the moment they speak up. When someone offers an idea — celebrate it. Say their name. "Going back to what Sharon just said..." Positive reinforcement, every time, explicitly and intentionally. Otherwise, there's no reason for them to speak up again.

Mousa Yassin [00:31:52]

Do you encounter resistance from managers who say, "Let's not disrupt the workforce"?

Bryce Griffler [00:32:06]

Of course. We're salespeople — that's part of the job. When we get resistance, we have to empathise. Maybe we scale back what we're asking for. Maybe we compromise in the short term. It's on us to articulate the case clearly and to genuinely understand the pressure they're under.

Bryce Griffler [00:32:57]

One of my favourite examples: I was working at an Amazon warehouse. Every day I'd walk the floor and ask the inbound and outbound managers: "Is there anything I can do to help you today?" The first week, one of them — Gary — just looked at me like I was from another planet. Every day. Sometimes twice. "Anything I can help with?" By the second or third week, he actually had something. Something small — we dealt with it. But the real moment came about six or seven weeks later, when Gary walked off the floor, came to my office, stood in the doorway and said: "Is there anything I can do to help you today?" That is how you shift a culture. An operations manager — glued to his metrics all day — coming to the safety person to offer help. That was everything.

Mousa Yassin [00:34:38]

Love that story. I want to come back to authenticity, because it's a journey I'm very much on. When I'm spending energy managing how I appear — protecting an image, guarding my ego — that's energy I could be putting into being present, into the things I actually want to build. What does authenticity feel like in practice? And how does it show up in safety?

Bryce Griffler [00:35:24]

It is exhausting. Building and maintaining those layers — what others need to see, what they expect of you — it never stops. We sometimes frame that as resilience, but it's not. You're wearing yourself down. For me, it connects closely to imposter syndrome. And imposter syndrome is different from self-doubt — I want to be clear about that. Self-doubt is healthy. It raises our cortisol, makes us work a little harder, learn a little more.

Bryce Griffler [00:37:01]

Imposter syndrome is when it starts impacting your mental health and your productivity. It's that persistent, paralysing fear that today is the day someone walks in and discovers you have no idea what you're doing. That you've been lying to everyone. And the most important thing to understand about it: it disproportionately affects high performers. The people delivering the most, performing the best — they're the most likely to be suffering in silence with this. And it's not "I'm not quite qualified." It's "Someone is going to call me out in front of everyone today."

Bryce Griffler [00:37:55]

The first time I really experienced it was as a first-time people manager. And I decided I was going to be open about it. In the first week — in casual conversation, not in a big team meeting — I told my employees: "I have no idea what I'm doing." They brushed it off at first. Thought I was joking.

Mousa Yassin [00:38:24]

He must be joking — someone hired him, he has a resume, he's fine.

Bryce Griffler [00:38:26]

Exactly. But about three or four months in, I said it again: "Bear with me. I'm going to ask a lot of questions. I genuinely have no clue what I'm doing." And that's when they realised I was serious. They said, "What are you talking about? You're exactly where you're supposed to be. You're the best manager we've ever had." And here's the thing — that is the worst possible response to give someone with imposter syndrome.

Bryce Griffler [00:38:52]

Because what I was trying to say was: "I think I might be a fraud." And what they said back was: "No you're not." So now I have to double down on hiding it. Now I really can't let anyone see the gaps. It actually makes it worse.

Mousa Yassin [00:39:21]

Oh wow. That's so counterintuitive.

Bryce Griffler [00:39:23]

But here's the other side of it. By being persistent and consistent about being open — by continuing to say "I don't know" when I genuinely didn't — it became a signal of authenticity. And when your team sees a leader they respect being vulnerable about their gaps, they feel safe to be vulnerable too. They'll tell you about the job they want to apply for but aren't sure they're ready for. I even gave data points — I told them I'd never operated a five-gas meter in my life. And those honest admissions created real trust.

Bryce Griffler [00:40:03]

The more you're open about your own gaps, the clearer the signal: you don't have to build that layered shell here. When people see leaders speaking honestly about where they're struggling — not as performance, but genuinely — it gives everyone permission to do the same.

Mousa Yassin [00:40:45]

It's so counterintuitive though. The default assumption is: if the leader doesn't seem to know what they're doing, people will feel lost. But what you're saying is — everyone already knows their own job. What they need is a leader who's human. Someone who communicates clearly, asks good questions, and removes barriers. That's the actual job.

Bryce Griffler [00:42:02]

Exactly. And your team are not idiots. If you're performing and building layers, they'll see through it eventually. I'd rather call myself out before anyone else has to. Identify the gaps, say what I'm doing to address them. My job as a leader is to listen, ask follow-up questions, and remove barriers to your success. Not to say "do this, do that."

Bryce Griffler [00:43:07]

There's a story that really captures all of this for me. When COVID hit, I was EHS manager at a critical national infrastructure manufacturing site. People looked to me to keep them safe — and I was determined to do that. I spent a quarter of a million dollars a month on COVID safety measures for a single plant. We had 42 contract nurses, 24-hour screening operations, an open budget. Everything was intentional and professional — no handwritten signs, five variations of masks in 16 locations, mass-scale thermometers. We even put time clocks in the car park so people could clock in before going through screening — though we ended up removing them because our process got so efficient they weren't needed.

Bryce Griffler [00:45:14]

Every time someone tested positive, my voice went out to 10,182 touch points — phones, texts, emails. "We've had another positive case. Here's where they worked, here's when they were last on site, here's what we're doing." That was my purpose: keeping these people safe.

Bryce Griffler [00:46:03]

It was June — Pride Month. I'd been living in the emergency command centre for six months at this point. The site lead mentioned that the employee resource group was sending a Pride flag to fly out front. On June 1st, it went up. I pulled into the car park that morning — around 4:35am, because those were the hours we were keeping — and I saw it: the giant American flag, the giant POW/MIA flag, and this tiny little rainbow flag. And honestly, having worked at that plant as an engineer nearly a decade earlier, in that small town, union manufacturing environment... I never thought I'd see a Pride flag flying there.

Bryce Griffler [00:47:10]

I walked into the command centre and the site lead said: "That's unacceptable." I said, "What?" He said: "I need a flag the same size as the others. That looks ridiculous." I told him logistics during COVID were a nightmare — you couldn't get anything. He said: "I need you to overnight it." I said, "Overnighting right now will cost more than the flag itself." He said, "I don't care" — and handed me his credit card.

Mousa Yassin [00:48:07]

Wow.

Bryce Griffler [00:48:10]

He was done with the conversation. So I ordered it. While we were waiting for the flag to arrive, the site lead and I were walking through the car park and we passed two employees who were talking about the flag. They used a slur. I heard it. I kept walking.

Bryce Griffler [00:48:44]

When we got to his car, Dennis — the site lead — was furious. He said, "How do you put up with that? You've been working 4am to 10pm with an hour-and-a-half commute each way, tirelessly protecting these people. How can you tolerate it?" I said: "I'm here to keep them safe, and I'm going to keep doing that." He asked, "But how do they not understand?" I said, "I'm not going to change their minds tomorrow. But I appreciate your support."

Bryce Griffler [00:49:33]

That afternoon, we received a formal grievance from the union — about the Pride flag. People who still had jobs, while others around the world didn't, were taking time to formally object to a small flag flying out front. The leadership team started discussing it. I walked in, asked what was going on. They said, "Don't worry about it." I said, "Why wouldn't I worry about it?" They said: "Bryce, this is the one time of year we need you not to have to carry this. Let us fight this fight. We are a team."

Bryce Griffler [00:51:02]

The flag arrived that night — the full-size one. I got there around 6am, and there it was: a giant Pride flag flying out front. I walked into the command centre and several leaders were already there. They said, "We want to show you something." They pulled out an iPad and showed me a video of the site operations lead, the site director, the labour relations manager, the security manager, and the HR manager — all raising the Pride flag together. They said: "This is going out in company-wide communications this morning. This is the one time of year you do not have to fight this fight. We were proud to do it."

Mousa Yassin [00:52:03]

Oh wow. That is extraordinary.

Bryce Griffler [00:52:13]

It reminded me that they valued me as a person. My voice was the one going to over 10,000 people every time there was a positive COVID case. I was working tirelessly — and they saw that. They saw me. And it empowered me to keep going, and to keep showing up as my authentic self rather than retreating behind a shell.

Mousa Yassin [00:52:49]

Goosebumps. Thank you so much for sharing that. The lesson I'm taking away: be your authentic self and trust that it's the right thing to do. Spend the time getting to know who you really are, and bring that everywhere. The moments where you feel reactive, defensive, or like you're hiding something — those are the teachers. That's where the real work happens.

Mousa Yassin [00:53:34]

Bryce, I want to stop here. This conversation has been so powerful. That story is the perfect place to land. Is there anything you want to leave listeners with?

Bryce Griffler [00:53:48]

Just this: I can share stories, we can talk about the right things to do — but it is going to be consistently uncomfortable. And if we're not getting uncomfortable, we're not doing the real work. It will be awkward. We will miss. We're not expected to be perfect. But we are expected to look back, reflect, adjust, and acknowledge. So get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Mousa Yassin [00:54:16]

Love it. Thank you so much, Bryce.

Bryce Griffler [00:54:19]

Thanks for having me, Mousa. Take care.