Helcim is a Calgary-based payments company on a mission to support scaling business owners with modern, merchant-friendly payment solutions. Whether in person or online, Helcim provides the point-of-sale systems and software that help businesses process transactions seamlessly.
With approximately 140 team members, all based in Calgary, Helcim entered a growth phase after closing its $20 million Series B funding round in early 2024. Around the same time, the company refreshed its Culture Book, emphasizing what it means to work smart and hard, and leaning into the idea of talent density: building a team where great people raise the bar for everyone around them.
Helcim was focused on building a place where great people want to work with other great people - where high performers raise the bar, support each other, and make everyone around them better.
But as the company entered its next growth phase, the People & Culture team saw an opportunity: the leaders were strong, but a shared framework for leading at scale could make them even stronger. Helcim decided to invest in development that would grow alongside the business.
Helcim's leaders were talented, dedicated, and deeply invested in the company's success. Many had grown within the organization, with individual contributors stepping into people leadership roles for the first time. They lived the culture. They worked smart and hard. But there was a pattern we couldn't ignore:
"Our leaders cared a lot - sometimes to a fault," Cheryl Hooper, Head of People & Culture, says, " but sometimes that showed up as being overly cautious - they didn't always ask for what they needed from their team."
This is a common tension in people-first cultures. When trust and psychological safety can quietly slide into conflict avoidance, feedback gets softened, and hard conversations get delayed. Leaders carry problems themselves instead of raising them directly - not because they care, but because they care a lot and don’t want to risk the relationship.
At Helcim, this manifested as leaders taking on too much. Instead of delegating and building ownership across their teams, many leaders absorbed work personally. In some cases, harmony was prioritized at the expense of performance. "We wanted people to feel supported, but we also needed to raise the bar. We needed more tools to do both at the same time.”
This wasn't a question of capability or commitment. It was a question of tools, confidence, and shared standards. Many of these leaders had navigated the shift from peer to leader without any formal training. They were doing their best with what they had, but they didn’t have a shared framework for what high-performing leadership actually looked like and how to deliver clear feedback and set expectations while staying aligned to the culture.
The conversations that needed to happen weren't happening - not because leaders didn’t see the issues, but because they didn’t have a roadmap to handle them well.
As Helcim’s Culture Book raised the bar, motivation wasn’t enough. To scale talent density and performance across the organization, Helcim needed a repeatable way to develop leadership capacity — and the confidence to lead with both care and clarity.
Once the need was clear, Cheryl, the Head of People & Culture, began exploring leadership development options. She eventually came across Unicorn Labs, and the focus on startups and scale-ups stood out right away.
“A lot of it just clicked,” she recalls. "They were talking about the same challenges we were seeing - building high-performing teams while scaling fast. "
A local reference further validated it. Another Calgary company already working with Unicorn Labs spoke highly of the experience - not just the program itself, but the practical takeaways and the fact that they continued investing in it over time. That gave Cheryl the confidence that this wasn't just another generic leadership course.
There was still one important question to answer: would it actually fit at Helcim?
Nic, Helcim's CEO, had a reasonable concern - whether the language and approach would feel too corporate, too polished, or disconnected from the pace and reality of a startup.
"Startups are just different," Cheryl acknowledges. "The problems are real-time, and you don’t have the luxury of slowing down."
A conversation with Fahd helped resolve that quickly. It didn’t feel like a sales pitch; it was an exploration of fit. Fahd asked thoughtful questions about Helcim's culture, goals, and what the team was trying to achieve - and focused on understanding before recommending.
"That’s when we knew it would work," Cheryl says.
With that confidence, Helcim made the call: every leader would go through the program.
Helcim committed to running three cohorts of approximately 36 leaders in total.
Running all three cohorts on the same cadence was intentional. It meant leaders across the company were learning the same frameworks at roughly the same time. That created consistency - and made it easier for the learning to show up in real life, whether in leadership meetings, learning pods, or day-to-day conversations. The reception was overwhelmingly positive.
"Honestly, almost everyone was excited," Cheryl recalls. "There’s always a couple of people who’ve been through leadership training that wasn’t great, so they come in skeptical."
And that skepticism is fair. Leadership training can feel generic - another deck, another model, another program promising transformation. But even the skeptics came around.
"The funny part is those were the people who ended up most impressed," Cheryl says. "They came out of it like, 'Okay -, that exceeded my expectations.'"
The early indicators showed up - and they weren’t forced. Leaders started bringing concepts into day-to-day conversations without anyone prompting them.
"Some of the first signs was hearing people reference what they were learning in other settings," One framework spread especially quickly: DISC.
Leaders didn't just complete the assessment for themselves. Many went a step further - they found free DISC tools online and ran exercises with their own teams. It became a shared language across the organization, an easy, accessible way to understand different working styles and improve communication.
"DISC is just easy," Cheryl says. "It's easy to do, easy to talk about - and people are still using it today."
But the real shifts went beyond the frameworks. It showed up in how leaders showed up - with more clarity, more confidence, and a stronger ability to lead directly while staying aligned with Helcim’s people-first culture.
For many leaders, the program was their first formal leadership training. That mattered more than anyone anticipated.
"For many of our leaders, this was their first leadership training," Cheryl reflects. "And honestly, it helped in ways we didn’t fully anticipate - it validated that they were already doing many things well. That built confidence, and it helped them think more clearly about how to lead their teams."
The validation was as important as the new tools. Leaders who had been second-guessing themselves realized they weren’t starting from zero - they had strong instincts. They just needed shared language, consistency, and a framework to build on.
“It was one of those moments where you realize, ‘Oh, I’ve actually been doing parts of this already,’” Cheryl says. “I just didn’t have the words for it.”
It was foundational.
Leaders who doubt themselves may avoid difficult conversations, hesitate to set clear expectations, and struggle to foster psychological safety. As leaders became more grounded and confident, they were better able to lead with both care and clarity. "Our leaders feel more confident now," Cheryl observes. " They're more self-assured and intentional in how they lead."
Before the program, many of the hardest conversations were missed. Feedback was softened to the point where the message might have gotten lost. Expectations were implied instead of clearly stated. In a people-first culture, the desire for comfort sometimes meant that things lingered longer than they should have.
That changed.
"We've seen more confidence in how people communicate," Miranda says. "They're having the right conversations, honest and respectful ones, including the hard ones we used to avoid."
Leaders began to internalize something important: accountability and kindness aren't opposites. You can be supportive and direct. In fact, that combination is what teams need in order to do great work.
"Our leaders are creating more space for feedback and real dialogue," Cheryl says. "They're holding people accountable while staying kind and supportive. That balance is what we wanted."
Conversations about expectations, career growth, and performance became more often. Leaders also got better at choosing the right approach for the moment: coaching when someone needed support, and being direct when clarity and accountability were required, based on the situation and the person.
Sixteen months after completing the program, the tools and frameworks haven't gathered dust.
"People are still talking about it," Cheryl says. "The learnings keep coming up in our leadership circles and in conversations about team dynamics. That's a sign of impact."
DISC, in particular, stuck.
In a recent leadership meeting, the team used DISC as an icebreaker. New leaders who hadn't completed the program were simply sent a free assessment in advance and asked to come prepared to talk through how they prefer to work. It wasn’t treated like a one-time activity - it had become part of how Helcim communicates.
The "Yellows," high-influence, socially oriented personalities, took matters into their own hands after that.
"After they all got to know who each other were across the organization," Cheryl laughs, "they're like, 'We have to get together and do social stuff.' And then, 'Let's have a group chat as well.'"
A cross-functional community had formed organically, sparked by a leadership training exercise. It wasn't on anyone's roadmap. It just happened because people had a framework for understanding one another and a shared language to connect.
After the program, Helcim brought back leadership circles - structured spaces where leaders could connect, share challenges, and support each other. What stood out was how naturally the Unicorn Labs frameworks showed up in those conversations.
"We brought back leadership circles after the program, and the team keeps bringing Unicorn Labs frameworks into those discussions," Cheryl explains. "It's become part of our language."
This wasn't mandated. Leaders chose to bring the material back because it was useful and because it gave them a shared way to talk about the same problems."The biggest change is the shared toolkit," Miranda reflects. "Everyone went through the same training, so we have a consistent foundation for how we lead."
That consistency matters. When everyone shares a common baseline understanding of feedback, accountability, communication styles, and team dynamics, conversations get faster and clearer. Less time is spent translating what someone means, and more time is spent solving the problem in front of the team.
The changes Cheryl and Miranda were seeing day-to-day reflected in the data as well.
Unicorn Labs measures team dynamics across six dimensions of high-performing teams — ranging from foundational elements like Psychological Safety, through Empowerment, Communication, Leadership Culture, Purpose, and Vision.
Helcim’s post-program results showed improvement across five of the six dimensions.
The largest gain came in Sense of Purpose - how connected team members feel to why their work matters. That’s meaningful in a scaling company, where pace is high, and priorities shift quickly. When purpose increases, you typically see more energy, stronger engagement, and better retention.
Two other improvements stood out for Helcim: Empowerment and Effective Communication, the areas most directly tied to the “too nice” challenge Helcim was trying to solve. As leaders became clearer and more confident, teams were given greater ownership and had more constructive conversations about expectations, feedback, and performance.
The only dimension that declined slightly was Psychological Safety, moving from 4.33 to 4.21. But context matters. A 4.21 out of 5 is still a strong score, and a small dip here can happen when teams start being more direct and candid.
In Helcim’s case, it didn’t signal a loss of trust. It reflected a shift away from equating safety with niceness, exactly the change the company was aiming for.
Beyond team-level dynamics, Helcim also saw clear growth at the individual leader level.
Throughout the program, Unicorn Labs tracked leadership capability through structured reflections at multiple checkpoints. Leaders assessed their confidence and effectiveness across core leadership skills, not in theory, but in how they were showing up day to day.
By the end of the program, Helcim leaders reported meaningful improvements across all measured capabilities.
What mattered most wasn’t just the breadth of skills covered; it was how closely the growth mapped back to the challenges Helcim had identified from the start.
Leaders became more confident in setting expectations. More comfortable addressing issues early. More intentional about coaching instead of stepping in to do the work themselves. The qualitative feedback reflected a shift from uncertainty to clarity — from wanting to “do the right thing” to knowing how to do it well.
This wasn’t about turning managers into a different kind of leader. It was about giving them the tools, language, and confidence to lead in a way that already aligned with Helcim’s culture, just more clearly and consistently.
Like any fast-moving company, Helcim has changed a lot since the program wrapped. People have come and gone. Strategies have evolved. The organization today isn’t exactly the same as it was sixteen months ago.
But the impact has lasted.
"Even with all the change, the results have held,," Cheryl says. "Because at the end of the day, our leaders themselves got better. That’s the part that sticks."
The investment wasn't in a moment or initiative. It was in building leaders who could navigate whatever came next - with more clarity, confidence, and self-awareness.
Since completing the initial cohorts, Helcim has returned to Unicorn Labs to enroll additional leaders in the program's asynchronous version. The goal: maintain a shared foundation as the company continues to grow.
"We wanted to make sure new leaders were coming in with the same baseline," Cheryl explains. "That common framework really matters."
The shared rigour matters. So does the shared language.
"Investing in leadership training probably got us to where we needed to be faster than if we hadn't done training like this," Cheryl says. "With less pain. And less trial and error."
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Leadership development is a significant investment in dollars, yes, but also in time. Cheryl is clear-eyed about that reality.
"It can be scary," she admits. "This is time that you're not spending building your product or finding customers."
But the rigour of the program wasn't incidental. It was part of what made it work.
"The rigour made it meaningful," Cheryl says. "It wasn't easy - and that was the point. People appreciated that it pushed them."
The effort required sent a clear signal: leadership at Helcim is real work. It reinforced the standard the company expects across every role.
"The amount of work that you have to do in the program actually reinforces what we expect people to do in all parts of their job," she explains. "You're investing just as much in terms of your leadership development as you are in any other aspect of your role within the organization."
The program wasn’t a finish line. It was a foundation.
"This program gave our leaders a foundation," Cheryl reflects. "They're more confident, more self-aware, and better equipped to have courageous conversations. It's shifted our leadership culture for the long run."
But Cheryl is careful not to frame this as a finished story. Building a high-performing culture isn't a box you check.
"It's not a one-and-done," she says. "Building a high-performing culture is ongoing. We just need to keep reinforcing what we've learned; that's how we maintain it."
The team is already thinking about what comes next: rituals, cadences, refreshers to keep the material alive in day-to-day work.
“We’ve talked about putting rhythms in place to keep the material fresh,” Miranda adds. “So it stays part of how we work.”
For Helcim, the program wasn't an ending. It was a beginning, a shared foundation from which to keep building.
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