The Occupational Safety Leadership Podcast · Dr. Ayers/Applied Safety and Environmental Management

Episode 278 - Rod Courtney-Part 3 of 8 Habits of a Highly Effective Safety Culture

·35 min·2 clips

Rod Courtney uses SEAL Team Six to argue that the best leaders combine performance and trust, not just technical skill.

1. The Occupational Safety Leadership Podcast episode 278 centers on Rod Courtney’s habit five from The Eight Habits of a Highly Effective Safety Culture. 2. Rod Courtney is the guest and author of the book, and the host frames him as a repeat guest continuing a series from episodes 268 and 274. 3. The episode asks what it means to "stop managing people" and why leadership must be treated as a learned skill. 4. Rod says habits one through five form the foundation, and he calls habit five the last part of that base. 5. He restates habit one as "stop making safety a priority" and says safety is "a value," not just a priority. 6. He says habit two, making it safe for everyone to report things, is "the hardest habit" and likely takes the longest time. 7. He says habit three is about making sure operations owns safety, not just the safety department. 8. He says habit four is "focusing left of zero," which means using data to see accidents before they happen. 9. Rod says multiple companies have proven that if habits one through five are in place, any safety culture can sit on top of them and sustain. 10. He says habits six and seven originally focused on behavior-based safety, but he now thinks human performance is a better direction. 11. Rod says the phrase "natural born leader" is false and compares it to claiming, "I'm a natural born helicopter pilot." 12. He says managers manage departments, processes, procedures, and outcomes, but leaders lead people. 13. He says companies often promote a strong lineman or craft worker into a foreman role and then fail to teach that person how to lead. 14. He uses Navy SEAL training to show how much time and selection it takes before someone can even be considered for SEAL Team Six. 15. He names BUDS, SQT, Coronado, California, and green team as parts of the selection path that weed people out. 16. He says the performance-and-trust graph matters because a high performer with low trust can become a toxic leader. 17. He says a low performer with high trust can be trained, and that person is usually a better teammate than a high performer with low trust. 18. Rod lists 16 leadership skills, including communication, influence, inspiration, humility, delegation, honesty, integrity, ethics, vision, gratitude, competence, teaching, self-awareness, and empathy. 19. The conversation stays practical and interview-driven, with Rod using examples, repetition, and direct questions from the host to explain the framework. 20. Listeners who manage crews, safety teams, or new supervisors will get the most value, while people wanting a short technical update may skip it.

As heard by us

Trust belongs on the safety scorecard, not off to the side.

Rod's safety framework gets a real workout here as it moves from habits one through four to the harder question of who belongs on a high trust team.

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Why you'd press play

If trust and performance keep getting mixed together, this episode gives you a cleaner way to separate them.

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