The Leadership Exchange

Leaders Who Treat Safety As A Core Value Create Better Teams And Results

• Lupe Munoz and Steve McKeon • Season 3 • Episode 8

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Safety culture doesn’t live on posters; it lives in what leaders choose to value every day. We sit down to unpack how treating safety as a core value—not a rotating priority—changes everything from trust to engagement to operational excellence. Instead of telling people to “be safe,” we share the specific habits that make safety visible and real: asking open-ended questions that spark thinking, turning walkthroughs into hazard-spotting sessions, and responding to issues in the moment so people see what truly matters.

We dig into the link between safety and credibility. When leaders devote five minutes to their “top priority,” teams notice the mismatch. You’ll hear practical ways to close that gap, including how to invite employee input on risk, why to route feedback through the leadership chain, and how to coach without shaming so psychological safety grows. We also talk about the power of modeling: one missed vest or pair of goggles can undo months of culture work. Owning mistakes, thanking people who correct you, and holding yourself to the standard signals that safety is everyone’s job.

At the heart of it all is care. Many workers follow rules to avoid trouble, not because they feel valued. We discuss how to make the why personal—so people go home safe because they matter to their families and to us. That shift pays off across the board: fewer incidents, stronger quality, better productivity. Anchoring the conversation in Maslow’s pyramid, we explain why meeting basic and safety needs is the foundation for unlocking higher performance, creativity, and continuous improvement. If you’re new to a team, start here: build safety culture first, set clear expectations at every leadership level, and practice the behaviors daily.

If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with a leader who needs it, and leave a review with the one safety question you’ll ask your team this week.

The Five Leadership Behaviors Covered are..

• Defining safety culture as shared values and behaviors
• Using open-ended questions to surface risks
• Treating safety opportunities as important in the moment
• Purposeful walkthroughs to observe hazards and behaviors
• Balancing immediate correction with leader follow-up
• Modeling perfect compliance and welcoming feedback
• Caring out loud to make safety personal and real

More information on Maslow's Pyramid: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Explained + Pyramid Diagram — BiteSize Learning

Follow us on Instagram or on Threads @LEADERSHIPEXCHANGEPODCAST. We'd love to hear from you! What topics you'd like us to explore with you? What questions on our topics do you have? Say hello and start the dialogue!

SPEAKER_01:

Hello everybody, this is Steve McKeon. And this is Luke of Mia. This is the Leadership Exchange.

SPEAKER_00:

Lupe, today we're going to talk about something that is just a critical part of leadership, and that's taking care of your team. And it's one of the areas that you and I aligned on early when we started working together. And I recognized that you had a really good understanding of the importance of this. And since that time, we've continued to just highlight an awareness across organizations that we work with and others, even that we've been asked just to speak with about the importance of taking care of the team and really starting with uh understanding what we generally say safety culture, and then tied directly to leadership. What's the leadership's uh responsibility in that space? And I think maybe to start, Lupe, is I'll just uh define what uh we would call safety culture for the audience, so that we're all starting off kind of with that foundation. And the general definition I like to use is uh safety culture is the shared mindset, values, and behaviors within an organization around how safety is valued and prioritized. And you'll notice that I use the term value in that definition a couple of times, and you also hear the term prioritized. And one of the things that you and I have found is a lot of companies will say, Yeah, safety is important, we prioritize safety. But I'm always asking, well, how do you value safety? Because one of the things that that we have learned over time is just to recognize and highlight our values individually and as a company. And you know, we know that our values over time should not drastically change. So, as you and I talk about our values 10 years ago are the same as they were 10 weeks ago, it's the same as they were 10 days ago, 10 minutes ago. And so it's really kind of starting with that mindset as we go into looking at safety culture in an organization and where the leader values safety. Priorities change, and I agree we want to prioritize safety continuously in our everyday work to take care of the team, but it's got to start with it being a value in order for it to always be higher up on that priority list.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's a deeper meaning to value. It's kind of like my personal values versus my priorities. Sometimes my priorities may not reflect my values or the or the opposite. Sometimes they they will reflect my values. But but I I I perceive values as being a lot more deeper embedded in every individual's mindset.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I agree, Lupe. And when we talk about taking care of the team and the importance of leadership in the that space, you know, there's also a connection as a leader with you know operational excellence and kind of where this safety culture fits in there. And we've learned in our career that, you know, a strong safety culture leads to sustainable improvements in safety performance, employee engagement, and operational excellence. Or maybe an easier way to say it, that there's a positive impact to the business and there's a positive impact to the human, right? And that's so important to make sure that those two are really aligned and connected.

SPEAKER_01:

The way I like to set up culture, especially safety culture, is as a leader, right? I can say a lot of things, but if my behaviors do not demonstrate that value, that priority, then everybody's gonna see right through it. It's kind of like Simon Seneck says in one of his uh talks to a big group, he talks about, hey, I can tell you to trust me, but you will not trust me. It's not just something that happens that way. I have to demonstrate things that build that trust. Same thing with safety culture. And and when you really think about it, it is around trust of the leader.

SPEAKER_00:

And let's talk a little bit about you know some key, what I would say, attributes or bullets around you know the importance of leadership and really setting the the tone for safety culture. And I'm gonna be uh kind of cherry-picking these off a recent presentation that I did, but these these are all very true requirements, I would say, or things that if uh a leader demonstrates, you're gonna see that commitment. And we understand that you know, leaders, as you mentioned, Lupe, shape the attitudes and behaviors towards safety. So if you're if it's not important to you, guess what? It's not gonna be important to the team. If you only focus on it when an event occurs versus you know trying to proactively prevent events, that's the way your team's gonna behave. So it's really you know important that you have that that understood early on. Um, visible commitment uh influences employee engagement, as you referenced Serlupe. We're gonna talk a little bit about you know what does it mean to model leadership in this space with some uh additional things that we've identified that every leader should practice. So these are the practices that really help you show the importance of uh safety and taking care of your team. You know, when a leader encourages employee involvement in safety solutions, it allows them to weigh in and gain their buy-in. So, in addition, but besides just directing, you know, hey, is safety important? We need to make sure nobody's getting hurt, it's hey, what are you guys seeing that we can do better? What are you seeing that we need to do differently? Right? So it's an in-depth conversation, and I guarantee the second you ask them that, they will probably, if they haven't been asked that before, they'll probably pause and think, wow, no one's ever asked me that. And and they're gonna have to to think. But the more you ask that type of question, the more embedded it is, and they're gonna come forward every time when you bring that up with something else, and and and then eventually they're gonna do it to their team and they're gonna have those conversations. That's really what we're trying to do. So it you know really reinforces the mindset of continuous learning and proactive risk management, you know, with some of these uh really simple skills. This isn't stuff that's difficult, but a lot of leaders avoid it. They believe that it belongs to um maybe a safety department or safety manager director to have these conversations, and and that's really a false statement. It's gotta be the people that you are responsible for taking care of. You as a leader have to ask these questions and you have to believe in them. So that's I guess the first piece of it.

SPEAKER_01:

Open-ended questions trigger the mind. So if you're able to ask questions like as you recommend, Steve, that really starts to open people's minds up and really start to think about safety and and you walking around asking people on a very regular basis, those open-ended questions. Here's an example, a few examples. How do we know our team is working safely today? Uh, what one activity would likely lead to an injury and why? So all these things uh invoke thought and really uh get people thinking and engaged on safety. And one thing I will say is I I I run into a lot of leaders that tell me that safety is like their number one thing, like, oh, it's the most important thing to me. But if you look at them throughout the whole day, their work day, very few times are they touching on safety. And I challenge them on that. I kid, okay, hey, so how many times do you talk to somebody about safety today or did anything related to safety? Oh, well, I did this one thing, okay. Uh five minutes. All right. So out of an eight-hour workday, you spend five minutes on safety. How much of a priority do you think that that uh translates to? Because to me, that does not seem like it's a lot of time that you're spending on supposedly your number one priority. It's a little tough love approach, but I I I do I try to do it in a way that really gets them to think about it versus, you know, hey, I'm I'm I'm calling you out. But there is a little bit of accountability there, like, hey, wait a minute. You tell me it's it's a big priority, but you're not spending a lot of time. So the amount of time doesn't have to be like 80, 90 percent necessarily, but it can't be 5%, is my point.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and it's gotta be with some some thought and intent. And you know, you have to a lot of times, you know, teach new leaders or teach uh leads and supervisors, you know, that is part of the the job assignment, right? So you you have clear expectations for delivery of the the year, the month, the week, the day, and you have to at each step make sure that you're showing that prioritization of safety in those activities so that the team then also understands it. And then what you said, Lupe, I think spot on is you've got to either challenge them or or really kind of explore with them. How are you demonstrating this? Example that uh we hear all the time is well, I'm out talking to the team members. Okay, well, what are you talking about? What's what's the safety subject that you recently spoke to them about? And then what feedback did you get from that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's a lot of times it's crickets, right? Because they they go out and they say, be safe. And to them, that's prioritizing safety. And as you and I know, that's that's not prioritizing safety, right? That's just a wish.

SPEAKER_01:

It's it's just not very effective, right? It I think that's the key, is that it's just saying those things is not very effective. A lot of times people don't even listen to that. It just goes one in one ear, out the other ear. It does not require processing of anything, and so there's no deep thought. So, yeah, you're right. The other thing is when when you're uh doing the same thing, you're walking. If you're a leader and you're walking through the work area, it is a waste of time or it's a wasted opportunity, I'll say, if you're not looking for safety, looking for hazards, looking for behaviors. Not you're not looking to catch anybody like, aha, you're I caught you, you're doing something wrong, but really trying to understand from a safety perspective what what are the risks out there? What's the risky behavior, what's the risky environment? Because if if you're not doing that, I mean, you're walking through the area anyways, why would you not be trying to look for again, my number one value, why would I not be spending some time focused on that as I'm walking through those areas, right? If you're walking through and not and like you're not even thinking of those things, I think that's an opportunity for you as a leader to really start to say, hey, you know what? I could spend a little of my time focused on that. And you honestly, eventually you get real good, you you look for that, you look for quality issues, you look for work burden for the team, you look for GMP opportunities. A lot of things can pop up because you've kind of trained your eye and your mind to look for and process those types of things.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and we've kind of layered this into different categories of leadership in in an organization. So from your frontline supervisors and leads to your your middle managers and even to your executive team. And what we found is that when you can clearly state, hey, these are the expectations that we are needing from our leadership and start to define how they can engage in keeping safety as a value and a and a top priority. Um, good things will come out of it. And Luffy, why don't we give them some examples? Um, let's go to like what every leader, whether you're a frontline supervisor or a middle manager, you know, what are those attributes that they should be demonstrating, you know, pretty much on a continuous basis?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we'll kind of go rock through these specific ones and we can stop and talk a little bit in depth of one. But there's about 14, 15 things that as a leader, you know, you can really help shift your team's culture with your behaviors, right? One is we already talked about when when you're talking to people, when you're interacting with your leaders, asking those open-ended questions that are focused on safety. The uh the other thing is when when someone brings a safety opportunity to you, let's say you're on your walk or you're in your office, whatever, treat it as important. Do not do not wave it away, commit to saying, you know what, I I want to go look at it. If you have the opportunity to look at it right at that moment, do so because you're you're delivering the message that, hey, this is important, so important to me, that I'm gonna stop what I'm doing. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna walk with you, and I'm gonna go to see and observe what you're talking about because you caught my attention when you said, hey, there's an opportunity, a safety opportunity to improve on. Doesn't mean you're gonna do it all the time, but you need to strive to do that as much as you can.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Lupin, if I could just kind of even talk about some of those open-ended questions, because I've I've heard you've you've asked them of uh team members, and they're very impactful. And and one of the ones that I find uh really interesting if I'm on a gimbal walk with you and you ask this question is if and the question is what one activity would likely lead to an injury or incident today? And a lot of times team members have never heard that before, and or even the area supervisor, and they it causes them to pause, and you know, you have to coach them through it sometimes. Well, what what what are the jobs that we're doing? Well, we're we're you know handling these chemicals today. Okay, then you can follow up with so how could that result in someone being injured? Well, I I guess if they don't have the right personal protective equipment, or if maybe they're not trained, or or maybe it's the first time we've done this in a while, might need some refresher work. And so it's just starting with that simple conversation and dialogue that will really kind of open their eyes to the environment they're they're working in, and it goes beyond, hey, please be safe today, right? It's what what could happen based on you know the environment that we're working in, and and uh just it's it's a great opening uh dialogue to have. So I just wanted to call that one out.

SPEAKER_01:

The other one, and we we talked about is when you're walking through the area, right? The number three is kind of like when you're walking through the area, spend time focus on safety opportunities, looking for safety. It's more of an observation versus discussion that you're having. Um but always keeping an eye out for safety hazards and and opportunities that you know, behaviors that team members are exhibiting that tell you, hey, they're putting themselves at risk, maybe. Um, and making sure that those things that are like the proper PPE that you mentioned, Steve, those things are being had. Because if you see that that's not happening, that that tells you that there's probably an opportunity either in the training, in the um the holding our team members accountable to ensure that they understand why it's important. But somewhere there's a breakdown if you're seeing people not necessarily wearing all of their proper PPE. And there's a fine line there where sometimes you have to correct people right away. And sometimes you need to go and talk to the supervisor of that team member and and give them the feedback. And you know, there's um there's two camps of thought on that. One is, well, I shouldn't allow any safety opportunities to to happen, you know, to exist without me correcting them. And I understand that and I I see the value there. I I think the the opportunity though is if you tell that person and and you don't talk to the leader, uh, you don't talk to the supervisor, the supervisor won't be aware that that was an opportunity with that team member, right? And so there could be this this sort of pattern of behavior by the team member that tells you that, hey, they may not be taking that value of safety as as important as they should. And I I think that's a missing oper missed opportunity sometimes when you correct someone and that doesn't make it to the leader. I prefer, if it's not a serious issue, like hey, someone had their their ear plug kind of halfway in in their ear, they they they weren't appropriately um putting them in their ears. I may not say anything. I may go and say, hey, can you talk to them about like appropriate method of in putting their ear? I don't want them to get injured because of not having that PPE properly on. But some cases are like super critical, like chemical exposure, like, hey, what you know, hey, I need you to put your goggles back on. I notice you don't have them. I think there's a line there that you could make an argument either way, but I I just want to call out that it's important to incorporate include the leadership chain for that individual so people are aware when there may be opportunities with people's behavior, a certain person's behavior.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and one coaching opportunity there, I think Lupe to bring up is is a lot of times the supervisor may likely be with you or present in the area. So take a minute, call them over, and then don't make it a big production either, because you can do a lot of harm in the building that psychological safety environment by calling out and and chastising the individual, you know, for whatever this incident is. And and so, you know, one of the best practices would be hey, supervisor is aware, you're gonna let the supervisor kind of drop back, you're gonna hopefully coach them in advance. Hey, as we come up against these things, these are all coaching opportunities, and we need to continually make sure that the team members understand. But yeah, we we to your point, you know, we we've got to be connected with that supervisor because eventually they're the ones that are gonna see that and they're they're gonna know what we're gonna do. Yes, you need them to see that. Great.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you need them to see that, and and that's part of that sort of calibration that I do with my leaders that I work with is you know, making sure that we all see the same thing, and especially when it comes to safety, because it truly is a number one value. We we need all our leaders and and our team members to see these hazards, to see these opportunities, because you know, then we can really tackle uh the culture and and shift shift the way the way we think. But if it's just one person doing the that, you you're not gonna get anywhere. The other thing, now that we're talking about like PPE and and people's behaviors, is you yourself have to demonstrate and you have to strive for perfection when it comes to you as a leader demonstrating and following all the safety rules, all the safety standards, all the requirements. It completely demolishes uh what you're trying to do with the safety culture, just with one moment of you not wearing what what you know you should be wearing. And you know, sometimes people will point that out to you as as the leader. Some a lot of times people are too scared to. And they shouldn't be, but they they're nervous, they don't know how you're gonna take it, and so they won't call you out. And you you know you have a strong culture when team members correct the leader. It doesn't matter what level leader, they correct them on the spot, and that leader should express appreciation and and be thankful for being corrected because you know we're human, we can make a mistake. Yeah, I've I've had a situation where for guys I was in a conversation with somebody, uh, we were heading out to do a gimbal walk, I'll go out to the production floor, and in my my focus in the discussion, completely like had a brain cramp about putting my vest on. And I'm walking out, and somebody's like, Hey, Lupe, your vest. And I'm like, Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I I really love that you're taking care of me and you're taking care of the team. Thank you. And I go back and correct it. And so a lot of times that doesn't happen, you know, and that means that you need to do work with the culture. And and the leader will be walking around, you know, everybody sees that they're not following, but nobody says anything, and that leader's not aware that that, you know, on a on a regular basis, that completely it's kind of like someone that says, Hey, trust me. Yeah. Um, but always always stabbing you in the back.

SPEAKER_00:

Don't do what I do, do what I say. Never mind. That type of thing. Look, I think the other, you know, we talk about behaviors, you know, is is showing your team members how important their safety is to you personally, right? And and showing how much you care for them in and around the work environment. And and you you can't say it enough, honestly. I mean, it's one of those things that just has to be a constant reminder. And if you're out there very stoic all the time and on the soapbox telling people what to do, they're not going to care. But when when you see that opportunity to go up and just direct one-on-one with an individual and just tell them how much you care for them and appreciative that they are wearing the right equipment, or you notice that they were doing job safely and effectively and encourage that behavior, it just, you know, that's that's gold, right? That sticks with that intuition for a long time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's super powerful, Steve. And and and you're right, like you have to you have to mean it. You can't say this if you don't mean it. People get blown away when I because I I like to ask people, like, hey, do you know why it's important that you wear your earplugs or that you wear your your eye protection? And they'll say, Well, yeah, because you know I don't want to get in trouble. I'm like, Oh, okay, maybe that okay, but there's a deeper reason for that. I said, Why is that? Like, well, my safety, yes, your safety. Uh, I want to go home the way I came, and I have loved ones that are responsible, I'm responsible to to support. I go, yes, that's that's all that is very, very true and and important. I said, but here's one more reason. And this is uncomfortable for some leaders. I don't understand that, but some leaders do have a problem. They they feel like it's oh well, I shouldn't be saying that to aren't my team members, but and I'm like, it's because I care for you. As part of this team, you mean something to me. And it's amazing the look I get from the team members, like, what? Like you care for me? I go, yeah, I care for you. I care for everybody on our team. You we're like a family, right? That can be extremely powerful if if you mean it first, you gotta mean it. If you it it'll come through as fake if you don't, but then people really start to get a feeling that wow, like this safety stuff's a lot deeper than I'm not gonna get in trouble, right? And that's when the magic starts to happen, is when you can really get people to really believe and understand that you truly do care for them. And they're like, you know what, I I understand now this whole safety thing is about caring for each other.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you know, and good things happen as we know. You know, when you you start off with safety is that primer, then the chance of having good quality increases, you know, your your productivity metrics increase. And so there's there's this whole business side of it as well. And a lot of times leaders will just focus on the business side and not get the people side correct and understand why they're not doing good in each of those areas. So I think one, you know, you you really have to adopt safety as a value to you personally as a leader. You have to truly show that you care about your team. And if you don't, you're probably in the wrong job, right? You probably need to go find something else to do because if if you don't have that fundamental set of values. Lupe, you and I have been working uh together for several years now and through that process, you know, of identified behaviors that we spoke about here today. We've also got a list of uh clear expectations in this realm that a leader should follow, and then what we call leader standard work. And I I think you know those are great topics we'll save for another podcast if you agree, because I think today we really just wanted to capture behaviors and the importance of setting safety as a value so it it stays really elevated in the priority list of what needs to be looked after when you're when you talk about taking care of your team and making sure others truly believe you're taking care of them as well.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Parting parting thoughts today on this uh episode, Lapay?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm just gonna reference Maslow's pyramid. So those of you that don't know Maslow's pyramid, he was a psychologist or yeah, I think he was a psychologist. He created this pyramid, and basically think of the pyramid with different layers, right? And the previous layer must be established before the next layer can be uh, I guess, built. And the very base of that is I don't remember the term he used, but basically are like the fundamental needs that people have, the basic needs, right? So think of hey, food, shelter, right? And then the other one was safety. So physical safety. I bring that up because if you don't have a good safety culture within your team, within your organization, you are so far down that uh that pyramid that all the other great things that team members could do, and specifically uh the pyramid at the very peak is like how do you tap into people's potential, full potential? You're never gonna get there. If I were a leader going into an organization, the very first thing and the only thing I would focus on for to start is the safety culture. And this has been my my sort of MO when I go and join teams, is the very first thing because I know that without that established, then I I have no chance of doing anything else in a positive way with the team.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well said, Lupe. And uh again, just want to encourage listeners of the podcast to really go and put some of the things that we've talked about into action. And if you believe you're already doing a lot of them, continue to ask yourself how well are you doing them? And and maybe look for a couple of those uh things that uh we pitched today as additional conversations you can have with your team to help just really elevate the importance of safety as a value, keep it up high on that priority list, and you know, engage engage the team in those conversations would be the other recommended ask. But Lupe, this was a great uh session. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. The discussion I have with you are always useful and and very relevant. Uh and just uh for our listeners, we will be putting some of the tools. Like I'll put we'll put Maslow's pyramid or a link to it if you want to you know understand it a little better. Um we'll put the five behaviors that we talked about uh on a list so that you can, you know, sometimes it's hard to take notes while maybe you're driving and listening or riding a bike and listening. That way, if if you thought this was uh very meaningful to you, you can you can grab that information.

SPEAKER_00:

And as always, give us some feedback. Um you can catch us at uh Instagram and uh let us know what what you're enjoying and what you would like us maybe to talk about next. We do have a couple exciting guests coming up that we'll be uh doing some uh podcast interviews with as well around uh leadership.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And uh look forward to uh sharing those with you in the near future. Okay, Lupe, we'll go ahead and uh close it out for today. So thank you to our uh listeners. This is Steve McKee.

SPEAKER_01:

And this is Luca Mills.

SPEAKER_00:

And thank you for listening to the Leadership Exchange. Have a great day.