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7 Insights into Safety Leadership
What is it that senior leaders need to "get" about safety? What is it that key safety leaders need in order to influence the organization and improve performance?
In their new book, Tom R. Krause and Kristen J. Bell bring together decades of experience in the field with industry-leading research to distill the 7 essential insights that all leaders need to know about safety.
Packed with easy-to-read insights, the book will provide your leadership with an executable roadmap to improved safety performance.
CREATING A STRONG SAFETY CULTURE
According to Krause and Bell, the key to achieving excellent safety performance isn't just improving technologies or focusing on worker behavior. In order to excel in safety, your company needs to develop a strong safety culture. And that starts at the top.
While safety may not be their primary role, the CEO of a company is your most important safety officer. The leadership that sets the tone of your safety culture. And your culture informs and influences how everyone in your organization, from bottom to top, values and thinks about safety.
7 Insights Into Safety Leadership will help you get your leadership on board with the latest and most relevant perspectives in safety so you can build a strong safety culture.
THE 7 INSIGHTS
Krause and Bell's 7 Insights are based on decades of experience working to transform the safety culture and systems of some of the biggest companies in the world. Some are intuitive. Others may be new, even controversial. But all of them are based on exhaustive research and the latest data in safety
In their new book, Tom R. Krause and Kristen J. Bell bring together decades of experience in the field with industry-leading research to distill the 7 essential insights that all leaders need to know about safety.
Packed with easy-to-read insights, the book will provide your leadership with an executable roadmap to improved safety performance.
CREATING A STRONG SAFETY CULTURE
According to Krause and Bell, the key to achieving excellent safety performance isn't just improving technologies or focusing on worker behavior. In order to excel in safety, your company needs to develop a strong safety culture. And that starts at the top.
While safety may not be their primary role, the CEO of a company is your most important safety officer. The leadership that sets the tone of your safety culture. And your culture informs and influences how everyone in your organization, from bottom to top, values and thinks about safety.
7 Insights Into Safety Leadership will help you get your leadership on board with the latest and most relevant perspectives in safety so you can build a strong safety culture.
THE 7 INSIGHTS
Krause and Bell's 7 Insights are based on decades of experience working to transform the safety culture and systems of some of the biggest companies in the world. Some are intuitive. Others may be new, even controversial. But all of them are based on exhaustive research and the latest data in safety
101 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2015
30 people are currently reading
61 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 11, 2023
"If you want to improve safety, start with leadership and work from there".
Small reading about safety with a great number of case studies, and a number of references that I am planning to read in the future.
Small reading about safety with a great number of case studies, and a number of references that I am planning to read in the future.
November 29, 2023
read this for work
February 20, 2026
7 Insights into Safety Leadership is a concise yet highly practical guide for executives and safety professionals seeking to move beyond compliance and toward genuine cultural transformation.
Drawing on decades of field experience and research, Krause and Bell argue that safety excellence is not primarily a technical challenge it is a leadership challenge. While equipment, procedures, and behavior-based programs matter, the authors emphasize that sustainable safety performance begins with executive ownership and cultural alignment.
One of the book’s strongest contributions is its reframing of responsibility. The CEO, they contend, is the organization’s most important safety officer not because they manage day-to-day operations, but because they set the tone. Culture flows from leadership priorities, and employees take their cues from what senior leaders consistently model, measure, and reward.
The seven insights themselves are presented in an accessible, direct format, making the book particularly useful for time-pressed executives. Some principles feel intuitive such as visible leadership commitment and accountability structures while others challenge conventional thinking about behavior, systems, and organizational influence. Together, they form an actionable roadmap rather than abstract theory.
At just 101 pages, this is not a dense academic treatise but a focused leadership brief. It works especially well as a discussion catalyst for executive teams, safety committees, and industrial leaders aiming to elevate safety from a department function to a core organizational value.
7 Insights into Safety Leadership reinforces a critical message: safety culture is not built from the ground up it is modeled from the top down.
September Withers
Drawing on decades of field experience and research, Krause and Bell argue that safety excellence is not primarily a technical challenge it is a leadership challenge. While equipment, procedures, and behavior-based programs matter, the authors emphasize that sustainable safety performance begins with executive ownership and cultural alignment.
One of the book’s strongest contributions is its reframing of responsibility. The CEO, they contend, is the organization’s most important safety officer not because they manage day-to-day operations, but because they set the tone. Culture flows from leadership priorities, and employees take their cues from what senior leaders consistently model, measure, and reward.
The seven insights themselves are presented in an accessible, direct format, making the book particularly useful for time-pressed executives. Some principles feel intuitive such as visible leadership commitment and accountability structures while others challenge conventional thinking about behavior, systems, and organizational influence. Together, they form an actionable roadmap rather than abstract theory.
At just 101 pages, this is not a dense academic treatise but a focused leadership brief. It works especially well as a discussion catalyst for executive teams, safety committees, and industrial leaders aiming to elevate safety from a department function to a core organizational value.
7 Insights into Safety Leadership reinforces a critical message: safety culture is not built from the ground up it is modeled from the top down.
September Withers
June 30, 2017
Excellent book on Safety Leadership - but I feel like this should be in the hands of the senior leaders in my organization, and not me... Still beneficial, but I found that I already knew a lot of the concepts that were discussed (Heinrich being wrong, etc.) Still a great read!
October 30, 2019
Read for work. Actually pretty good primer on latest in safety leadership theory, but not going to pretend it's riveting or anything. Changed my mind about a few things like how focusing on small incidents doesn't have an impact on major accidents.
April 8, 2025
Worth reading for anyone involved in leading workplace safety!
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August 8, 2017thanks
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews