5 Leadership Lessons for Trade Supervisors from Roofer and “That Sober Tradie” Claude Thomsen

Guest: Claude Thomsen

Episode: Season 2, Episode 5

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Claude Thomsen is a former Army reservist who now works as a roofer and leading hand at Weber Roofing, and has built a second platform as That Sober Tradie, a voice for healthier habits and culture across the trades.

Here’s what he’s learned about leadership as a trade supervisor:

Lesson 1: How to Earn Respect as a New Trade Leader

Early in his leadership journey, Claude tried to buy respect with kindness, shouting drinks, doing favours, assuming it would come back to him.

It didn’t work, and the lesson took a while to land.

“Often respect comes when you have those hard conversations. When you draw that line in the sand, and often you’ve gotta say no,” he says, a shift from wanting to be liked to earning something more durable as a supervisor.

Lesson 2: Understand Your Team as Individuals

Claude’s approach to getting the best out of his crew starts with understanding what actually drives each person over an eight-hour shift, rather than applying one leadership style across the board.

That takes a level of empathy he says is easy to skip when the job is already physically demanding.

“I think the more you know the people you work with, the more you can tap into what drives this person,” Claude says, describing it as forming a genuinely healthy relationship rather than a purely transactional one.

Lesson 3: Manage Your Energy as a Leader

Giving energy to a crew all day is draining, and Claude is upfront that leadership takes a real physical and mental toll if you’re not replenishing it somewhere.

His fix is a run before work, not because it’s easy, but because it reliably puts him in the right headspace to show up for others.

“That gets my battery fully charged… and when I do finally get to site, I get to give that energy to people and lift team spirits that way,” Claude says.

The specific habit matters less than the principle, he says: find whatever reliably refills the tank before you're expected to lead anyone else.

Lesson 4: Sobriety and Performance in the Trades

Claude built That Sober Tradie after choosing to stop drinking, partly to hold himself accountable and partly to offer an alternative to a culture where drinking is often the default way to unwind.

The result surprised even him: significantly more capacity for both work and life, in a trade culture that assumes the opposite.

“I would argue and say drinking less would increase your capacity,” he says, pointing out that avoiding a hard feeling with a drink rarely makes the underlying stress go away.

Lesson 5: Being Open About Mental Health in the Trades

Sharing his own struggles publicly wasn’t easy for Claude, who says the instinct to hide anything uncomfortable is just human nature reinforced by fear of judgement.

He’s found that sustainable change only happens once you stop protecting a private narrative and let people see the harder parts.

“If you’re going to make any sort of sustainable change in any part of your life, we have to step out of the dark,” he says, a philosophy that now extends to hosting Built to Last, a community event focused on health in the trades.

For Claude, that's the real point of showing up publicly: if the leader won't go first, no one else will either.

Claude’s Advice on Everyday Leadership

Never ask of others what you’re not willing to do yourself.

It’s a simple standard, but one he says underpins everything else: respect, culture, and the credibility actually to influence the people around you.

Catch the full conversation with Claude Thomsen on Tradies Who Lead for more leadership lessons for tradies, out now wherever you listen to podcasts.