The leader of one of the world’s largest automakers shares the leadership lessons she learned from some of the most challenging moments of her career — lessons directly applicable to Canada’s automotive industry.
Whenever Mary Barra meets with her teams, she asks the same question: When is the best time to solve a problem? After a brief pause, she provides the answer herself: “As soon as you know you have one.”
This belief is more than a philosophy — it stems from an experience that defined the beginning of her tenure as CEO of General Motors. Less than 30 days after taking the helm, Barra faced one of the most serious crises in the company’s history: an ignition-switch defect that exposed significant shortcomings in GM’s internal processes for identifying and escalating safety issues. The experience transformed GM and helped shape Barra’s leadership style.
The central lesson she draws from it is simple but demanding: solving problems begins with taking responsibility. As a leader, the buck stops with you. You need to seek the truth, gather the facts and bring the right people together. In complex situations, clarity rarely comes all at once — it emerges layer by layer, like peeling an onion. The key is to keep listening, learning and moving forward until the problem is resolved.
At GM, teams met every day, sometimes for 20 minutes and sometimes for hours. Each meeting began with the same questions: “What did we learn today? What do we need to do now? Are we on the right track?”
This discipline led to much more than changes to technical or safety processes. It transformed the company’s culture. By confronting the problem head-on — with transparency and a strong focus on the customer — GM rebuilt trust and established a new standard for how the organization would operate.
Those same instincts have guided GM through other major challenges, including ventilator production during the pandemic and the global semiconductor shortage. An organization’s true values, like those of a leader, are not revealed when everything is going well. They become clear during difficult moments, when the path forward is uncertain.
For leaders and business owners across Canada’s automotive industry — whether they operate a collision repair facility, a distribution network or a dealership — the message is particularly relevant: Don’t simply identify a problem. Own it.
That mindset is what turns a manager into a true leader.
Picture credit : LinkedIn
