2025 didn’t just challenge the automotive industry.

It exposed it.

Tariffs that shifted overnight. Another chip crisis. A sudden rethink on EVs. Then Ford dropped the bomb: nearly $20 billion in charges as it pivoted away from EVs, stranding capital across the supply chain. And on top of it all, AI is moving faster than most leaders can keep up with.

In this solo episode, Jan Griffiths presses pause on the noise and calls it what it really was: feedback.

Not chaos.

A signal.

2025 showed us exactly where legacy leadership breaks under pressure. Command-and-control slowed decision-making. Rigid processes collapsed under uncertainty. And waiting for perfect data became a competitive disadvantage.

As we step into 2026, Jan lays out what leadership must become if this industry wants to survive, not just react. She challenges leaders to stop pretending they have all the answers and start learning out loud. To trade certainty for curiosity. Ego for humility. Silos for systems thinking.

AI is not the threat. Speed is the reality. And culture is still the differentiator.

This episode is a direct, honest conversation with leaders who feel the weight of what’s coming and know the old playbook won’t get them there. Jan breaks down the five leadership categories that will define success in 2026 and beyond, and why standing still is no longer an option.

If 2025 cracked the foundation, 2026 is the year leaders decide whether to rebuild or repeat the same mistakes.

This episode is sponsored by Lockton, click here to learn more

Themes Discussed

1. Why 2025 wasn’t chaos, but critical feedback for automotive leaders
2. The leadership behaviors that failed under pressure
3. Learning out loud instead of waiting for perfect answers
4. Intellectual humility as a competitive advantage
5. Why speed now matters more than certainty
6. How AI is forcing a shift away from rigid org charts
7. The leadership mindset required to win in 2026

About Your Host – Jan Griffiths

Jan Griffiths is the Champion for Culture Change in the automotive industry. As the President & Founder of Gravitas Detroit, Jan brings a wealth of expertise and a passion for transforming company cultures. Additionally, she is the host of the Automotive Leaders Podcast, where she shares insightful conversations with industry visionaries. Jan is also the author of AutoCulture 2.0, a groundbreaking book that challenges the traditional leadership model prevalent in the automotive world. With her extensive experience and commitment to fostering positive change, Jan is at the forefront of revolutionizing the automotive landscape. Reach out to her at Jan@gravitasdetroit.com

Mentioned in this Episode

1. AI‑Era Leadership Self‑Assessment [COMING SOON]

Episode Highlights

[01:26] Reflecting on 2025: Challenges and Lessons

[04:32] Leadership Traits for 2026

[04:45] Mindset and Intellectual Humility

[06:03] Systems Thinking and Bias Awareness

[07:20] AI and Business Processes

[08:27] Leadership Styles in the Age of AI

[09:47] Decision Making and Accountability

[11:26] Trust, Culture, and Empowerment

[14:51] Humanity and Empathy in Leadership

If this episode resonated, share it with a fellow automotive leader and subscribe to The Automotive Leaders Podcast, where we’re shaping the future of authentic leadership in the automotive industry.

[Transcript]

Stay true to yourself, be you and lead with gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership. Let's dive in.

This episode is brought to you by Lockton. Rising benefit costs aren't inevitable for you or your employees when you break through the status quo. Independence matters, it means Lockton can bring you creative, tailored solutions that truly serve your business and your people. At Lockton, clients, associates, and communities come first, not margins and not mediocrity. Meet the moment with Lockton.

2025 tested all of us in automotive. Look at what happened: we had Liberation Day in April, tariffs, and then after that day, we woke up every morning wondering what would happen. Was it 50% on copper? Was it 50% on steel? Would it change the next day? Was it on again off again, so many different twists and turns we have never had to deal with before.

And then, we had yet another chip crisis with Nexperia. And then, we had the total reversal. Well, maybe total reversal is a bit too much, but we had a reversal in our EV strategies now, didn't we?

In December, Ford announced $20 billion charge. To pivot away from EV back to ICE. Almost $20 billion, and we're seeing the ripple effect through the entire supply chain. We've got stranded capital. We've got cost implications. We've got tariffs that we're grappling with. And then as if that wasn't enough, here comes AI — artificial intelligence, and what are we gonna do with that? Well, I've got some thoughts on that.

So what now? What does this mean to us, to all of us, to leaders in the automotive industry? Well, it means that we're gonna have to change our ways, and we're gonna have to change fast.

What is it gonna take to lead this industry forward?

I am going to divide these into five categories.

The first category is mindset. We're gonna have to learn out loud publicly. I know that sounds weird. That sounds strange, right? But what that means is no longer. Can we feel comfortable that we have to have all the answers before we make a decision? We're gonna have to learn on the fly together.

The next is intellectual humility. Defending our assumptions on our old ways of doing business will slow us down. We're gonna have to be open, we're gonna have to try new things, and we can't wait until we have all the data and we can't wait until we feel 100% comfortable. We're gonna have to try ideas and iterate, and iterate and iterate and keep going until we get it right.

This is the time to blow up. All of our processes and challenge everything.

The next is systems thinking. AI ignores org charts unless you tell it specifically. Not to. So we'll need to develop more of a systems thinking type mindset. And what that means is we'll have to think about things more holistically. So not just within our sphere of influence, maybe within our silo or department.

We'll have to think about what we're doing and how it impacts others two, three levels away from us. And you might think, well, I do that anyway, but I'm not sure that we do.

Here's an area that we don't talk about very often, and that is bias awareness. So if you've got bias within your culture, let's say you have some bad toxic elements in your culture. If you are now gonna train AI in line with that culture, it's gonna take all the bad things and it's gonna amplify them and ramp them up.

And surely we don't want that to happen. So we're gonna really need to be mindful about our culture and if there are any biases that we have, now is the time to question them before we start to apply AI. You know, one of the things that AI reminds me of is, back in the day. When we first started to talk about shared service models, remember that?

And business process outsourcing. And many of us took a business process and we threw it over the wall to a low cost country and said, there you go. There it is. And then we wondered why it failed. Well, this was an opportunity for us back then. To really understand our business processes and improve them, streamline them.

Look at what we really needed for the business before we sent it to a low cost country for a business process outsourcing. What we're going through with ai. It reminds me of the same kinds of thing. So before we can apply AI to a business process, let's understand exactly what that process does — the inputs, the outputs, and do we really need it? And is it serving our business? Not today, but is it serving our business for the future? These are questions that we're gonna have to ask and answer.

The next category is how we show up as leaders. This idea of compliance and control will have to go out the window. We won't have time. For compliance and control, that system will no longer work. This really is the time to let go of command and control and embrace authentic leadership. I know I've been saying that for the last several years, but if AI isn't the moment that we use that, AI isn't the catalyst to allow us to break free of command and control. I don't know what is. Because companies that don't adopt a different leadership style and a different culture will never survive with AI coming into our businesses, now's the time.

This episode is sponsored by UHY. Join us January the 14th at the Detroit Athletic Club for their Automotive Supplier Outlook. Real talk on AI, margins, and the culture shift suppliers need to rise.

Sign up the link is in the show notes and I'll see you there.

So we'll have to choose curiosity over control. That's scary. Curiosity over control.

Decision velocity. Speed is everything. It is the competitive advantage. So what are we doing in our decision making to slow things down? You know in a legacy automotive company, we have layers and layers of bureaucracy and approvals, and I'm sure there are very good reasons why those approvals are there, but that's gonna slow everything down.

So we have to question all of the decisions that we're making, why we're making them. Do we need all these layers of approval?

Are we gonna train AI to just send something to the next approval level? And then there's a human in the loop? What? That doesn't make any sense.

So we are gonna need to understand what the decision making process looks like. Where does it make sense to introduce AI and where? Should the human sit, we're always gonna have to have a human in the loop. Well, maybe not always, but certainly in the immediate future, there will be a human in the loop.

But where should that human be and what does that process look like?

When you start talking about getting rid of approval levels. Yes. Getting rid of approval levels. Now you're talking about accountability. People will have to step up and take responsibility and be accountable for their actions, and that can be very uncomfortable for a company that's been running with a lot of command and control.

But that issue will finally need to be addressed.

The next category is trust and culture. How do people experience you? Do you build psychological safety. Do you make people feel safe to allow them to make decisions to allow positive accountability to thrive? Or do you instill fear? Do you think that by being the command and control leader, the tough guy, that that's how you're supposed to be?

Is there fear in the air? Because if there's fear in the air, you can forget empowerment and accountability.

Do you encourage everybody to speak up. Do you speak first as a leader? You know, I used to do that. I used to think that as a leader, it was my job to speak first in the meeting, to set the tone and to very quickly summarize what was happening, to finish sentences and immediately jump to the action item and make the decision and move forward.

I thought that was my role and I was dead wrong. The leader doesn't speak first. They speak last. Maybe you want to speak first to establish a framework or to frame a problem, maybe. But then it's the team that needs to contribute all of their ideas, and the leader speaks last.

Along with that goes, empowerment and micromanagement or lack of. Empowerment will have to flourish now in the world of AI. If we really wanna take advantage of AI, we'll have to empower the human. Yes, we will.

And micromanagement will have to be a thing of the past because it will slow everything down. In a world of AI, we cannot have managers with a micromanagement approach wanting to review and approve everything. It's going to slow everything down.

So, now's the time that micromanagement dies a much needed death. Now we will need guardrails. Of course we will. You're not gonna let your team just run wild. I'm not suggesting that for one minute, but we'll have to think about who we are as leaders. Are we truly empowering our teams? Are we micromanagers?

There are many of you out there who think you're not a micromanager, but your team might have something different to say about that.

So we'll need to take a good, hard look at where are approvals blocking momentum.

It is time to focus on the real work. Pilots don't deliver ROI. It's time to stop with the pilot programs. I know we've all got a lot of pilot AI programs going on, and of course we'll need to do that. But let's start to put AI where the work is actually being done and start to get some results.

We're gonna need data discipline. We're gonna need to understand the rules of the game, and it's up to us to develop those rules. I'm sure you've heard of ethical AI. What is ethical AI? I don't know. I don't think I could define it, but you'll need to do that with your business and your team. Where exactly will the human sit in the loop with AI?

These are questions that we've never had to ask ourselves before, but we need to start asking them now.

And the final category is our humanity.

Why people follow you? Do you have empathy? Do you really care about your people? Do you care about their agenda? Because if you don't care about their agenda, they certainly are not gonna care about yours.

And courage. Courage isn't loud. It's early. It's early. So it means stepping out there and making a decision, doing something, iterating on a process. Knowing that there's a pretty good chance that it could fail, but keeping going, keeping the momentum going, that's the only way we're gonna get through this.

There's one thing that we need to remember: AI evolves too fast for performative certainty. Think about that. AI evolves too fast for performative certainty and this idea of performative certainty. We like that. We like to be certain. We like to have all the data and all the facts before we make a decision.

We are no longer living in that world. So feeling comfortable with AI, knowing that performative certainty is a thing of the past will change the way we lead.

2025 showed us what breaks under pressure.

Understand who we are as leaders and the leadership traits that we need to move forward. We have to stay in front of this and we have to move quickly. I've developed a very quick self-assessment worksheets that you can download in the show notes. Run through it on your own. It'll give you an idea of where you stand and where you need to focus.

I am here always to support you as we embark on the next most exciting, most exhilarating part of our leadership journey in the auto industry. We can do this.

Let's show the rest of the world that the auto industry can be out in front and not behind. Let's not let the tech companies lead this. Remember, it's not only about the data, it's the people that have to go hand in hand.

Thank you for listening to the Automotive Leaders Podcast. Click the listen link in the show notes to subscribe for free on your platform of choice, and don't forget to download the 21 Traits of Authentic Leadership PDF by clicking on the link below and remember. Stay true to yourself, be you, and lead with gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership.