Inclusive Leadership: The Mary Barra Way

In 2015, Mary Barra (Barra), CEO of American multinational corporation General Motors, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, was placed ninth in Fortune’s list of The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. Barra’s career at GM spanned more than three decades (33 years).During her stint at GM, she had risen through a series of manufacturing, engineering, and senior staff positions.

Barra had spent her entire career at GM and had overcome every new challenge presented to her. Her experience in a variety of engineering and administrative positions, her management record, her understanding of GM’s operations, and her interpersonal skills were repeatedly mentioned as her key strengths, and she was also credited with having “brought order to chaos” in the global product development process at the company. Analysts felt that as CEO, her challenge would be to restore confidence in the company after a string of deaths due to faulty ignition switches led to a recall of over 39 million GM vehicles in 2014...