General Motors is now enjoying stronger than expected profits, despite facing huge penalties to resolve its ignition switch litigation. I believe that Chairman and CEO Mary Barra\u2019s presence is a major factor.<\/p>\n
To grasp how she gained gravitas, let\u2019s wind the clock back to April 2014 and put\u00a0you<\/em>\u00a0in her hot seat.<\/p>\n You\u2019re just two weeks into your role as CEO of General Motors with your company in deep trouble over defective ignition switches tied to dozens of deaths. Your backside is planted at a congressional hearing. Cameras are in your face. Reporters are panting. Politicians are pontificating. It\u2019s political theatre at its finest.<\/p>\n But are you at\u00a0your<\/em>\u00a0finest? How will your leadership presence be felt \u2013 and how will it reverberate around the world?<\/p>\n As for Mary Barra, her presence that day inspired the opening skit on\u00a0Saturday Night Live<\/em>. SNL lampooned her nonresponsive answers and skewered her apparent lack of empathy for the victims, even though logic tells us that she was reciting precisely what her legal team advised her to say. Her presence was hardly off to a stellar start.<\/p>\n But as the old saying goes, she\u2019s come a long way, baby.<\/p>\n Today, Mary Barra\u2019s presence is resonating universally \u2013 with her board, employees, investors, analysts, and the car-buying public. She strode confidently onto one of the largest stages in the world recently as keynote speaker at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). In the months between Congress and CES, her capabilities as a businesswoman have restored investor and consumer confidence. General Motors rewarded her by adding Chairman to her title, making her the first woman elected to the role in company history, and making GM one of only 11 companies in the S&P 500 with a female filling the dual CEO and chairperson roles.<\/p>\n Barra\u2019s presence has unfurled like a \u201cBolt\u201d \u2013 not coincidentally the name of the electric car that she unveiled at CES.<\/p>\n In a short time, Barra\u2019s public presence has zoomed from zero to hero. I was curious about why and how it happened. So I reviewed videos of Barra in numerous appearances over the past two years, ranging from a live interview at a\u00a0Fortune Magazine<\/em>\u00a0conference to various taped interviews and, finally, the recent CES keynote. I offer three quick observations to help you learn from her experiences so that you can follow her lead.<\/p>\n She\u2019s not a \u201cred-lighter.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0In my television days, we privately referred to certain talk show guests as \u201cred-lighters\u201d because they radiated fake personas when the red tally lights of the studio cameras blinked on. Once the tally lights turned off (meaning we were now off-camera), the \u201cred-lighters\u201d reverted to their true, often harsh personalities. There was a major gap between who they\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0were and who they wanted people to\u00a0think<\/em>\u00a0they were. Barra doesn\u2019t do that. By all accounts, she now remains her warm and approachable self, despite the situation. She appears to have learned a valuable lesson at the congressional hearing, where her tone defied her natural warmth. Your lesson from this? Mind the gap. Regardless of the situation you find yourself in, a consistent tone is vital to earn trust and commitment.<\/p>\n She\u2019s mastered the blink rate.<\/strong>\u00a0What\u2019s a blink rate? The number of times you blink per minute. It\u2019s influenced by your cognitive process and can rise dramatically when you\u2019re under stress. Watching her congressional hearing, I noticed that Barra\u2019s blink rate skyrocketed to 60 blinks per minute (BPM). The National Institutes of Health lists the average BPM at 17. It can go as low as four when you\u2019re focused on reading. What can you take from this? As a senior leader, you have plenty of opportunities to be both influential and stressed. Be aware of your blink rate under stress. When you master your blinks, you exude a calmer presence. Calm begets calm.<\/p>\n She owns the platform.<\/strong> When Barra unveiled the new Bolt on the CES stage, she said, \u201cIt\u2019s more than a car \u2013 it\u2019s a platform.\u201d The same could be said for her leadership. And yours. Take Barra\u2019s lead. When you have a platform opportunity, don\u2019t be the \u201cI\u2019m-above-it-all\u201d executive who doesn\u2019t make time to rehearse. It\u2019s your responsibility to get up on the stage before the event to take the uncertainty away. You owe it to yourself, your company and the crew who have labored away to show you in your best light. And for heaven\u2019s sake, learn how to read the floor prompts or the TelePrompTer. Otherwise, you\u2019ll sound disingenuous or ill-informed as you revert to reading slides or someone else\u2019s words. Barra can still use a tweak or two to improve her Prompter-reading presence, but she\u2019s evolved very quickly.<\/p>\n Presence isn\u2019t an instinctive \u201cit\u201d factor. As a leader, you can, and must, sharpen your presence to maximize your leadership and to pilot your organization\u2019s growth. We can all use a \u201cBolt\u201d of leadership presence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" General Motors is now enjoying stronger than expected profits, despite facing huge penalties to resolve its ignition switch litigation. I believe that Chairman and CEO Mary Barra\u2019s presence is a major factor. To grasp how she gained gravitas, let\u2019s wind…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,51,55,52,53,54,62],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n