Behind Martinrea’s Strength: Pat D’Eramo’s No-Fear, People-first Leadership

[Transcript]

[00:00:00] Jan Griffiths: Welcome to the Automotive Leaders Podcast, where we help you prepare for the future by sharing stories, insights, and skills from leading voices in the automotive world with a mission to transform this industry together. I'm your host, Jan Griffiths. That passionate, rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales with over 35 years of experience in our beloved auto industry and a commitment to empowering fellow leaders to be their best authentic selves.

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. Lockton redefines business insurance and people solutions with a personal touch. Their global team of 11,000 is driven by independence, not quarters, to tailor success for your business. Discover the Lockton difference, where your goals become their mission.

Independence it's not just how you think but how you act.

Today, I am thrilled to bring on the show a leader, the CEO of a major global tier one company who truly understands the value of culture. He is Pat D'Eramo, the CEO of Martinrea International, a tier one supplier focusing on lightweight structures and propulsion systems. Pat, welcome to the show.

[00:01:53] Pat D'Eramo: Thank you. It's great to be here.

[00:01:55] Jan Griffiths: Pat, who are you as a leader?

[00:02:00] Pat D'Eramo: It's a really good question, and I've been at it for 40 years, a couple of OEMs, and now three suppliers. So, I've had a lot of diversity in my background. I would say consistently, I tend to be collaborative with the people that work in my staff, let's say, because I think it's important, they buy into what we're doing.

I tend to have a lot of loyalty to my people. I have to have people whom I trust, and I give 'em a lot of latitude. Typically, we'll give people quite a lot of latitude as long as they're producing.

It's very important to me to have an objective what's my target? What do I gotta accomplish this year over the next five years? So, for me, to do that, I gotta have a plan. I got to have to have a path. And when I draw that path up, I do it with the people that work with me. That's very important. It's not, here's my plan, here's what you're gonna need to go do today. And then, we measure along the way. Are we ahead? Are we behind? And if you're getting behind, where do you need help?

I have certain rules. I never dress a person down publicly. If I have an issue with someone, it's always in private. I always tell people a bad decision is better than no decision 'cause at least we learn something. I acknowledge, and to an extent almost encourage some level of mistakes, because people learn from mistakes. Just don't sink the ship while you're at it. But if you don't have that environment, people won't take risks.

And if you really wanna move ahead — in our business in particular, which is a very tough business — you have to have people who are willing to stick their necks out, and they'll do that if they know you have their back. They won't do it if they don't think you do or if they know you don't.

So, I try to create that type of an environment where people feel comfortable. The people that are on my team, they don't have to necessarily love each other, but they have to treat each other with dignity and respect. They have to respect each other's work. They have to be loyal to each other, relative to the work that gets done. And that tends to work for me very well.

Fortunately, I have a very good staff who does get along really well. And over time, I continue to refine that, and it's worked really well for us.

[00:04:09] Jan Griffiths: Now, Pat, we need to tear into that. You said you believe in collaboration and trust. Have you always been that kind of leader? Because when we started in this industry, you and I, it was a very much a command and control model. Was there a point in time that you evolved to understand the power of collaboration, or have you always been that kind of leader?

[00:04:34] Pat D'Eramo: I think I have that tendency, as far as an individual, I've never been a person who likes to be told what to do, and therefore I tend not to tell people what to do. I tend to try to encourage them and coach them in a direction. I'm not talking about just work, but just in general. So, I was fortunate that when I was hired out of the university, I started with Saturn or what used to be called Saturn.

[00:04:59] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:05:00] Pat D'Eramo: And it was a very difficult place to work 'cause it had a very unique contract. But the other part of it was General Motors really put some provocative people in the organization there to try to change the environment of how work got done. And so, they sent a bunch of people out before they formed the company and said, "Study what works."

So, they did everything from NUMMI, which was the Toyota-GM joint venture at the time, to many non-automotive companies based on their success. And then, they came back — and this was a team of both union and management people — and created a 'this is what we should do' type of company.

And of course, GM announced that, started building a plant, and I just happened to be graduating at that time. And I was really fortunate when I came out, I was an engineer by degree, but apparently I wasn't a very good one because they put me in management as soon as there was an opportunity, in what would be considered a supervisory role.

But in that interim, while I was an engineer and working toward the operation, I would say a guy took me under his wing. He decided I'm gonna make you successful, and coached me — and he was a really good coach, he was a great leader. All the collaborative types of things that you want people to use with you, he used. He could be really tough on people when the time came and tough on situations, but he did things right.

[00:06:28] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:06:28] Pat D'Eramo: And so, that was really good for me to see and experience. And there were a number of people in that organization, at that time, like that. They were recruited specifically because they had this style. So, there was a lot of that. And I'm not gonna say everybody by any means, 'cause the majority of people all came from just what you said, a command and control environment. But I was really lucky, I was lucky with him.

I had two different women who were my boss at Saturn as well at that timeframe, but in different phases along the way, who are also very much like that. And then, one other gentleman who was very similar as well. I really got exposed to nothing but that.

But I experienced all the tough sides too. I had to deal directly with the union, and it was called Consensus Decision Making. And to this day, no one can explain to me what that really means, and which is why it didn't work.

But it was really — you had to learn how to negotiate with everything you did. You wanted to do anything, the union had to agree. And they had smart people in there, too, right? So, you had to learn to negotiate, and you had to appreciate what they had to deal with. They had to get elected, so certain decisions were tough or an impossible burden to make. You had to find ways to help them be successful while you got what you wanted or needed. That taught me at a very young age, right outta school. That was probably the best exposure I could have had to get me on this track.

[00:07:57] Jan Griffiths: It's interesting, I always find that people always take it back to one person in their career that they remember. Look, how many years ago was that?

[00:08:06] Pat D'Eramo: 40, almost.

[00:08:06] Jan Griffiths: 40 years ago. So, 40 years ago and you can remember that guy. You remember how he made you think, how he made you feel, and look at how he influenced your leadership style, which in turn influences so many others. I think sometimes, as leaders, we forget the impact that we can have on people's lives just by helping somebody along and coaching them and guiding them — we can really change their life.

[00:08:34] Pat D'Eramo: Yeah. I have a tendency — and some would even accuse me, on occasion, maybe having too much empathy sometimes — to really try to put myself in people's shoes. And the good news is, when somebody's really struggling and has a problem, after over 40 years, I've had that problem at some point, and I know how I was treated, sometimes it was good, sometimes not so good, and I know how I would respond in that same situation. And over, over my career, we've had some major issues that came up because some people make mistakes. Okay? There's a school of thought where — and I've been challenged — why don't you fire that person? They made this huge mistake that cost us of dollars. And I say, " Prior to this mistake, that person was a rock star. But suddenly they make a mistake, and that's what we're gonna do?"

"That's what I would do," Somebody would say. And then I say, "Why would I take a person who's learned the most valuable lesson that they could possibly learn — know what not to do next time, and what to do next time correctly to never make a mistake like that again, and give them to a competitor? Why would I do that? We have a stronger person." And I've got many examples of those, and they are some of our strongest leaders in their organizations, including Martinrea.

[00:09:51] Jan Griffiths: I think that so many leaders would be concerned and fear judgment by not taking that action to fire the guy.

[00:10:02] Pat D'Eramo: And you're exactly right. And I was judged. There's no doubt in my mind, but you just gotta say, I'm gonna do what's right. I'm gonna do what I know is best from my experience. And I had to tell some people, "It's not your decision, it's my decision. And that's what we're gonna do."

And retrospectively, I would do it again. You have to be able to understand that people are gonna talk around the water cooler about you when they don't agree with your decision, but it's not just the way you treat people, it's in many things that you do right? And you just gotta accept that, as long as you're moving your organization forward toward that objective that I talked about earlier.

And I look at turnover, when I look at people who specifically have worked for me over the years, turnover's very low. And when they do go, there are exceptions, there are ones that have been asked to leave many times, that happens. I shouldn't say it many times, but it happens. But the ones who actually said, "Hey, I've got something else." And that happens on occasion. And I can say, every time it's happened to me, I said to the person, "I would go too if I were you. It's a better opportunity than you have here right now." And so, I feel really good about that. I feel okay, it's all right.

[00:11:20] Jan Griffiths: You must be very comfortable with your leadership style and comfortable in your own skin to not be concerned about the judgment that people would put upon you when you make those decisions.

I think there are a lot of leaders out there who feel that because of the command-and-control model we've had in this industry, they've got to be the tough guy and show that they're aggressive.

You talked about respect. They've got to berate people in meetings because that's how we do things in the automotive industry. If you don't behave that way, you are soft, meek, and mild, and you have no business being a leader in the auto industry. That certainly was the model that we used to have.

So, you've embraced a much more authentic leadership style. How do you continue to perpetuate that within your organization? Because you must have people coming in that think more around a command and control.

[00:12:19] Pat D'Eramo: Yeah. So, first off, you have to accept the fact — it's not that I don't care what people say if you're in those situations — you just gotta learn to live with it. Okay? And so, when you have people you're trying to — for lack of a better term — convert. Okay? A lot of it is just what you said, it's what people think, people are gonna think about 'em, and how they're gonna be judged. And you gotta help people get past that, and show them how making those good decisions, which are also really tougher decisions in a lot of ways, are better for them and the people that are working not just for them in this condition, but around them, because people see it.

So, for every person who said, in this case, I think you should have gotten that taken care of. And there were a lot more that sat around and said, "Oh, if I make a mistake, he's gonna have my back. He's gonna he's gonna give me a chance. So, I'm not gonna be afraid to make a mistake."

[00:13:17] Jan Griffiths: And also, not afraid to take a risk.

[00:13:20] Pat D'Eramo: That's right.

[00:13:20] Jan Griffiths: And come forward with the next innovation that perhaps will be the most successful product for the company. And I think that's a shortsighted view that a lot of people have. They feel or they're so consumed about, "Oh, I gotta make this call. I've gotta fire this guy 'cause he made a mistake." But they don't understand the impact on culture. And you want to banish fear in the organization.

[00:13:43] Pat D'Eramo: The reality is firing someone is the easy way out. That's the easy way out. Now, there are times if somebody who just doesn't work in your culture — I've had that condition. People who won't get on board with the strategy. Okay? And then, in my way past, I've had people who broke the law. And those three reasons to me are good reasons.

[00:14:05] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:14:06] Pat D'Eramo: The majority of other people you can get there as long as they're at the position where they're working for the CEO or someone who's running a group. They didn't get there by luck. They got there because they work hard and they're capable. So, now you can take that

[00:14:18] Jan Griffiths:  This episode is sponsored by UHY. UHY, and the Center for Automotive Research are digging in to how suppliers quote and win with OEMs.

The results drop at CAR MBS, September the 15th through the 17th at Michigan Central. Stay tuned!

[00:14:36] Pat D'Eramo: Capability and refine it. And honestly, it's a heck of a lot better to go to work when people know you're trying to have a golden rule culture and you can show it by your actions, not just by words. And I think that Martinrea has really been able to work hard on that, and I think it's shown itself, especially in the last number of years, through these very difficult times.

[00:15:18] Jan Griffiths: There's a lot of activity with Martinrea around culture. You take it very seriously, and you have your guiding principles. And the golden rule is around respect. Is that right?

[00:15:12] Pat D'Eramo: It's our first principle. And it's to treat people with dignity and respect, or the golden rule. We use both terms. Even when we started our DEI activity, we rooted it in that first principle. So, when the backlash came with all the we're not gonna do DEI anymore, we didn't even change one thing because the base was the same. It's about treating people, it's about treating people with respect, and it works.

That one is very important, and we have many others. And in our last one, we actually modified too, with the sustainability, environment, and changed it to "Leave it better." And then there's a number of other things in between. My favorite being "Work hard, play hard," which we do some of that, as well.

But yeah, we really take our vision seriously of making people's lives better. We know who we are out there to please, which is our customers, people, suppliers, and environment, and of course, the people who owned our company, which are our stockholders.

So, we understand that these principles — which actually have been around in Martinrea for some time — but you have to have the right environment for them to take root. And they've been able to take root, I think, of the last decade or so. And now, they're really core to how we do things.

[00:16:31] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. I certainly felt that when I visited last year.

[00:16:35] Pat D'Eramo: Oh, okay.

[00:16:35] Jan Griffiths: You can see it. It's real. It's not a poster on a wall in a conference room; it's real. People understand it, and they're always talking about how do you practice these behaviors. How do you practice these principles? That's how you bring a culture alive. And then, of course, you model those principles yourself and your leadership team.

[00:16:54] Pat D'Eramo: Yeah, and it starts at our chairman. Our chairman, is, in fact, wrote the 10 principles before I even joined. He calls me his work partner, his work wife, because the two of us have really worked it from both ends of the organization.

And certainly, my staff clearly understands it and emulates it to their ability. And I try to do my best at it is. You know, we're all human beings. We all get mad sometimes. But the ability to stay objective in times like we're having right now is very important. And I'm really proud of the people I work with because they work very hard at not jumping off a cliff and really working the system the way you should.

[00:17:31] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. So, we're sitting here today in a period of massive disruption in the industry. We've got Chinese OEMs eating our lunch when it comes to producing EVs. We've got tariffs. So, the idea that we're in a period of disruption is almost laughable. It's almost complete chaos because we don't know what's going to happen next.

How do you lead through a time of chaos, Pat? Your role as a leader is to bring calm to the chaos, but you have no idea what you're gonna wake up to tomorrow morning. How do you do that?

[00:18:11] Pat D'Eramo: Let's go back to when this landslide of events started when the pandemic hit, and the industry shut down. We did what everybody else did. We got people working from home, we got our plants all safetied up, if you will. And the OEMs got together and created standards very quickly, and executed on those standards. And we played a substantial role in that. In fact, we made ventilator stands for the government. And then, once everything started up, we met every day — everybody's virtual, of course.

The people in the plants are not, they're working, so I personally visited as many plants as I could. I couldn't get across the border at first, I was just staying in the US. And then, I got into Canada once in a while. And I can get into Mexico once in a while. And so, it was slow getting into the other countries, but leadership had to make an appearance, so the leaders were out and about in their own countries, keeping the spirits up. And that made a difference.

Probably the most pivotal point in inside I'd say our organization from a collaboration level was when we had to start figuring out how to recover costs for inflation and loss. The supplier community had never really done this before. I'd worked for OEMs for 24 years. I'm like, "Why aren't we knocking on the door?" And the first reaction I had from one of our sales guys was, "Are you crazy? We can't go ask for this money."

We were very early in the process. We didn't wait a long time. But what was really cool about it is that we got our commercial people out of our business units, our operations people, our sales people, our lawyers who played a really key role, our SCO leadership, our technical leadership, just key people twice a week started working the process. And pretty soon, it started to work. It started to work very well.

And I think a lot of other suppliers have done similar things, but the majority of our suppliers have not recovered what's been lost. Inflationary difference might be 50%, if you're lucky, you get 80% of it, but there's still a gap. And until new generations of products come, you're not gonna be able to fill that gap.

But here comes the EVs. That was our opportunity. We'll get the EV work. When the EVs pick up, our economy will be back to normal, and we can move on. We all know what happened there. The EVs' lack of sales has only compounded the problem. So, now you've got a supply base out there that hasn't recovered from the inflation, hasn't recovered from the EV investments, which is really hurting some suppliers really bad. Someone all in. But no matter who you are, if you have any EV activity, you've been hurt. Okay? It just depends on what level. So now you've compounded that.

And now the tariffs hit. Okay? So, what do you do to lead through that? It's getting everybody in a straight line. This is what we're gonna do. Talking about it every day. Are we ahead? Are we behind? Where's our weak point? Who's not on board? What do we gotta do? Who do we have to escalate to? What do you need me, as the CEO, to do? Whatever it is.

And we, I would say, as an organization, are stronger now internally and our ability to take something from A to B than we ever have been before. So, out of this crisis, and the two: the pandemic and the supply chain, and then inflation and then the EV. We've actually taken advantage of it in some respects and become much stronger. But you gotta get a tailwind at some point. Yeah. And just when it's time to get a tailwind here comes the tariffs.

So, we were on day one, and a lot of frustrated people, obviously, at work. I was on the phone all morning, you go around, you slap backs, you kiss babies, you gotta say, "Hey, this is just one more thing we gotta fight through."

I think the thing that's most frustrating in this case is, you are absolutely right, China is kicking our tail. Okay? And to their credit, 25 years ago or whatever it was, they set out and said, "We're gonna be number one by 2025."

And they don't think quarter to quarter, they think long term, they did get tremendous state support. You talked about that in one of your in one of your podcasts, but it's significant, it's not just a little — 'cause I worked with a lot of Chinese companies over the years — it's a lot.

And so, when the North American continent and the Europeans as well need to be sitting down saying, "What do we have to do to literally catch up?" You have to get together. You gotta use the USMCA, you gotta focus on technology, you gotta open up material supply chains. You gotta figure out how to get rid of the borders — and I'm not talking about people crossing the border, of course — but fluid borders for trafficking parts back and forth across the border because we have many assemblies. They'll go back two, three times, maybe four.

And you want it to be like going across state lines, not like going across, country lines in the case of the business. So, you wanna strengthen the North American business so it can compete. And that won't happen in the USMCA in and of itself. It's gonna take tremendous investment.

And so, if you said, "Okay, how do we catch up with China?" To me, it's three steps. First step is — and I know this is controversial — but you do have to inhibit their ability to come to North America initially to give you time. Yeah. Then the government has to participate. That's how the Chinese did it. And I don't think we should do it like they did it, but our government needs to quit fighting about the border and tariffs and take the money that's being wasted and ask for investment.

You may have heard this when we were at the MEMA conference. In my view, we cannot build a production car in the United States right now. You can't do it. If it was designed here, and you went out to the supply base and said, "We want you to buy all your tools here." You can't do it. There's no capacity. And so, if you want to create that capacity, you need investment. And so, the government's gonna have to create an environment to make investment easy, to help with the investment, and move it along.

And help with things like if you want to have EVs and you want to have your own material, you gotta mine it here. You gotta refine it here. Light speed to develop a mine right now is 10 to 15 years. That's not gonna get you there. It's gonna have to be a lot of changes. So, quit wasting time like we are today, and start figuring out how we're gonna get back up on our feet because we're getting creamed.

But you can't think about tomorrow, you gotta think about the day after that, the day after that, and where do you wanna be in 10 years? What do you wanna be in 15 years? You gotta work the plan. So, this one's tough. The tariff things compounding all these other issues is really difficult, because everybody's what the hell?

And after all this, now, when we need you the most, leadership in our governments, you're all gonna get ready to fight. One's shot across the bow. Now, you guys and the other two countries are gonna shoot across the bow, and you're gonna waste everybody's time.

We need you to allow us to do what we know to do. Because if you set targets in front of this industry, and you've seen it for years, you don't need to tell the OEMs what to build. You need to tell the OEMs what they need to do, what targets they need to reach, and they know what to build.

[00:25:56] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:25:57] Pat D'Eramo: And right now, they don't know what to build. They really don't know what to do in some ways. So, we're waiting on the new portfolio. The RFQ is slow because no one wants to invest in another vehicle till they know what it should be. It's a mess, and we need support, and we're not getting that. Yeah. And these tariffs are just making it worse.

[00:26:17] Jan Griffiths: And I agree with you that we need something in place to stop the Chinese vehicles coming into the US to buy us time.

[00:26:24] Pat D'Eramo: Yeah.

[00:26:25] Jan Griffiths: But the clock has been ticking for a long time. We don't need this distraction — this massive distraction. And in the words of Jim Farley, that's gonna blow a hole in the auto industry. We need to focus on manufacturing in the US, but we need to focus on what this industry should be reinventing itself into. And right now, we don't know what that is.

[00:26:49] Pat D'Eramo: US can't do it alone.. Okay? You need, at a bare minimum, you need resources, and Canada is a gold mine, literally. Okay? And they've got really good people, really good technical people. And then, in Mexico, you know, where it used to be you had to go down there and train everybody.

[00:27:08] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, that's right.

[00:27:09] Pat D'Eramo: Now, we're bringing 'em in to help train our people because we have such a gap in skill. You need all three countries, and if you get all three countries with one plan — and the government's cooperating instead of rearranging the chairs on the Titanic — we can make things happen very quickly.

But it's gonna have to have that type of government support, and they gotta get out of our way. And yeah, you're right. In the long run, tariffs or inhibiting the Chinese from coming in over a long period of time never works. Nothing ever like that works.

[00:27:42] Jan Griffiths: No. No.

[00:27:42] Pat D'Eramo: But because they've been at it for such a long time, because they've had state support, which is not the North American way, then we've gotta figure out how to play ball differently, and we have to have some time to do that.

Because car programs take a long time. The development of technologies takes a long time. But there's no better place in the world than North America when it comes to innovation. So, like I said, get out of the way and let us work.

[00:28:09] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. Innovation provided. If we have the right leadership and culture in place to allow that innovation to flourish quickly, because speed is everything right now.

[00:28:19] Pat D'Eramo: That's why I gotta let people take risks. You gotta take risks with them.

[00:28:22] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. Pat, the 21 traits of Authentic Leadership, I know you've taken a look at that document. What stands out to you as the most important trait of leadership?

[00:28:34] Pat D'Eramo: So, it's funny, I read all of it, and then I read it again, and I started circling words and lines that I liked in all of 21 of them, honestly. And I said, "Okay, I can't pick 21." So, I came down to five: coaching, long-term vision, understanding where you want to go, long-term planning, trust, and, of course, those are the big ones, but of course, today, you have to include resilience.

[00:29:02] Jan Griffiths: Yes. That's right. That's right.

[00:29:03] Pat D'Eramo: It's such a big part of our existence these days. And when you look at where those overlap versus what I told you earlier as far as my personal leadership style, those overlap the most with the way I like to manage and lead, and the way I like to be led.

When I went through the hiring process at Martinrea, they put me through a whole bunch of testing, the recruiters. And funny thing is that our chairman did the same thing. He says, "Hey, I'm gonna do that too just to see how we line up." And I can't remember how many traits there were. Let's say there were 16 traits; we lined up exactly the same on 15.

[00:29:44] Jan Griffiths: No way.

[00:29:46] Pat D'Eramo: And the one we didn't was process. I'm a very process-oriented

[00:29:50] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:29:50] Pat D'Eramo: And he's not.

[00:29:51] Jan Griffiths: Oh.

[00:29:52] Pat D'Eramo: And that's where we butt heads on the occasion once in a while. But it also creates a lot of new things and creativity within the organization. So, we're very much aligned, which has really helped us move things along.

So, if I had to pick one.. It's really tough.

[00:30:09] Jan Griffiths: You can do it. Come on.

[00:30:10] Pat D'Eramo: Maybe supporting and coaching.

[00:30:12] Jan Griffiths: Yes. Yes. I would say that makes perfect sense given everything that you said.

[00:30:16] Pat D'Eramo: There's things in all the other ones I thought were traits either I'd like to think I have or try to achieve. If I had to boil it down to one, that would be it.

[00:30:24] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, now it's time to take a turn to the personal side. Are you ready?

[00:30:29] Pat D'Eramo: Yeah.

[00:30:31] Jan Griffiths: We were looking at the guitar here in the studio earlier. What's your favorite band?

[00:30:35] Pat D'Eramo: ELO.

[00:30:37] Jan Griffiths: Really?

[00:30:38] Pat D'Eramo: Yeah. Growing up, I was big on ELO, Alan Parsons, Steely Dan, and Toto are my bands.

[00:30:47] Jan Griffiths: Wow. ELO, I haven't heard that word in such a long time.

[00:30:50] Pat D'Eramo: Yeah. You know what's funny is in 2018, they hadn't been to the US in 30 years, and when they were here the first time or last time I was too young. So, they came to Little Caesars — they've been there twice since, by the way — and I went and saw him with my best friend from high school, who we were both big fans of. After all this time, we finally got to go see ELO, and it was fantastic.

[00:31:13] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, it's great.

[00:31:14] Pat D'Eramo: Yeah.

[00:31:15] Jan Griffiths: What is the last live performance of anything that you've seen? Play, theater, band, or anything?

[00:31:23] Pat D'Eramo: My wife and I love going to movies, we just don't get to 'em as often because everything's on TV now.

[00:31:30] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, I know.

[00:31:30] Pat D'Eramo: And it's simpler. Now, we probably like to watch action series.

[00:31:34] Jan Griffiths: Okay.

[00:31:35] Pat D'Eramo: Like Reacher.

[00:31:36] Jan Griffiths: Oh, you're a Reacher fan. Okay.

[00:31:37] Pat D'Eramo: Big Reacher fan.

[00:31:38] Jan Griffiths: Okay.

[00:31:38] Pat D'Eramo: And I like Landman. I don't know if you've seen Landman.

[00:31:41] Jan Griffiths: I love Landman. Yes.

[00:31:43] Pat D'Eramo: Yeah. Tulsa King, we're a big fan.

[00:31:45] Jan Griffiths: Haven't gotten into that yet, but Landman had me hooked.

[00:31:48] Pat D'Eramo: That's one of the best. That's one of the best. And I'm a big sci-fi fan, and my wife's not as much. She'll watch it with me, but I'm a big sci-fi fan, so I watch all the Star Treks and that kind of thing too.

[00:31:59] Jan Griffiths: So, what's the last book you read?

[00:32:01] Pat D'Eramo: The last book I read that was, I would say.

[00:32:06] Jan Griffiths: You could say mine.

[00:32:08] Pat D'Eramo: I'm still reading yours. That was a science fiction book called Terran Menace. Oh yeah, just finished that. And then, probably the best book I've ever read was Why Nations Fail. You know, when it comes to a more of a workbook, if you will, I think that's a fantastic book.

Favorite book of all time is probably the Dark Tower that Stephen King wrote, but you know, so I don't read as much as I'd like to, but I do listen a lot because I'm driving a lot. I live in Tennessee half-time. I live in Michigan part-time. In Toronto, a lot. So, when I'm driving, especially on a weekend, I'll listen to a book.

[00:32:47] Jan Griffiths: Oh, what's your favorite podcast?

[00:32:50] Pat D'Eramo: When I'm with my wife, we always listen to mysteries like the Dateline type of things.

[00:32:54] Jan Griffiths: Yes, okay.

[00:32:55] Pat D'Eramo: And so forth. And I haven't listened to a lot. I've listened to yours.

[00:32:59] Jan Griffiths: Yes, thank you.

[00:33:00] Pat D'Eramo: So, I've enjoyed those. But I don't listen to a lot of podcasts unless I'm with her for some reason. I tend to listen to a book or I'm on the phone. If it's during the week, I'm on the phone the whole time. That kind of rounds me out a little bit.

[00:33:12] Jan Griffiths: I see it. I see it. Pat, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been an absolute pleasure.

[00:33:17] Pat D'Eramo: Yeah, I enjoyed it. I really appreciate you having me on the show.

[00:33:20] Jan Griffiths: Thank you. 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.