Hadi Awada's Journey to Transforming Workplace Culture

[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.

I'm often asked how I select my guests for the show. And one of the most important criteria is that they really are an authentic leader, that they walk the talk, that it's not just blah, blah, blah. That it's real. And every once in a while, different people will come up to me and tell me, this is the leader. This is the leader we love to work for. And over the last, I'd say five or six years, at least four or five different people have come up to me and said, "This guy, we love working for this guy. He shows exceptional leadership. He's a fantastic boss. He cares about the team." And you might be wondering, well, who is this person? Who is this trailblazer in the automotive industry? He was named to the esteemed list of Automotive News Rising Stars in 2020. And when he took his current position, in the press release they said, "He is keenly focused on developing intimate customer relationships and is a passionate leader of people." And that apparently is true. And so, today, I am thrilled to welcome to the show Hadi Awada, President of Axalta Mobility Coatings. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:46] Hadi Awada: Thanks, Jan. Great to be here. I'm also honored, and I'm not the only trailblazer sitting in the room; you have also set the industry ablaze with the podcast that you do, and I'm honored to be here. Thank you.

[00:02:56] Jan Griffiths: Well, thank you. Let's go right in. Hadi, who are you as a leader? Now, I've heard it from other people, but I want to hear it from you. Who are you as a leader?

[00:03:07] Hadi Awada: Well, I would say that I lead with culture and people. And I don't lead through them; I lead with them. I think culture is the first thing that I look at because it is the only thing that beats everything. The other thing is, as you look at people, the people that you put around you represent exactly who you are. And so, that culture has to manifest itself in what you're trying to bring into leadership. There are three things I usually look at: it's the people, the org, and the governance. And this kind of goes into your 21 Traits here. But as you look at the people, I hire people for situations, not for jobs. I develop organizations that are created for empowerment, and I govern with that empowerment in mind. So, we keep things simple.

[00:03:58] Jan Griffiths: That's a powerful message. What shaped your belief in leadership and the leader you are today? What happened in your history, in your past experiences? Share some of those with us, please.

[00:04:12] Hadi Awada: Well, I worked for a big corporate animal for a long time, and at some point, I decided I just had enough of it because every day when I went to work, it was draining in terms of energy. I remember coming home one day and my wife saying, "Why are you always so exhausted when people come as a European company? When people come from Europe, you're out for the week, and you come home, and you're just strained." And I said, "Well, I have to be on all the time."

[00:04:36] Jan Griffiths: I can totally relate to that. Yes.

[00:04:38] Hadi Awada: And she said, "But why do you have to be on? Why don't you just be the same person at work that you are at home, and it doesn't require any additional energy." And that resonated, actually. So I said, "You know, I want to be in a situation where that's possible." And I left. I left big corporate America. I went to a 20 million startup. It had 60 employees in it. It grew substantially in the two years I was there. But something clicked with me later where I decided that I wanted to go back and change corporate. And that became kind of my mission. So, I said, "You know, I'm gonna go back." And I came back to the same company. They actually hired me back. I landed in the UK and eventually made it to Shanghai. I learned all these cool things as I was going through it. But when I became a Vice President in Asia, I sat around the table with all of these other vice presidents, and these were the gods before, right? You looked at these people; they're making all these decisions; they're driving the company. And I had realized that in my time in that small company, I had made more decisions and done more things that mattered than any of those people sitting around that table have ever done without a safety net.

[00:05:45] Jan Griffiths: That's so interesting because I can completely relate. When I left corporate America, same thing, starting my own business, I had to learn so much. There are so many skills that I didn't have, and you have to learn, you have to bring that on board. But how interesting that you were then able to go back into Corporate Automotive, Corporate America, with the skill set, with a different mindset, perhaps?

[00:06:07] Hadi Awada: Sure, of course. I mean, everything is related to a payback, right? So, in life, you see your successes, but you don't see how you got there. You see the people that got you there. And that's kind of where this whole theory of culture for me came. I'm not the first one to invent it. I think a lot of people have stumbled on culture beats everything for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But you have to actually not say that you have to live it. You have to really imagine yourself in a culture that you want to be. You want to walk into your job every day and make sure that that's the culture you want to be around you. You would need that to manifest within the other people. And if they don't, there's a door, and there's a bus, another bus they can take to another bus stop, right? So, that's okay. There are plenty of people that share your convictions, share your values. Shouldn't you surround yourself with people that are the same characteristics as you, or the same leadership style, or habits, or organizational habits, but the right character and culture are interesting, right? To have the same shared level of convictions, I think goes a long way for how the rest of the organization sees that.

[00:07:08] Jan Griffiths: The other thing that I see in automotive is that, and I certainly experienced this in my career, it's a bit of a badge of honor in, even in a VP role, where you're down in the weeds, down in the detail, working in the detail. The idea is that you work on true leadership, as in creating a mission and a vision, rallying the troops around that vision and mission, creating a rallying cry, and taking teams off-site to talk about culture and how we do things. That idea in automotive the more deep down in the weeds you were, the stronger you were, and the more you were recognized. And that behavior was rewarded. I'm sure you've seen that type of behavior, but how do you keep your leaders motivated by raising their gaze, staying up from the weeds from the day-to-day, and really moving forward and focusing on vision and mission? How do you do that?

[00:08:10] Hadi Awada: So, I think it comes down to sizing people, right? And you know, of course, the mantra around automotive has been in God we trust; everyone else bring data.

[00:08:19] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:08:19] Hadi Awada: Creating a culture of trust is important and finding people that have perspective. So, as you size people, one of the main characteristics I look for in the leadership style is the person's perspective. Do they have the ability to take a step back and see what the hell is going on, right? And not that many people will do that. You'd be surprised how many people keep their heads down and just keep marching. But you really want to surround yourself with people who will take a step back, have a perspective, and question things. That tends to get them out of the weeds. The other thing I look at is there's a problem pendulum that you gotta see. And problems can be anywhere from 0 percent to 100%. You gotta figure out where you are and when you need to be involved in that pendulum. And sometimes, you've got vice presidents that are involved in the 5 percent level of problem. Why do you need to be involved in where we're going to schedule lunch for today? But some people feel like they need to do that. And that creates an environment where people don't feel trusted, quite frankly. So, as long as you keep your team in that perspective to say, "Are you really feel like you need to be in that problem solving for that problem?" That's that 5 percent of the pendulum. It gives them that perspective to take a step back. 80 percent of what I do in my day-to-day is to keep my team cohesive and operating. Of course, I think about strategy and all this other stuff, but so do they. And they bring these ideas, and we pull these things together, and it's because we keep them cohesive. When you've got a high-performing team, there's a lot of friction. Everybody's a fiery red, extremely organized, and they've got data that makes them smarter. And they use that data to drive their objective or their agenda. So, your job as a leader is to make sure they all get along as like a family, right? It's kind of like if you've got multiple children, you raise them all the same, they all have different personalities. Each one is playing their role in their place. But you've got to keep them as one, and you've got to move them together. And that's pretty much how you keep them out of the weeds. You keep them with that perspective.

[00:10:22] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. And then you have to keep the toxic politics out of the conference room.

[00:10:27] Hadi Awada: No politics policy.

[00:10:30] Jan Griffiths: Practicing that can be difficult, particularly if you're in a legacy company that's been around for a long time, where there are ways of doing things, written or otherwise, that are ingrained into the culture. And I've seen that a few times in my career. Now, Axalta has a deep history; you're over 150 years old as a company, and there are many companies in the auto industry that have that type of history. And now here you are dealing with massive transformation in this industry. How do you do that?

[00:11:06] Hadi Awada: But like I said, no politics policy, at least in my team. And, look, one of the things I really enjoy as a leader is watching my team win and whether that's a customer win, whether that's a problem that we solve, whether it's a recognition internally about the mobility team versus some of the other teams, it just brings me joy to see that winning. And when we do win like that, we advertise it a lot, and we make people want to be part of our culture and mobility. And so, as you start to set that up and people want to come to work for you because they want to, it starts to trigger people to ask questions like, "What kind of DNA do I need to be on that team?" And that no politics policy kind of stands out as the first thing. There is zero politics in what we do. We may posture, but we don't play politics. And it's a very different game. And you have to know but no executive makes it to the top without understanding how savvy you need to be in certain cases. But there's a difference between overplaying your politics versus just posturing.

[00:12:07] Jan Griffiths: You talk about a high-performance team. We all know that the most important characteristic of a high-performance team is psychological safety. And as a leader, you're responsible for creating that safe environment. And when I interviewed Warren Harris from Tata Technologies, he said, "When we leave the room, we either agree and commit or disagree and commit." And in that room, you might be fighting in a positive sense, not physically, and you're going to have disagreements, and you're going to have different perspectives and different points of view. And that's good. And that can be healthy, but that depends totally on the leader of the culture and the environment. It can be healthy. And it can be toxic. And I've worked in companies with both types of cultures. How do you make sure that you keep it positive and that it doesn't turn into the toxic?

[00:13:00] Hadi Awada: Yeah. So, positive conflict is a really good way to lead, and creating enjoyable competition is a way to offset that. The way we set up our business is, more or less, we've got three general managers that run it. And we create a lot of positive competition between those three. We give out the Sandbagger Award. We do funny things that some people go up on stage when they present stuff, and they dress in AC/DC outfits. And we try to always compete through the creative side. And I think when you've got a bunch of fiery reds that are leading with a bunch of blue in their back pocket because they're very organized. It's hard to take time to think about creativity. And so, you need to always create an environment where creativity is at the center, and only argue about the data, and have fun with positive competition and reward it in a fun way.

[00:13:54] Jan Griffiths: How do you get your team into a creative space? It's so hard sometimes in day-to-day running the business. How do you get them into that creative mode?

[00:14:04] Hadi Awada: We got to take time sometimes. We do a lot of chat groups, one thing in the leadership team, and we keep a lot of humor in the chat group. That humor leads to creativity on who can be the most witty and who can say the funniest things without crossing lines and keeping it respectful. So, you know, you keep that environment in the background. We recently just went off-site in Düsseldorf. And we brought in a company called Musicworks, and we took a step back from all the strategy discussions and tactical discussions. And this group actually split us up into four teams. One team had to learn how to rap and create a rap song. The other team had to learn how to beatbox. Other team break dance. And then, the other one did some graffiti. And at the end, we had to pull this production together and everyone kind of did it. But the interesting part was because the culture of our team is very competitive, instead of using that creativity to bring the production together, you realize that the rappers made up songs about other people, the beatboxers were dissing the break-dancers, and it made it fun at the same time. It was all in fun, and I clearly had to change my closing speech after that because, you know, I was going to be very presidential and give the thank you for coming to the strategy session speech, and it turned into, "Hey, thanks for coming to the concert," and, you know, "We won't be stopped, we can't be stopped, and there's no one that's going to stop us." And it resonated, people felt motivated, and they walked out with that. It was really interesting. I think, in the end, there are multiple things you can do for creativity, but you can't walk away from fun. I think fun is the ultimate creativity, right?

[00:15:36] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, because we used to be so judgmental in this industry. I remember a time when you would never do that; you know, you would be ridiculed.

[00:15:44] Hadi Awada: Sure.

[00:15:45] Jan Griffiths: And in fact, I was, several times, when I would take my team off-site, I was judged. It was absolutely brutal, but I did it because I knew it was the right thing to do. And it's so encouraging and warms my heart to hear that there are leaders out there really encouraging this different environment, this creativity, bringing it back into the workplace. What happens is all the leaders that you had in that session now have given themselves permission to be more authentic, to do something like that with their teams. And the ripple effect. And then, of course, you have culture change, right?

[00:16:19] Hadi Awada: Of course. Now, everybody's signed up and they all have this accountability to each other now. When Renato calls Mateus and asks them for a favor, they have that connection.

[00:16:30] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:16:30] Hadi Awada: And it's no longer, oh, I need to do this for Renato. It's I want to do this for my colleague.

[00:16:35] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:16:36] Hadi Awada: And that's a very different level of service that you get for the internal customer.

[00:16:41] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. Accountability. I used to hate the word because it was always associated with blame. Now, I've learned to love it because I understand it more, and I understand positive accountability. As a leader, we're often faced with having a business to run, there's accountability, and certain things have to happen, but you also have to balance this need to nurture people and be kind. And it's okay to be kind in this industry. Many of our leaders have forgotten that. It's a balance. And it's different for everyone; it's different in every business. How do you strike that balance between driving for the numbers and the accountability, and in the words of Doug Conant, being tender-hearted with people?

[00:17:29] Hadi Awada: So, you know, respect is at the center of everything we do. There's no reason to disrespect anybody. There's just no reason for it. You can be firm and fair, but there's no reason for disrespect. And when I think about accountability, my mind goes more towards anticipate and initiative. People who have a strong sense of accountability tend to be people who anticipate things so that they can avoid problems, which also shows accountability. You've got to reward those characteristics, as well. Because accountability isn't just that we failed; who's accountable? We succeeded; who's accountable? It's what happened along the journey. What characteristics do people exhibit that got us to where we are? I always say when you look at these successes, and you turn around and look to see how that happened, you don't see the steps that you took; you see the people. You see every person, you remember all their names, you remember where they came from, and you also follow where they go after that because you're connected with them. All those people give you a sense of accountability through the steps that they take. And as they anticipate things and they intercept those things so that they don't become problems, that's a form of accountability. And that's the kind of accountability that we try to do on our team. We don't wait for the results because the results are just the results.

[00:18:52] Jan Griffiths: It's forward-thinking. It's accountability.

[00:18:54] Hadi Awada: Of course.

[00:18:55] Jan Griffiths: It's not backward-looking. If accountability is looking backward, it becomes blame. If it's forward, it becomes positive accountability.

[00:19:03] Hadi Awada: Yeah. And really the only accountability you've got to look at backwards when there is a problem is what systems led us or processes led us to this.

[00:19:13] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:19:14] Hadi Awada: And it's not a person. It's never a person. It's there's always some kind of system or process that got you there. And it's really hard. You know, when people try to do root cause analysis, they always land on this person who didn't follow the policy. What was wrong with the policy that allowed the person to deviate, right? So, you got to think through that stuff and not shoot the people. You have to figure out how to fix processes.

[00:19:35] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, that's true. You've taken time to review the 21 Traits of Authentic Leadership. What really jumps out at you? What resonates with you?

[00:19:44] Hadi Awada: The thing I've been really preaching and demonstrating is transparency. And it goes back to even what I said before, you know, when my wife told me, "Why are you a different person at work than you are at home?" It takes so much energy to not be transparent. Now I know there are certain things you're not allowed to tell people because they're confidential. I'm not saying to violate confidentiality. But be your authentic self, come transparent, and make sure you try to believe that everyone's trying to be their best person. And if you do that, they will also be transparent. Some people take a long time to warm up and to tell you things. Sometimes people are afraid and so you've got to break that paradigm of fear, you know, have them want to be there and communicate and contribute. But really it all comes down to transparency, and this will eliminate politics, this will eliminate command and control. This creates an environment where everybody feels that they can approach you and that they are themselves approachable. It's really an interesting trait that you have identified.

[00:20:43] Jan Griffiths: Yeah. Is at the root, isn't it? It's at the root of authentic leadership.

[00:20:47] Hadi Awada: Yeah. If you can be transparent, it comes across as very genuine because it is.

[00:20:53] Jan Griffiths: I'm interested in what your wife said to you because my neighbor actually made a similar comment to me many, many years ago. And she said, "Gosh, when you come home from work, you know, you just seem so drained." And I was going through a difficult time with this company and she noticed that my posture had changed. I was hunched over and she noticed I was getting more hunched every day. I would never have thought of that. And the same thing, I had a closet of clothes, it was work, look, and then there was me. Why? Why do you have two sections in your closet? I would spend hours getting ready for work. I would never have rolled onto a Zoom call without makeup on in the corporate world, never. I, for sure, would never have gotten a tattoo with a Welsh dragon on my arm. But life is so much better, life, not just work, life as a whole is so much better when you live it from the heart, when you're comfortable in your own skin, and you actually like who you are as a person, and you have that giving mindset. It's so different. And if you can create an environment at work where people feel at home, where they can be their selves, oh my gosh, do you have power to be able to transform a business and transform an industry. That being said, what do you think is the biggest challenge leaders are faced with in this industry today as it relates to culture and leadership?

[00:22:26] Hadi Awada: Everything you said is extremely valid, and most people, until they try it, don't understand how much energy they save when they show up as their authentic.

[00:22:37] Jan Griffiths: Yes.

[00:22:38] Hadi Awada: Last week, and I won't name any names or anything, but, you know, I ran into a couple of people I had conversations with, and it was a very clear facade they had on. And it's so superficial.

[00:22:48] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, you see right through it.

[00:22:50] Hadi Awada: In different cultures, it's different, but the Americans don't hide being superficial; it's very on their sleeve, right? Versus when you go to China or when you go to Europe, you know, it's different. I mean, they're all, you know, compare them to fruits, coconuts, peaches, all these different things, right? But it's unbelievably draining when you have to do that. And so, for me, as we look at where we're moving in this industry, I think leaders have to have that empathy. They have to practice that more. I have kids; I've got an 18-year-old, a 17-year-old, a soon-to-be-19, soon-to-be-18, and a 14-year-old. And what I'm learning with this new generation is that they don't really care to handle that. It's not that they can't handle the pressures that we used to handle growing up, where we had this tough love; they just don't care to do it.

[00:23:38] Jan Griffiths: Yeah, it's so true. Yes.

[00:23:40] Hadi Awada: They don't care about it, and so why should I be pressured? I don't need to do that. So, that's coming. It's not a matter of if we're going to allow that to happen in the workplace; they're going to transform the work environment there. So, we've got to have that empathy. We've got to be able to relate to that. And we have to start with ourselves; we have to be who we are at work, the same person that we are at home so that we can see that this is what they expect and they're not asking us to be like them. They're just asking you to be your best you, and your best you are probably who you are when you go to the other side of your closet and take the clothes that make you comfortable.

[00:24:16] Jan Griffiths: That's so true. Yes. So true.

[00:24:19] Hadi Awada: It is. It is. And look, some people like to come to work every day with a button-up shirt, and that's fine. I like to wear a button-up shirt that's comfortable. I like to have it untucked all the time. I wear that on the weekend, too. I go walk my dog. I also have that kind of outfit on. That's just what I like. I enjoy it. I like my white tennis shoes. I like to do that stuff. I wear that to work. So, there's nothing wrong with doing that. It doesn't make you inappropriate. Mary from GM even changed the dress code, it was just: dress appropriately. So, things like this are starting to resonate through society, especially in the U S and, and I think people need to have more empathy around how to approach this next generation that's coming in. Otherwise, we're going to get run over by them. We're not going to be able to build a team that's successful if we don't understand them.

[00:25:05] Jan Griffiths: And we're at a time right now where it's possible that we'll have five generations in the workforce at one time. millennials are already in and moving through leadership roles, Gen Z is in, and Gen A is right behind them. It's coming. And each generation has different communication preferences. They have different aspirational values. And as a leader, you're going to need to understand all of these things to be able to create that high-performance team. Also, to be able to attract talent. And the time for transformation was yesterday. It's, it's now we're in it. We've got to put more of a spotlight on transforming culture in this industry. And it makes me so happy to meet a leader who's been practicing this for quite some time. This is not new news to you. You've been doing this for a while.

[00:25:57] Hadi Awada: Sure. I mean, but look, mobility helps you grow when you choose to be an international citizen, like we did. I mean, moving from the US to Europe, spending time in Germany, in the UK, and then in Asia. And then, of course, being of Middle Eastern descent, you kind of get a sense that there's one common thing and that people just want to be who they are. Yeah. And they don't want to be judged or measured based on who you want them to be. And it's a very simple principle, right? And it's so easy to just get the best out of somebody by allowing them to be there. Why would you want to take a perfectly good person and change them to something else where they can't feel comfortable performing in their own clothes? So, it's a weird thing to do. It reminds me of the past, and I don't know if the UK still does this in the governments where they put these weird wigs on, and they do. Why would they do that? They do like it just, okay. There might be cultural reasons for it, but, you know, show up in your own clothes. Right. And you know, let's get things done based on who you are. Be your best you. Right.

[00:27:04] Jan Griffiths: So, talking about being your best self, let's take a tune into the personal realm, shall we? Sure. Yeah. What do you like to binge-watch? Do you binge-watch anything?

[00:27:14] Hadi Awada: We binge-watch a lot. So, we just started watching The Gentleman. I don't know if you've So yeah, this is based, I think, in the UK. The gentleman was in the UN, and he was pulled out because his father was dying. He was a duke and, you know, the inheritance is supposed to go to the oldest child. It ends up going to the middle child, who was in the UN. He's a military soldier, very disciplined. Finds out his father was running a marijuana cartel in the background. And now he's inherited all this, and he's trying to figure out how to piece this all together. So, very interesting. I mean, we like to watch things like this where people end up in situations that they weren't expecting and have to fish their way out. Succession was another one that we watched that we were pretty deep into that.

[00:27:50] Jan Griffiths: I am rewatching Succession with my daughter right now. I love it because it's been a great experience to talk to her about corporate life. And when they're talking about making an acquisition, and everybody just says yes and agrees with Logan because they're all afraid of him, I said, I have been in that room. I've been there. I've seen that actually happen. And she's like, Mom, really? Yep.

[00:28:12] Hadi Awada: What a commanding presence he always has, though, right? Yeah, I mean, we won't spoil it for anybody as you go through the series, but There's definitely a change as you get into the final season because of that presence. Right. So, it just, it's very interesting. And then usually what's running on the television, whenever it's on, just generally is Comedy Central and The Office.

[00:28:31] Jan Griffiths: Yeah,

[00:28:31] Hadi Awada: and the American version, and because the whole family tends to land on that. No one complains about it. And it's something we can all relate to. It makes fun of office life.

[00:28:40] Jan Griffiths: What's the last live performance you saw?

[00:28:43] Hadi Awada: the Verve Pipe, actually.

[00:28:46] Jan Griffiths: Oh, really?

[00:28:47] Hadi Awada: Yeah, yeah, the Verve Pipe, I followed them, I grew up, and at 15, I actually, I didn't like how music was being written, and so I decided to join a band. So, I taught myself how to play guitar, and I would teach them how to write songs. I still can't read music, but I can write music. And so, I started to follow the Verve pipe because the Verve pipe, Counting Crows, Dave Matthew, and then this whole Seattle sound came in. But you know, the last show I went to was before COVID. And this was at the Masonic in downtown Detroit. And it was the Verve pipe. It's a very small set, a very small venue. I got to meet the band afterward.

[00:29:22] Jan Griffiths: Oh, great. Yeah.

[00:29:23] Hadi Awada: We went and had a drink with them afterward, too, next door, which was cool. So yeah, that was, that was nice.

[00:29:28] Jan Griffiths: Yeah.

[00:29:29] Hadi Awada: I appreciate that. And their local band, too. So, I mean, they're, they came from Michigan, right?

[00:29:32] Jan Griffiths: So, when you get up in the morning, and you're thinking about the day, you're thinking about work, you're thinking about leading this global business, leading your team. What are some of the things that you do first thing in the morning to set yourself up right for the day?

[00:29:47] Hadi Awada: I block out the first two hours that I wake up, and that's my own time. So, I'm not active until 8 AM. The only exception I make to that is if Asia wants to have a call with me. But I tend to be accommodating to Asia. So I'll do those more at nighttime. I'm a late owl, so I like to stay out late, stay up and work sometimes, sometimes not work, but yeah, so I usually reposition my Asia meetings to the evening, and I like to take those first two hours to myself. That's the time that I usually use for just reading emails without responding. I read text messages without responding. And I take a look at the headlines of what's going on in the industry that's related to us. And then, usually, for half an hour, I think about who on my team I need to help today. What doors do I need to open so that people can be successful?

[00:30:33] Jan Griffiths: That's a very powerful way to start the day because you're starting off with that servant leadership. I'm here to support your mindset, not the I'm coming into work to tell you guys what to do today. Yeah, that's very, very different. And it's so important that we set ourselves up right for the day before we launch into the day. Yeah.

[00:30:54] Hadi Awada: And so, all that's linked, right? So, reading the text messages, the emails, because everybody's got their agenda and that's okay. I'm not one of those people who tell people not to have their own agenda. I think the world is created around people who have their own agendas. And it's how you take everybody's agenda and see them, see what their agendas are, and make them all work together. I think that's the key. Otherwise, you're trying to change people, and you're not supposed to do that. My whole philosophy is to use their superpowers and get the whole team to succeed so that everybody's happy. And so, you read those emails and text messages to get all the different sides of the equation, every different street corner. When Nicholas is asking you for this, and that's when he tells you he needs help, you have to open this door for him. You've got to understand why he's asking that and what the potential traps are as you fall into this or as you start down that path to help him. Otherwise, you just go open that door for him, and he falls into a trap. I'm always looking two, three, or four steps ahead, trying to understand what his agenda is without challenging what that is, and learning through that from, all the different peripherals that you can get and then doing the right thing.

[00:32:00] Jan Griffiths: That is great advice. Well, Hadi, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.

[00:32:05] Hadi Awada: Pleasure. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. I'm really honored to be here. And I'm so glad that, which number am I? How many people have you interviewed so far?

[00:32:13] Jan Griffiths: We're 120 something.

[00:32:15] Hadi Awada: 120 something? Yes. All right. Well, I'm glad to be in your 120s.

[00:32:18] Jan Griffiths: You'll have a number. You'll have a number. Yes. All right. And let's transform this industry together, shall we? I'm

[00:32:24] Hadi Awada: there with you. Let's do it. All right. Great. Let's go.

[00:32:27] Jan Griffiths: 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.