Jan Griffiths grew up on a farm in Wales and was supposed to stay there.

Instead, she left at 23 with no real plan and spent the next three decades building a career in automotive, working her way from a temp role on a factory floor to VP of Global Supply Chain Management. 

She’s held leadership positions at companies like BorgWarner, Bosch, GKN, and Inteva Products. She was named one of the top 100 leading women in the automotive industry. But through all of it, she watched the same fear-driven, command-and-control culture hold the industry back. 

In her early 50s, she walked away from the C-suite to start Gravitas Detroit, where she now coaches leadership teams, speaks on stages across the country, and hosts the Automotive Leaders Podcast. She’s the author of AutoCulture 2.0 and one of the loudest voices pushing the auto industry to rethink how it leads, makes decisions, and treats the people inside it. 

In this episode of The BLTnT Podcast we cover: 

→ Why fear-based leadership is the biggest threat to the auto industry’s future 

→ How Jan lost almost all stability in two years but came back stronger 

→ Why “China speed” is outpacing Detroit and what cultural shifts need to happen right now 

→ The accountability framework that turns ownership into real results 

→ What it actually takes to lead with honesty 

The biggest transformations in business happen when a leader finally decides that how they’ve been told to lead isn’t how they want to lead; when they choose honesty over fear.

Jan, thank you for being so open about the lows and the losses. Your energy is contagious and your story is proof that reinvention can happen the moment a leader gets brutally honest with themselves. 

*Chapters* 

0:00 Intro 

0:55 Meet Jan Griffiths: From Wales to Detroit 

3:23 Leaving Wales at 23 and Crying at O’Hare 

7:16 The Pace of Change Will Never Be This Slow Again 

10:16 Why Culture Is the Real Operating System 

14:35 Leaders Have to Walk the Talk With AI 

17:06 Command and Control vs. Authentic Leadership 

21:00 Walking Away From the C-Suite in Her 50s 

24:06 Zero Income, COVID, and the Accountability Group That Saved Her 

27:24 The 21 Traits: Rethinking Accountability 

32:38 Vision, Empowerment, and Getting Out of the Weeds 

37:03 What Gravitas Really Means in Leadership 

39:05 The EV Reckoning: Culture Over Technology 

45:11 Why EVs Still Aren’t Profitable for Legacy Automakers 

50:13 Reinvention, Self-Belief, and What’s Next for Jan 

54:30 Jan’s Message to Young Leaders 

~~~ This episode is brought to you by Auxiom Find out more: https://auxiom.com/