The Weight of Leadership: The True Cost of Poor Leadership in the Automotive Industry

Jul 24, 2025

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Jay Butler doesn't just understand troubled operations. He's worked through them at every level. From the production lines of Nissan and Mercedes-Benz and now as a consultant for distressed plants, he has seen what causes operations to fall apart. And the biggest problems don't come from the floor. They come from leadership.

Jay starts by sharing how poor leadership decisions create ripple effects that reach all the way to the floor. Holiday shifts that never end. Supervisors are stretched too thin. People burned out from six- and seven-day workweeks, year after year.

Operational pressure doesn't just hit the floor; it follows people home. When that pressure builds up for long enough, performance drops, and culture breaks. Jay doesn't blame the people doing the work; he points the finger at the decisions being made at the top.

But Jay doesn't frame this as a call for soft leadership. In fact, he's clear: being a good leader means setting expectations, being consistent, and holding people accountable. What doesn't work is enforcing rules that no one follows or only applying them when convenient.

You can't expect consistent performance if you don't hold people accountable—or worse, if leadership doesn't model the behavior themselves.

Jay recalls workers raising grandkids, struggling to keep up, and barely making it through the week. Leaders might not think that's their responsibility, but Jay argues otherwise. If your policies at work make someone's home life harder, you're responsible for that too.

They also revisit accountability, but in a different light. Jan mentions a recent interview with Brad Ring at Webasto, who swapped the word "accountability" for "promise." It's a simple change, but it changes everything. "I promise to get this done" hits differently than "you'll be held accountable."

They also talk about tariffs. Jay explains how one political post or policy change can throw an entire manufacturing plan off course. He's seen companies scrap full strategies mid-meeting because of a headline. That level of volatility demands preparation. You can't move production in a week, especially in automotive, but you can plan.

This episode is a reminder that the weight of leadership isn't just about decisions. It's about owning your impact.

As Jay puts it, you influence more than just metrics—you influence whether someone gets to go home proud or completely drained. That's where operational transformation begins. Not with new systems. Not with floor-level changes. But with better leadership.

Themes discussed in this episode:

How poor leadership creates burnout and operational breakdowns in manufacturing
Why holding employees accountable without clear standards creates chaos and mistrust
Why operational breakdowns often stem from leadership gaps, not workforce performance
How Gen Z workers are reshaping expectations for culture in manufacturing plants
How inconsistent enforcement of rules weakens trust and team accountability
Why companies must address culture and accountability before fixing production issues
What leaders must do to prepare for tariff changes and global trade uncertainty

Featured guest: Jay Butler

What he does: Jay is the VP of Client Development at Seraph, where he leads management and leadership training, quality improvement, strategic planning, and product development. He is also a John Maxwell Team Certified Coach and Speaker, employing his leadership expertise to support management and client operations on the floor.

On Leadership: “You can be a strong leader but still show empathy for people. And I think the article that I posted on LinkedIn, where I talked about the fact that we were not only responsible for the performance of the organization, but also for the health and welfare of the people we lead. I think it's so important for leaders to understand that you really are responsible for both. And if you're not prepared as a leader to carry that burden and that weight, then maybe you probably shouldn't be a leader in that organization.”

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode Highlights:

[02:05] Bad Leadership Travels Home: A struggling plant doesn’t just show in KPIs—it shows on the faces of exhausted workers carrying stress from the floor into their homes.

[03:47] KPIs Don’t Hug Back: You can chase metrics all day, but when leadership cuts corners and burns people out, it’s the frontline workers and their families who pay the price.

[05:31] Tough, Not Toxic: You don’t have to choose between high standards and human decency—real leadership means setting clear expectations, holding people accountable, and still showing empathy without being a pushover.

[08:35] Leadership’s Real Impact: The authority to control someone’s livelihood is heavy—and leaders who ignore that impact risk breaking more than just production flow.

[11:36] Culture Has Consequences: From Gen Z walkouts to early retirements, toxic work cultures are driving talent out; and leaders who resist change may find themselves out, too.

[15:08] Make the Mission Matter: Clear goals don’t just drive results, they build emotional connection, rally teams, and turn the daily grind into shared purpose.

[20:38] Accountability or a Promise? Reframing accountability as a promise makes it personal—and a simple Post-it system turns that promise into action teams can see, feel, and follow through.

[26:33] We Can’t Ship Effort: “I’ll try my best” doesn’t work in high-performance teams. Jan shares a lesson that stuck with her: you can’t deliver effort, only real commitments.

[33:42] Forget Being Right: Tariff chaos, political curveballs, and global disruptions—Jay Butler says the real leadership edge isn’t in being right every time, it’s in staying flexible.

[37:37] Tariff War Room: When uncertainty hits, you need more than spreadsheets; you need a team, a strategy, and strong leadership ready to make long-term moves before it’s too late.

Top Quotes:

[10:23] Jay: “I’ve run into older team members on the floor who are raising a grandchild, and they talk about having to balance it between grandfather and grandmother—about who's going to be home when, and all this other stuff. And I'm like, if they just had some more time off, that stress would go away. And maybe some leaders say, "Well, that's not really my responsibility." But I would challenge that, because it is your responsibility. I mean, granted, you can't be involved in everything going on in somebody's life, but you certainly don't want to create an environment at work that's going to negatively impact that home life.”

[13:05] Jay: “Factory work is not easy under the best of circumstances, but it shouldn't be a place where people feel like every day is an uphill battle, where they've worked so much overtime that they're just tired, right? They just want to get through the day. It should be a place where a team comes together with a goal or objective and can celebrate those victories. And when things aren't going quite the way we want them, the team can pull together and get it done and make it happen. And leadership, the way leaders handle those kinds of situations can have a huge impact on people's morale.”

[17:31] Jay: “Sometimes clients question us about the simplicity of what we do. But we talk about one thing we always say: win the hour, win the day. And we're talking about the KPIs, whether output or scrap, uptime, or whatever it might be. Win that hour, we'll win the day. If we win the day, we'll win the week. And if we win the week, we'll win the month. And if you win the month, you'll win the year. And so, we really focus on that hour, and we do very simple things when we go in. It's not rocket science. People ask us what makes the difference. It's definitely not the processes; it's not the lean manufacturing. Everybody talks about lean. It's our people, it's our team. It's the willingness to hold each other accountable.

[32:49] Jay: “You’re supposed to set the example. Now I'm not talking about being perfect, right? But definitely setting the example and the expectation. Being able to be held accountable by subordinates, from people who follow you as a leader, and not be like, "Oh, I'm the plant manager. I'll do whatever I want." I think all those things play into this burden, this responsibility that the leader has to hold himself or herself accountable, the organization accountable, and provide an environment where people are respected, and that their not only their physical safety is taken care of, but also their mental safety, that whole work-life balance, so that they can go home at the end of the day and be happy about the place that they just spent eight or 10 hours at.”

[36:26] Jay: “I’ve talked with some OEM leaders and OEMs about what their plans are in terms of how to manage the tariff impact. There, one of the messages I heard from one was, "We just want our suppliers to communicate with us." We'll figure out how to manage the tariff burden—and how to hopefully share it in some cases. I know some have been like, "The supplier just has to eat it all." That's not really a reasonable expectation. You just have to be ready and flexible and know that your plans are probably going to change.”