Oh My Gosh, This Is Incredible!

Not all leadership communication emanates from stages.

“Oh my gosh, this is incredible!” GM CEO Mary Barra exclaims as she climbs into the backseat of an autonomous vehicle for the first time, in a company-produced video last week and published on CNBC.

“I always believed we’d be doing it,” she says as the car pulls away, “but to actually be doing it—it’s just surreal.”

Mid-ride, she tells her co-passenger Kyle Vogt, founder and interim CEO of GM’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary Cruise: “You know, a lot of people have asked me, ‘Well, how are you going to get people to use it?’ Well it’s like, okay, we were in the vehicle for five minutes, and the trust is there. I really think that the apprehension that some people think they have is going to dissipate extremely quickly when they get the experience.”

Barra says, “It’s too bad we have to wear masks, though, ‘cause I can’t stop smiling.”