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?General Motors is traveling toward transformational change, and Tamberlin \u201cTammy\u201d Golden is helping the 115-year-old company get there.<\/p>\n
In 2020, amid heightened attention in the U.S. to police officers killing Black people, GM\u2019s chair and CEO, Mary Barra, announced that she wanted GM to become \u201cthe most inclusive company in the world.\u201d The following year, the company created Golden\u2019s role: executive director of workforce strategy in the office of diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I).<\/p>\n
With a lean team of about half a dozen professionals, Golden is working to expand GM\u2019s talent pool so that its workforce is more diverse and inclusive. \u201cOur mission is to weave DE&I into the fabric of our organization,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
Shifting Gears<\/p>\n
By broadening GM\u2019s talent pool, Golden is also helping the organization realize another strategic shift\u2014a move away from internal combustion engines to all-electric vehicles. GM plans to build 1 million electric vehicles by 2025 and to stop making gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. \u201cThat\u2019s exciting for our teams to launch,\u201d Golden says. \u201cIt\u2019s probably the most significant program of their careers.\u201d<\/p>\n
She and her team are helping GM attract, engage and retain talented people from broader backgrounds and experiences to contribute to the company\u2019s electric future. The company takes a skills-first approach to writing job descriptions and hiring candidates. That helps create career pathways for people who historically have been underrepresented in business, such as applicants without traditional four-year degrees. Under Golden\u2019s leadership, GM has removed its college-degree requirement for front-line leaders in manufacturing and created scholarships for women and people of color in the Detroit area to help them become software developers.<\/p>\n
STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) professionals, of course, will be vital to GM\u2019s future, as will innovative thinkers, Golden says. But the company also will need people leaders who can support their teams during the transformation. That\u2019s why Golden launched inclusive-leadership coaching for all of GM\u2019s people managers globally. During two and a half hours of coaching, followed by small-group sessions, leaders take \u201ca self-reflective walk,\u201d Golden says, to learn effective ways to collaborate, build trust and be more inclusive. (Of the eight employee behaviors GM uses during salaried employees\u2019 evaluations to help determine promotions and pay increases, the most recent addition is \u201cbe inclusive.\u201d)<\/p>\n
By the end of September 2022, about one-fifth of GM\u2019s people managers had taken part in the training, which ultimately will be extended to all 12,000 of its people leaders worldwide. Survey feedback from participants so far has been overwhelmingly favorable.<\/p>\n
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Gaining Experience<\/p>\n
Despite her focus on people in her current position, Golden has spent the bulk of her career at GM not in HR but in leadership roles in manufacturing. When she joined the company in 1985, she was a student at Cass Technical High School in Detroit and began a work-study program with GM\u2019s labor relations department. \u201cThat\u2019s where I first acquired my passion for HR,\u201d she says. Golden continued to work with GM through another work-study program while attending Wayne State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration.<\/p>\n
For her first position at GM after college, Golden worked as a labor representative. When she accepted a professional development opportunity to gain experience in manufacturing, she planned to return to HR. But Golden found she also had a passion for working in the company\u2019s plants. \u201cI chose to stay with manufacturing because I enjoyed its dynamic nature and challenges. I also loved working with the people\u2014my HR experience prepared me to take on manufacturing,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not a degreed engineer, but I thoroughly enjoyed assisting engineering teams in getting vehicles to production and to customers. It\u2019s exciting work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Golden ascended the manufacturing ranks, gaining a deep understanding of the business along the way. Most recently, she served as plant director for GM\u2019s Flint Engine Operations, which produces engines for multiple vehicles, in Flint, Mich.<\/p>\n
Supporting People<\/p>\n
Golden\u2019s current role, which she assumed in May 2021, takes her career back to where it began\u2014in HR. Yet she doesn\u2019t see it as a radical change. While her professional life has been spent mostly in manufacturing plants, it has been \u201cdeeply rooted in the people experience,\u201d she says. \u201cI enjoy having a positive impact on people, whether it\u2019s in HR or manufacturing.\u201d She points to her involvement with two employee resource groups\u2014as the lead of the GM African Ancestry Network and as a member of the leadership board of GM Women in Manufacturing.<\/p>\n
When Golden looks back over her career, it\u2019s her impact on people that gives her the greatest sense of accomplishment, she says. \u201cI\u2019m proud that I\u2019ve led teams to achieve what sometimes feels impossible.\u201d <\/p>\n
Golden recalls one particular experience that occurred as GM filed for bankruptcy in 2009. As general assembly area manager for GM\u2019s facility in Lansing, Mich., she helped her plant go from three shifts to one and then back again to three, while also bringing a new car model online\u2014all in two and a half years. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople always asked how I could get that done while we were staring at this bankruptcy crisis,\u201d Golden says. \u201cOne thing I always do is put my teams first and make sure we keep our priorities in order.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Golden, that means giving her people the time and support they need to attend to their personal lives. That \u201censures everybody can bring their best self to work,\u201d she says. \u201cTo get the best work done inside the workplace, you have to consider that people have lives outside the workplace. You have to create that integration.\u201d As a leader, Golden always aims to integrate the needs of the business with the needs of her people\u2014but she admits that\u2019s also one of the biggest professional challenges she encounters.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Golden experienced a moment that confirmed she had helped at least one employee in this regard. She was speaking about work\/life integration at a GM Women in Manufacturing event when someone in the audience raised her hand and told the group that she used to work for Golden. She described the first time she heard Golden speak about wanting her team to prioritize both work and life. She said Golden then asked the team to hold her accountable for that.<\/p>\n
Golden says, \u201cShe was like, \u2018Yeah, right, everybody says that, but when it comes to doing it, will she?\u2019 \u201d Then, Golden says, the audience member explained how she experienced family-related difficulties. She said Golden, without judgment, allowed her to work flexibly so she could take care of her family while continuing to contribute to the company\u2014long before flexible or remote work became commonplace. \u201cShe said she was a believer after that,\u201d Golden says.<\/p>\n
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Keeping Family in Mind<\/p>\n
As a wife of 32 years, a mother of two and a grandmother of one, Golden says she tries to model the happy union of work life and personal life that she wants her people to enjoy. \u201cEverything I do, I do with my family in mind,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Justin Foust was first impressed by Golden\u2019s attention to work\/life integration in late 2020, when he began working with her at the Flint facility. During his first six weeks on the job, Foust commuted back and forth between Ohio, where his wife and two daughters still lived, and his new job in Michigan. \u201cTammy not only took a genuine interest in me professionally but also showed genuine concern about how I was doing four hours away from my family,\u201d says Foust, a global supply manager at GM. <\/p>\n
Golden also models inclusive leadership in her interactions with her own team members. The more that people can \u201cshare themselves and live out loud,\u201d she says, the more they grow together as a team. As the newbie, Foust recalls not saying much during his first meetings with Golden\u2019s group. \u201cShe looked directly at me and said, \u2018Justin, what are your thoughts?\u2019 \u201d says Foust, who describes Golden as \u201cone of the best leaders I\u2019ve had in my 13 years at GM.\u201d<\/p>\n
Growing up in a single-parent home in Detroit, Golden watched her own mother continually try to juggle work with life. Golden\u2019s mother raised her and her two younger siblings while working and also attending school to become a registered nurse, eventually earning a master\u2019s degree in nursing. \u201cThat motivated me as I thought about the things I would do, and it shaped how I see people,\u201d Golden says.<\/p>\n
The example set by her mother\u2014whom Golden considers one of her greatest sources of professional inspiration\u2014continues to inform Golden\u2019s vision for a more diverse, inclusive work culture. \u201cIt\u2019s important we don\u2019t place labels on people or judge them, because everybody\u2019s road is not paved the same,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
More than five years ago, TaiJaune Robinson, business manager for GM\u2019s motorsports division, sought out Golden as a mentor after hearing her speak at a GM Women in Manufacturing event. Robinson recounts a time when, as lead of a manufacturing plant\u2019s resolution team, she learned that a certain production procedure was not being followed. Robinson felt frustrated that the problem wasn\u2019t getting resolved and didn\u2019t know how to fix the issue without stepping on toes. Golden helped Robinson understand how she could approach the leadership team not just with the problem but also with potential solutions. <\/p>\n
\u201cTammy is the type of person who will challenge you to do your best,\u201d Robinson says, \u201cespecially when she sees more than you may see in yourself.\u201d <\/p>\n
Novid Parsi is a freelance writer based in St. Louis.<\/em><\/p>\n Photographs by Jeffrey Sauger for <\/i>HR Magazine.<\/i><\/p>\n