SOULBASE Talk:

Luciana Silvares

Brand Style at Mazda Motor Europe on Modern Leadership , Motherhood and Trends in Automobile Industry

For quite a long time, society mistook authoritarianism for authority. But, in fact, these are opposing concepts. A person that needs to exercise authoritarianism to prove his or her position is in constant fear of not having enough authority, and this individual needs constantly to count on external validation to confirm his or her position of authority. On the other hand, a person that embodies authority gets validation from within, through their character, knowledge, expertise and skills, and doesn’t have the need to exercise authoritarianism.

That is basically the difference between a leader and a boss. It is a little bit cliché, but it is true that “a leader can be a boss, but not every boss is a leader.”

When we talk with leading women in the tech or automobile industry, we are always curious if the assumption is true that these industries have less female leadership than other industries or if this is a misconception. Can you share with us your experience?

I think there is a common misbelief that women are less interested in cars and tech. This is absolutely misleading and doesn’t help the women that are working in these industries.

For example, at home I am the network administrator, because I am far more interested in tech than my husband. Nevertheless, if I have a network problem and need to call the service hotlines, mostly I am confronted with very basic questions (“Did you try to restart the computer?” “Did you check if the network cable is connected?”) that I assume wouldn’t happen if I wasn't a woman. After some minutes, the attendant realizes that I know about the matter, and the whole conversation changes. 😉😉 This also happens in my daily life unfortunately.

And even though I have been working for more than 20 years in the car industry, sometimes I have to hear, “We need to find someone that understands more about cars,” or, “If there is any non-car or fashion feedback needed, we will contact you.” But things are changing, and some women do succeed as leaders in the car industry.

I think awareness of this does help a lot. And currently more and more women are speaking up and pointing out that this needs to be changed. Misogyny and sexism is a fact in our societies, and the only way to change it is to speak openly about it and teach the younger generations not to move forward with these behaviors. I do my part by speaking up, reading a lot about it and trying to show my two sons that feminism and gender equality is also good for them.

There is a little nice book that I use as my personal primer for feminism called “We Should All Be Feminists” by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Sometimes at home, because we live in a quite liberal context, my kids tend not to understand why we still need to talk about it. And the book makes it really clear and visible why it is still so important to talk about it.

You are a Lead Designer at Mazda Motor Europe. Can you share with us where you are based and what your job involves?

I am based in Stuttgart, Germany, but my job is in Oberursel, near Frankfurt. I work in Brand Style now, which is the group inside the design department that advocates for the brand and its core values and turns it into tangible (and intangible) aspects. Basically, we support all the departments and the markets to consistently represent the brand to the customer the way our company/brand would like to be perceived. Brand Style gives voice to the brand.

You have worked for Mazda for many years. Did your career focus shift over time and what have been the biggest challenges?

My career focus changed many times over the years, partly because of my personal life. I started as a CMF designer for advanced design concepts and my work was to create future material concepts for our interiors and exteriors. These were mostly internal projects that I presented in our headquarters in Japan. Later our studio was involved in many showcar developments where we could showcase our ideas in a whole product, a concept car, in the motor shows. So, I worked together with our team in Hakaze, Kiyora, Showcar:

MX-5 Superlight amongst other concept cars.

Due to private reasons, I had to move from Frankfurt to Stuttgart, and since our kids were so small at that time, I decided to take a year off in order to organize our new life in a new city. When I returned to Mazda I continued working with CMF, but I was more involved in Brand Style themes such as the Mazda Design Space during the Milan Design Week in 2015. And in 2017, I started to work 100% for the Brand Style group.

There is no place for vanity if you think this way. Once you understand that “to build a strong team you must see someone else’s strength as a complement to your weakness and not a threat to your position or authority,” you can lead a team in a peaceful way and can create a work environment where everyone is able to communicate his/her needs and wants and, consequently, thrive.

How do you feel about the word “design” and what misconceptions do people have about it in society? What does a well designed product mean to you?

The biggest mistake regarding our profession may be thinking that anyone who is halfway artistically gifted already has enough qualifications to become a design professional. This gives our profession an aura of “destiny,” which is, in the long run, damaging our professional image.

Talent alone does not make the product. Ideas and creativity are needed, but creation is a process where concentration and passion are needed. It is not simply waiting until the ultimate idea reaches our minds and then all the work is done.

With the technology becoming almighty and customer demands becoming extremely diverse, designing products becomes even more complex, and it is crucial to develop the design work in multi-disciplinary teams.

As Don Norman, the writer who coined the term “user experience,” says: “Today to understand products, it is not enough to understand design or technology: it is critical to understand business.” We often discuss design as being a matter of taste or opinion, and it is not. A well designed product has to serve its users. It has to have an appealing aesthetic, that is for sure, but to qualify as a good product and be a successful product, it has to meet customers’ demands and emotions and allow for a good user experience.

How do you manage to make time for yourself and for your family?

I do believe it is all a matter of good organization. For instance, I never buy ready-made meals. I cook fresh every day. But I need less than a half an hour for cooking during the weekdays because I do lots of batch cooking and leave meals semi-prepared for the week. I also have a huge fridge. I get my box of organic vegetables every week. I buy a lot online and do some research on these topics. I do have help for cleaning my home — the best investment someone can have for mental health and peaceful co-living with a husband, two boys and a dog at home. And I take the time I need for sports and leisure. This is super important, and I treat it as a priority!

What defines modern leadership for you? As you lead your own team, what is important for you as a conscious leader and how would you say society differs between male and female leadership?

I think modern leadership is when the leader understands that the team he or she is leading is not composed of servants, but of individuals with their own strengths and ideas. In fact, the function of the leader is to serve the team and not the other way around.

Good leaders understand the different strengths and needs of the team members and can adapt to it in order to get better results.

I think there is no such thing as female or male leadership. I think there are good leaders and weak leaders, both male and female. I think society for quite a long time established the image of the boss as the person of authority: serious, strong and feared – similar to the idea where a father should incorporate all these attributes to be considered the strong voice at home. Luckily, these concepts are already obsolete.

Can you give a little insight into what design trends you are seeing and will see more of in the future in the automobile industry? How long does it take a design to go from an idea to being brought to life?

Currently, I see two major trends getting stronger in the automotive industry. Basically, as in almost every other field, we experience two sides of one coin: on one side is "the rise of the supercars,” as I like to call it. There the ego is underlined. It is about personal representation by means of a car. Especially in this market, many newcomers have appeared out of nowhere who have already jeopardized the established brands with a lot of tech and big investments.


On the other hand, there is the complete opposite trend.

Here sharing is the big thing – the understanding that you only have to be mobile, but do not need a car at all. A large majority of young people have no interest in even getting a driver's license, let alone buying a car. In the design department we try to address both questions and try to find solutions for both demands in the future.

Now, for the second question, it depends quite a lot on what idea we are talking about. The automobile is one of the most complex products, with several little products inside such as accessories, for instance. To develop a new floor mat, a few months are enough. Developing a unique exterior color like our Soul Red Crystal can take years of development.

You live in Stuttgart with your family and you commute multiple times per week. For those who commute on a daily basis by train, can you give us some insight on how to use the commute in a productive way? Can you give us a hint on how you used the commute to combine your MBA studies?

When I first started to commute, I wasn’t really clear how much time I would gain by sitting in the train until I would get to my destination. But soon I realized that there was plenty of time that I could use to be productive in some ways. So, I was already looking for some kind of activity to learn more and enhance my understanding of these disruptive times that we are experiencing at the moment.

When I read that I should have approximately 15 hours a week reserved for my distance learning studies at the University of Warwick, I thought, “That is exactly the time that I have whilst commuting!” And that is what I did over the first three years of commuting. I used the time in the train to do my readings and writings. Of course, it is not so easy to concentrate on the train, but over time I developed strategies and got better at it. Some of the greatest tools are the white noise podcasts or videos available online or on streaming platforms. They really helped me to focus on the train, but also at home.

You were born in Boston and grew up in Brazil. You raise your children in Germany. What similarities and what differences do you see raising kids in Germany compared with when you grew up in Brazil? How often are you able to travel to Brazil to see your family?

That is a difficult one. I think there are advantages and downsides in both countries. Contrary to what people might think, I grew up in a very urbanized context in Brazil. I grew up in Sao Paulo, a city with more than 15 million inhabitants. So, this is already a huge difference from Germany where cities tend to be smaller and controlled.

I think the freedom is different in both contexts. For example, in Germany kids start going to school alone at a very early age, around 7 years old. This is unimaginable in Sao Paulo. Due to the city size and to crime, in Brazil we tend to be overprotective with our children. On the other hand, the climate is far milder in Brazil, so even in bigger cities kids can play outside and enjoy life at the beach and in the countryside over the weekends.

I try to go to Brazil every Christmas because that is when all the family members have some time off and I get to see everyone. My kids already know that, and they love that they get two Christmases: one in Germany and one in the tropics.