Even good leaders need good leaders — and that also holds for Leading Women.

I had the opportunity to interview two top female auto executives for our online 2021 Leading Women event, which airs this week, Nov. 1-3: Chris Feuell, CEO of the Chrysler brand, and Olabisi Boyle, vice president of product planning and mobility strategy at Hyundai Motor North America.

Both switched companies during the pandemic and both returned to the auto industry — where they had started their careers before venturing out.

But another thing that struck me was the approaches of the CEOs who brought them back into autos.

White men in leadership positions — or striving to reach them — are often intimidated or put off by diversity efforts, perhaps fearing a loss of opportunity or being treated as “the enemy.” But dudes looking for role models on the issue can take a page or two from Jose Muñoz and Carlos Tavares.

Yes, they have names that sound to American ears like members of minority groups. But Muñoz is from Spain, Tavares from Portugal: They were born into the established, dominant male group in their respective Iberian nations.

Muñoz is global COO for Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co. and CEO of Hyundai Motor North America. It’s in that latter role where the expat has put together a leadership team that reflects America’s rich diversity.

“He has a female chief marketing officer. He has a chief communication officer who’s an African American female. He has me that leads product and mobility,” Boyle said. “He has Claudia Marquez, who’s the [COO] of Genesis. His EVP of sales is an African American male, Randy Parker.”

She said Muñoz’s commitment to diversity — and to business results — drew her back to the auto industry.

“I worked … at Visa, Fiat Chrysler, at Ford, IBM and I had never seen that, right? And we are a dynamic team,” she said. “He holds us to account and has very high standards for what we have to do.”

At Stellantis, led since its creation in January by Tavares, the leadership team is mostly white and mostly male, but there is a lot of diversity among nationalities. Among the most important elements to Feuell was that several women had profit and loss responsibility within the company.

“He has six women on his leadership team, four of whom lead P&Ls,” she said. “And I think that’s pretty significant.”

Also important, she said, is how he handles his team: “He’s a fierce competitor; he’s very clear on the goals and objectives for the business. But he’s one of the most humble leaders I’ve ever worked with. And he’s so respectful in the way that he leads the team managers meetings and respects the feedback of everyone before he weighs in,” she said.

To ensure that progress on diversity continues, Boyle and Feuell stressed not only recruiting women and members of minority groups, but also ensuring that those starting their careers have enough support and opportunity so they can move up and continue to be ready for ever bigger roles.

Women who aspire to senior management need “to secure roles and succeed in roles in which you’ve managed a budget, in which you’ve led a sizable team, in which you’ve led a profit and loss part of the business,” Feuell said. Those “are all really important experiences to have in order to set you up for those future roles.

“I’m often asked as a female leader in the business, how do I support other women in the business? And it’s really down to building that pipeline so that we can promote internally.”

Keeping that pipeline flowing is the responsibility of all leaders, Boyle said.

“We have to take it on ourselves as senior leaders — the accountability for understanding the real struggles that underrepresented minorities feel in a majority-centered space and take it upon ourselves to reach out, to make them feel included, to be their champion when their voice is discussed in a meeting, to be their champion behind the scenes when we’re deciding who’s going to get the next promotion or the next leadership opportunity or the next opportunity to speak in front of leaders. We want to make sure that everybody’s getting that equal chance.”

The obvious business benefits of diversity are having a bigger pool of potential hires for key roles and a broader range of perspectives on how to solve problems.

These women — and their CEOs — illustrate yet again the value to be uncovered in valuing all people.