Winning Leadership Lessons

Jack Welch, General Electric’s legendary and recently retired CEO, has just collaborated with his wife Suzy Welch to publish his latest book, Winning. Publishers Weekly says, "It’s difficult to think of anyone in business that wouldn’t benefit from reading this savvy, engaging cubicle-to-boardroom guide to success." Welch's objective is to speak to people at every level of the organization, in companies large and small. His audience is everyone from line workers to college students and MBAs, from project managers to senior executives. Below Welch shares eight leadership “rules” that he indicates always worked well for him in both good times and bad.

Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach and build self-confidence.  The team with the best players usually does win. And that is why, very simply, you need to invest the vast majority of your time and energy as a leader in three activities. You have to evaluate - making sure the right people are in the right jobs, supporting and advancing those who are, and moving out those who are not. You have to coach – guiding, critiquing and helping people to improve heir performance in every way. And finally, you have to build self-confidence – pouring out encouragement, caring and recognition. Self-confidence energizes, and it gives your people the courage to stretch, take risks and achieve beyond their dreams. It is the fuel of winning teams. Too often, managers think that people development occurs once a year in performance reviews. That’s not even close. It should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on.

Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it. L Leaders have to set the team’s vision and make it come alive. How do you achieve that? First of all, no jargon. Targets cannot be so blurry they can’t be hit. You have to talk about vision constantly to everyone. A common problem is that leaders communicate the vision to close colleagues and it never filters down to people in frontline positions. If you want people to live and breathe the vision, “show them the money” when they do, be it with salary, bonus or significant recognition. To quote a friend of mine, Chuck Ames, the former chairman and CEO of Reliance Electric, “Show me a company’s various compensation plans, and I’ll show you how its people behave.

Leaders get into everyone’s skin, exuding positive energy and optimism.  An upbeat manager with a positive outlook somehow ends up running a team or organization filled with … well, upbeat people with positive outlooks. A sourpuss somehow ends up with an unhappy tribe of his own. Unhappy tribes have a tough time winning. Work can be hard. But your job as leader is to fight the gravitational pull of negativism. That doesn’t mean you sugarcoat the challenges. It does mean you display an energizing, can-do attitude about overcoming them.

Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency and credit.  Your people should always know where they stand. They have to know how the business is doing. And sometimes the news is not good - such as imminent layoffs – and any normal person would rather avoid delivering it. But you have to fight the impulse to pad hard messages or you’ll pay with your team’s confidence and energy. Leaders also establish trust by giving credit where credit is due. They never score off their own people by stealing an idea and claiming it as their own. They don’t kiss up and kick down because they are self-confident and mature enough to know that their team’s success will get them recognition, and sooner rather than later. In bad times, leaders take responsibility for what’s gone wrong. In good times, they generously pass around the praise.

Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls.  There are times you have to make hard decisions – let people go, cut funding to a project, or close a plant. Obviously, tough calls spawn complaints and resistance. Your job is to listen and explain yourself clearly but move forward. You are not a leader to win a popularity contest- you are a leader to lead. Don’t run for office. You’re already elected. Sometimes making a decision is hard not because it’s unpopular, but because it comes from your gut and defies a “technical” rationale. Sometimes the hardest gut calls involve picking people. You meet a candidate who has all the right stuff.  But something nags at you, and you’re left with that uh-oh feeling. Don’t hire the guy.

Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure their questions are answered with action.  When you are an individual contributor, you try to have all the answers. When you are a leader, your job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room. Every conversation you have about a decision, a proposal, or a piece of market information has to be filled with you saying, “What if?” and “Why not?” and “How come?” Questioning, however, is never enough. You have to make sure your questions unleash debate and raise issues that get action.

Leaders inspire risk taking and learning by setting the example.  These two concepts often get lip service – and little else. Too many managers urge their people to try new things and then whack them in the head when they fail. And too many live in a not-invented-here world of their own making. If you want your people to experiment, set the example yourself. Consider risk taking. You don’t need to be preachy or somber about your errors. In fact the more humorous and lighthearted you can be the more people will get the message that mistakes aren’t fatal. As for learning – again, live it yourself. Just because you’re the boss doesn’t mean you’re the source of all knowledge. 

Leaders celebrate.  Why does celebrating make managers nervous? Maybe throwing a party doesn’t seem professional or it makes managers worry that they won’t look serious to the powers that be, or that, if things get too happy at the office, people will stop working their tails off. There is just not enough celebrating going on at work – anywhere. I harped on the importance of celebrating for 20 years. But during my last trip as CEO to our training center I asked the 100 or so managers in the class, “Do you celebrate enough in your units?” Even knowing what I wanted them to say, less than half answered yes. What a lost opportunity. Celebrating creates an atmosphere of recognition and positive energy. Imagine a team winning the World Series without champagne spraying everywhere. And yet companies win all the time and let it go without as much as a high five. Work is too much a part of life not to recognize moments of achievement. Make a big deal out of them. If you don’t, no one will.