A leader's role is not to control people or stay on top of things, but rather to guide, energize and excite.
Interpretation
A leader should motivate and inspire rather than merely manage and command.
In this quote, Jack Welch emphasizes that effective leadership is about empowering and motivating others rather than exerting control or authority. A true leader inspires their team by providing guidance and creating an environment that energizes and excites individuals to perform at their best. This approach fosters collaboration and innovation, leading to greater success for the entire organization.
In practice
In a team meeting to inspire cooperation and enthusiasm among colleagues.
You've got to eat while you dream. You've got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.
I wanted to change the rules of engagement, asking for more- from fewer. I was insisting that we had to have only the best people...If you wanted excellence, at a minimum, the ambience had to reflect excellence.
Control your own destiny or someone else will.
The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts.
An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.
Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance.
You cannot govern, you cannot administrate, with an ignoramus.
People and organizations don't grow much without delegation and completed staff work because they are confined to the capacities of the boss and reflect both personal strengths and weaknesses.
What Britain needs is an iron lady.
If people who have to work together in an enterprise trust one another it is because they are all operating to a common set of ethical norms....such a society will be better able to innovate...since the high degree of trust will permit a wide variety of social relationships to emerge.
I ask that all Americans demonstrate in their personal and public lives... the high ethical standards that are essential to good character and to the continued success of our Nation.
Brevity is the soul of command. Too much talking suggests desperation on the part of the leader. Speak shortly, decisively and to the pointβand couch your desires in such natural logic that no one can raise objections. Then move on.
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