The ideal leader has over a dozen of Welch’s key traits, including: integrity, acumen, a global mind-set, a customer focus, embraces change, confidence, good communicator, team builder, energizes others, has infectious enthusiasm, delivers results and has fun doing it.Welch prefers the term leader to manager because he has always associated the word “manager” with all the things that he had tried to eliminate from GE, such as controlling and ruling by intimidation (see also Four E’s of Leadership).

 

Welch has a very specific vision of the ideal leader. Unlike the“command and control style” of autocratic leadership,Welch’s leadership ideal encompasses a wide range of qualities closely associated with a learning organization. Early on,Welch looked for customer-focused leaders who had “head,” “heart,” and “guts.” Later he spoke of a leader’s ability to embrace change, think globally, and deliver results. He also articulated ideal leaders as those who had the “Four E’s”: Energy (actionoriented), Energizer (can excite others), Edge (competitive types who moved quickly), and Execution (delivered in the form of results).

Thanks to GE’s ability to nurture managerial talent, the company became a “farm club” for executives. Over the years, many ofWelch’s key managers became CEOs of other Fortune 500 companies. Examples include Larry Bossidy, who became head of AlliedSignal, Robert Nardelli, who became CEO of The Home Depot, and James McNerney, who took the top spot at 3M. (Nardelli and McNerney left GE within weeks of learning that they would not succeed Welch as GE CEO.)

Welch said that one of the more difficult decisions was to fire Type C’s, those managers who made their numbers but did not subscribe to the company’s values.

 

2. Look for leaders who harness the power of change: Welch embraced change, never afraid of staring reality in the face. Look for leaders who will see things as they are, those unafraid of making the really difficult decisions.

3. Look for the “Four E’s”: Welch sought out managers who were strong on all four traits.

4. Search out confident managers: Welch believed that “instilling confidence” was one of his key tasks.He also felt that genuine confidence was a rare trait, and a quality he sought out in GE managers.

5. Look for managers who put customers first: Customers and customer focus became a more prominent part of the company’s values. In the most recent version of GE’s values (the version in place in Welch’s final year at GE), one-third of the statements involved the customer (see Values).

 

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