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.
The prevailing - and foolish - attitude is that a good manager can be a good manager anywhere, with no special knowledge of the production process he's managing. A man with a financial background may know nothing about manufacturing shoes or cars, but he's put in charge anyway.
Having more women in company boards, in senior management, supervisory positions and workers in the formal sector is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. It's good for the bottom line.
After years of telling corporate citizens to 'trust the system,' many companies must relearn instead to trust their people - and encourage their people to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power.
The first lady is, and always has been, an unpaid public servant elected by one person, her husband.
There's no other job in public life that is like chairman of the Fed.
Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.
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