The Power of Candor-Jack Welch

One of my favorite days of the year is the first Friday of May. For nearly 15 years this has been the date for one of my favorite leadership training events, Leadercast. Each year I come away inspired with a notebook full of new insights to help me grow and successfully overcome the challenges that leaders face.

Make sure you take part in this event! Join leaders from all around the globe May 4, 2018. You will learn at the feet of leaders who are known around the world for their accomplishments and leadership abilities.

Be a part of an extraordinary event that will make you an even better leader. Leadercast Live is the largest, one-day leadership event on the planet, with more than 100,000 current visionaries and future world-changers attending each year.

This year, attendees will gather at more than 700 locations in 20 countries to be inspired to develop their leadership skills and master the fine art of achieving great things.

This one-of-a-kind event will be broadcast live from Atlanta and simulcast into communities across the globe. For me details and to register check out their site: Leadercast

In the coming days I will share some of my favorite notes from past events. Here is a sample from Jack Welch’s 2013 interview.

Former Chairman & CEO of General Electric

Dr. Henry Cloud interviews Jack Welch

Quotes from this interview:

At all times give them all you got.
Don’t dabble
Don’t lose your focus

How did you come to be the master of Necessary Endings during your career at GE?

Jack stated that you ask yourself the question: If you weren’t already in this business would you get in it today?

They drew 3 circles of the businesses they wanted to be in. Then told his team to Fix, sell or close any business outside these circles.
The reason people are unwilling to let go of their businesses is they want to grow their businesses. So it is counter intuitive to close it down. When you prune you get smaller and this is difficult for leader’s to do.
People always think it is a bad people thing to make these decisions, but not always the case. Many times people end up in a much better situation than they are currently in.

Example: He once sold their AC to Trane and it worked out great for the people because they ended up in a place where they were wanted and cherished. He sold the business to Trane and it helped those people grow and excel.

Dr. Cloud asked: When you found yourself in a moment of conflict, did you have to grow into this ability to handle these situations?

What I have learned is that if are you are transparent you can lead through these issues and tough times.
You have no right to be called a manager if your employees don’t know where they stand with you.
I have found many people have trouble being transparent and candid with their people.

It is cruel and unfair not to be candid with your team members.

You have no right to do these things(shut down businesses, fire people etc.,) if you have not been upfront and candid with your people.
You need to focus on the Personal Connection:

I love hanging around with people, if you don’t love people this jobs stinks.

Great Leaders Have The Generosity Gene: you will find it in every great leader. These leaders love to give raises, promotions , accolades etc.,

You have to implement the 3 Ss

1. Self-confidence: It is imperative that you build this into your team members. You have to get this in your team member’s veins.

2. Simplicity –once they have self-confidence you get simplicity, clarity, focus. Only self-confident people operate with simplicity.

3. Speed-if you get speed you win the game. If you build self-confidence and keep it simple then you have speed.

If you hire self-confident people they will hire self-confident people and this will fuel your team to act with speed
Coaching/Teaching: Jack spent 70% of his time teaching. You have to build up your team. Develop them into the best team. The organization with the best team wins.
Use teachable moments to get the people in your organization performing the behaviors you want them to perform.
Many don’t see themselves as having time to teach, they have to run the business, but Jack sees this as key to success.
If you don’t have a great team working with great people then you won’t be successful.

3 Key Questions to Ask To Lead Successfully

Where?
Why?
How?
The Where & Why= Mission & Vision
How= Behaviors
How are the behaviors, what you want your people to do to get to the mission
I hate bureaucracy and the bureaucrats that practice it.

Don’t forget this about change: What’s in it for them? What will it mean to them?

Budget Review is really a personnel review with numbers.
You don’t want to see the charts & numbers, you want to see the people, you need to see what makes them tick, what’s their vision for the future.
4 Categories of Performance that measure the Behaviors & Results

The 4 quadrants:

Quadrant 1: right behaviors & values/poor performance, you give them another chance
Quadrant 2: great results but wrong behaviors: This is the jerk in the organization delivering results but with all the wrong behaviors. These guys get kept despite their bad behaviors in many organizations. This is poison to the organizations that keep these jerks. It totally undermines all the values and behaviors you say that you truly believe in.
Quadrant 3: Poor Performance & Poor Behaviors=easy decision to get rid of these people
Quadrant 4: Great Results & Great Behaviors, do all you can to keep these people, they are the leaders and drivers of your organization, the future of the company.

Every personnel move one by one with determine how successful you are.

When you say something is important you put your best person on it, back up your speeches with your personnel actions. If don’t do this your people won’t believe your stated priorities. Every time you make a speech can you back it up with the right people in charge of those areas. Your actions speak louder than your words.
When you find someone on your team with your values do all you can to keep them around.

Dr. Henry Cloud ask: Tell us about fear? When would you experience fear?

Jack states that you must have Healthy Paranoia, skepticism and fear, but in the end you have to go for it! You can’t let fear stop you from moving forward.
Always remember that you are never as good or as bad as they say you are.
You must realize you will fail along the way and build that in to the equation. You must have the resiliency to get back up on the horse once you get knocked off.
You must have healthy skepticism.
Make your organization a place where people want to be.
Create an organization where you have self-confident people who love being there but are willing to leave. This is a healthy place to be. Good to have this tension in organization.
I often told people: Be happy to be here but be ready to leave. I wanted our managers to take care of our people and in most cases they would. I wanted them to feel that pressure and tension to deliver this expectation.
You have gotta love what you are doing.
You must over deliver for your boss: when your boss ask you to do something they already have something in mind, but you need to exceed that expectation, to teach them something they don’t already know. You need work to make your boss smarter.
Create a whole new education for the boss, show them something they didn’t know or think about yet.

If you make your boss smarter, then You become indispensable!

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