Leo Reynolds

They should display Jack Welch’s words on the side of a building in brilliant General Electric bulbs:

“I don’t run GE,” he said, “I lead GE.”

And so he did. Love ‘em or not, Welch led GE through a period of extraordinary performance. Was it a perfect run? Of course not. His tenure was marked by great risks and magnificent blunders that reaped great financial rewards and created a powerful learning organization.

Welch identified his ingredients for success in an October 2001 talk at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. They are, he said, “four E’s wrapped in a P.”

Energy — For Welch, energy means, “…going like a house afire.”

Energizing — Leaders “Energize people to take a chance so they succeed and build self-confidence.”

Edge — Edge means “…the ability to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and not maybe.”

Execute — one word: “deliver.”

Success is four E’s wrapped in a P and that P stands for Passion — “Caring more than the next person…” Welch said, “…passion for what you’re doing. It’s all that stuff in you that goes for it and you give everything you’ve got to make it happen.”

These, Welch told his B School audience, are marks of leadership, as distinct from, say, management.

This is not a shot at managers. It’s just no good confusing one with the other. Managing is about stewardship, control, planning, organizing, solving problems…all good stuff.

But it’s not leadership. Leading is about clear vision, aligning people, culture and communication with your company’s mission.

Leaders motivate and inspire and engage people to achieve significant goals together. Managers manage.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, there’s something quite right about good management. We don’t have any real data to support this but we’d wager it’s easier to turn a great manager into a leader than the other way round. Leadership is played out in what a person does for the company—leadership is not conferred through a job description and certainly not by a title.

In your company, your division, unit, department or team, which function do you perform—management or leadership?

You don’t have to guess. The answer is not hidden deep in your soul; it’s written on the soles of your shoes. Here’s Fredrick Beuchner on the subject of self-examination:

Introspection in the long run doesn’t get you very far because every time you draw back to look at yourself, you are seeing everything except for the part that drew back, and when you draw back to look at the part that drew back to look at yourself, you see again everything except for what you are really looking for. And so on. Since the possibilities for drawing back seem to be infinite, you are, in your quest to see yourself whole, doomed always to see infinitely less than what there will always remain to see. Thus, when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.
— Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace, Harper & Row, 1970, page 24-25

OK…So where do your feet take you? How do you spend your time on the job? Get your hands dirty: Download the printable worksheet.