Jack Welch and Transformational Leadership Essay

Transformational Leadership empowers or enables its followers. The leader engages with the follower in a way that both the leader and follower transcend to a higher level of motivation and morality (Nicholls, 1994).

These types of leaders, according to Avolio (1991) possess the characteristics of individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and idealized influence. This paper will examine the outcomes that are a direct result of transformational leaders who exhibit these types of traits such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, job stress, safety, supervisor satisfaction, team, performance, and general.

Analyzing GE’s corporate-level strategy from 2001 – present with Jeff Immelt as CEO, GE focuses on the growth and development platforms. Technology is the key driving force for GE’s future and growth. Advancements in industries such as energy, health and aviation fueled demand for cleaner and more efficient energy production. GE identified new markets with potential high-growth that offered attractive returns through strategic mergers and acquisitions. As CEO, Jeff Immelt established a process for identifying projects that offered attractive growth potential which were then nurtured and treated as special projects or initiatives that were not subject to strict budget constraints. Immelt introduced GE’s three strategic imperatives as: (1) sustaining its strong business model, (2) strengthening the business portfolio, and (3) driving its growth initiatives. www.ge.com

The transformational leader needs to direct people towards where they want to go and where they need to be in order to achieve the vision (Luzinski, 2011, p. 501). According to Luzinski (2011), success occurs when followers and leaders learn from each other, coming to a common understanding and establishing shared values, not because followers dutifully agree to listen (p. 502). Successful transformational leadership has four components: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration.

Did GE in the Welch era fulfill its social responsibility duty? Could it have done better? What should it have done?

Transformational leaders express a clear vision, inspire others and work together with their team to identify common values and goals (Marquis and Huston 2009). They also recognise followers’ potential, assist them to develop their strengths and identify individual differences (Bass 2008).

Transformational leadership are classified into four components which are pointed out by Bass (1990, p. 28), ‘charisma, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration’. Apart from these basic roles, charisma leadership, a collection of personal characteristics, has its own role of literature since it has similarity with transformational leadership and they are contribution to each other (Bertocci, 2009, p. 43; Judge & Piccolo, 2004, p. 755). Leaders’ behaviour reflects them being role models for their followers. Followers respect, admire and trust their leaders who have charismatic effect on their followers to an extremely high grade are willing to take risks

Transformational Leadership can play a role in creating a successful team. It can also be the process that changes and transforms people dealing with emotions, values, ethics, and standards. Transformational Leadership is the process whereby a person engages others and creates a connection that raises the level of motivation and morality in both the leader and the follower (Northhouse , 186). This applies to a team because you always have to be able to connect and motivate others

When I think about the type of leader I would like to be, there is one supervisor that always comes to mind because of the positive environment she cultivated. In researching the different leadership styles for this assignment, I believe that this is the style that she used with her staff. I was interested in learning more about transformational leadership and how I can cultivate this style in the way that I lead my current team as well as the way in which I lead future teams.

This report’s objective is to provide analysis of the leadership challenge that General Electric (GE) is currently facing, and to recommend solutions. The primary problem is determining what kind of candidate is required to replace retiring CEO Jack Welch. This has left GE to question how much does the company want to change policy over the previous era, and where does the company want to be in future?

General Electric is a well-known company in many regions of the world, but what people aren’t particularly aware of are the steps that General Electric has taken to get to where it is at today. When I think of General Electric the first thing that comes to mind is the role that the company plays in the production of household appliances, but General Electric is a much bigger contributor to people’s lives than is most people realize. People aren’t familiar with the internal business decisions that General Electric makes to ensure that the company continues to grow and run as smoothly as possible, allowing the company to continue to provide people with the services that they have grown to recognize as being a trademark of General Electric.

They can well support GE’s development at every specific period. After Welch took the lead, his mission priority was to restructure GE, and he needed to push many radical ideas through the whole company. If the whole structure was still as bureaucratic as before, he cannot move one step. So Welch began to slim the whole organization and finally eliminated sector level. With the new structure, the whole company can move lightly and easily.

     When Jack Welch was named CEO of General Electric, Welch saw a company in trouble even though the business world saw GE as an intrinsically healthy corporation, secure in its position as a world industrial leader. Welch knew that the company was too large to fail yet GE was too unwieldy to adapt for further growth. The changes he instituted restructured and revolutionized GE and made Welch the most respected CEO in business today. After reading the book there were three parts that really stood out for me.

Within this new business environment that GE was facing, customers needs, wants and expectations of what products can offer them is forever changing. Immelt saw and understood this from the amount of time spent with customers, and implemented this idea within GE through the IT

Jack Welch’s vision of what GE was possible of gave the company a vision for twenty years while he was the CEO and chairman. He states, “leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.” (Winning, pg 67) He not only allowed for employees to stretch, but demanded it. In teaching workers to stretch Welch knew that workers “may fail. In fact, they probably will fail. But stretching, and stretching the business, is going to improve performance results.” (Jack Welch on Leadership, pg 105) He also states that “only by setting the performance bar high did it become possible to discover people’s capabilities.” Jack Welch’s emphasis on candor and breaking the bureaucracy of modern business separated him from his contemporaries. He excited others of the possibility of being the biggest and best company in the world and rewarding his best employees that shared the values of GE. According to FORTUNE Editorial Director Geoffrey Colvin In "The Ultimate Manager, Welch leads the annals of management history not for anticipating the new world's changes ahead, but for acting on them: "His great achievement is that having seen it, he faced up to the huge, painful changes it demanded, and made them faster and more emphatically than anyone else in business. He led managers into this new world, which we still inhabit, and just as important, he showed business