Jack Welch wrote an editorial that appeared in today’s WSJ. He talked about the important characteristics of leadership and applied them to the Democratic presidential candidates. Barry at The Big Picture has already written a great summary of the article and pulled out the interesting material on leadership.
I spent seven years working for GE. I joined the company right out of college and spent the first two years in one of their leadership training programs. I spent multiple weeks at the corporate training center in New York listening to Havard business professors and GE executives. I spent a year in classes at the work site talking about everything from hiring to team building to performance assessment. I was also put into situations early on that tested those skills. The classes continued with my progression up the management chain.
GE is very committed to building leaders and they are very good at it. Its hard to argue the success of GE leaders inside and outside the company.