I enjoy challenging a person's ideas. No one loves a good and passionately fought argument more than I do. This isn't about being tough-minded and straightforward. That's the job. But so is sensing when to hug and when to kick. Of course, arrogant people who refuse to learn from their mistakes have to go. If we're managing good people who are clearly eating themselves up over an error, our job is to help them through it. That doesn't mean you have to take it easy on your top performers.

The best way to support dreams and stretch is to set apart small ideas with big potential, then give people positive role models and the resources to turn smal…

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, a…

In GE every day, there's an informal, unspoken personnel review-in the lunchroom, the hallways, and in every business meeting. That intense people focus-testin…

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

When you're dealing with someone who only has a pair of underpants on, if you take his underpants off, he has nothing left - he's naked. You're better off tryi…

Executives who get there and stay suggest solutions when they present the problems.