Name: Why Everybody Started Hating GE's Jeff Immelt
Uploaded: 2017-05-19
Duration: 3 min 58 s
Description: The CEO talks about his most difficult day on the job.

Jeff, you've been writing and talking a lot about leadership these days. If you had to single out one thing, what does it take to be a great leader? I think the sense of resilience is really what matters the most in leadership today. I just think it's so hard to predict where things are going. It's hard to predict where the next disruption is going to come from I just agree there have to have the sense of purpose. The sense of resilience this visibility sense of part. I think that's what matters the most. You've been CEO of general electric for 16 years. Very early on you had to deal with the whole 911 tragedy. You've through a couple of recessions. As you look back on those years what is the most important leadership lesson you learned from all that. Again, I come back to resiliency. I can go through a bunch of other attributes. I had never seen a terrorist event until nine eleven. I am a much better risk manager than I was eleven years ago. I go back to Leaders that are good today. Jeff Biso, Fred Smith, other people you might interview. What we admire most in each other as kind of, what do we do when things don't work? How do we adjust when the world's not what we saw? You know? What was your worst day s CEO and what did you learn from it? The day we cut the devinant, right? But I think its focused on the long term. You know in other words on that, at that moment in time everybody hated me, everybody, right? But it was the right decision for the company two years later, five years later, ten years later. And you know GE is never a straight line, right? We're a company that goes through cycles, but we're a better company today than we were then. We're a better company today than we were when I became CEO. What are you most proud of as CEO? Globalization, the company's global footprint. You know, Susie, when I became CEO, we were 70 % inside the United States. Now we're almost 70 % outside the United States. If you see us in Vietnam, or India, or China, or France, or Saudi Arabia, we're just a vastly different company. We are, we're not a perfect company by any stretch, we are are a great global company. We're great for investors, we're great for a team, we're a great face for the US. In those. We're a great face for capitalism in those companies. Right? So that's what I'm probably proud of Steph. Part of being a great leader is also having a great succession plan. What's your timeline for naming the next CEO of GE? Again we never talk about the time. The board really leads that process. But we've got good leaders on the bench in GE, ones that are ready to take the company forward. There's a right time to have this Have this succession take place, and we'll pick that time. Given GE's goal of being a digital industrial, what are the key leadership qualities that this next CEO must have? They have to understand globalization for sure, right? They've gotta understand technology and digital technology for sure. So there's some foundational things I could talk about But you know, you never pick somebody for a child like this one based on what they know. You pick them based on how fast they can learn. Because the world just changes so damn fast. So that, you know that's how it describe it. As you look back on your life, both professional and personal, what would you say was the best leadership advice that you ever received and how did it shape you as a leader? Ten or fifteen years ago I was having dinner with Warren Buffet and You know, he just said, never confuse tailwind with good leadership and I thought it was so pressing, in the context of, you never can tell anything when times are good. The basic message was When times are good, be suspicious and when times are bad, be supportive. [ LAUGH ] I think that's the best advice that I got as a business guy, right? [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

The CEO talks about his most difficult day on the job.