by Steve Adubato, PhD

Former GE CEO Jack Welch has a written a great book called "JACK: Straight from the Gut." It's an honest, straightforward and highly practical work that focuses largely on issues of leadership and communication. One chapter that is particularly compelling is entitled "What This CEO Thing Is All About." In it, Welch says there is no pat formula to being a CEO because everyone does it differently and there is no one right or wrong way to go about it. Welch admits he has no magic formula, but does offer some valuable ideas as to what worked for him and might work for you, whether you're a CEO, manager, supervisor or have any responsibility to lead.

Welch argues the first thing you need is integrity. "Establishing integrity and never wavering from it supported everything I did through good and bad times. People may not have agreed with me on every issue-and I may not have been right all the time-but they always knew they were getting it straight and honest."

Welch is right on here. We would hope that most leaders lead with integrity, yet do you believe that people who consistently give it to you "straight and honest" in the world of business are the norm?

Welch is a big believer in informality in the workplace, arguing that "bureaucracy strangles, informality liberates". He says that creating an informal atmosphere is a competitive advantage while a bureaucracy can be an ultimate insulator. Welch says "informality isn't about first names, unassigned parking spaces or casual clothing. It's so much deeper. It's about making sure everybody counts--and everyone knows they count. Titles don't matter…Passion, chemistry and idea-flow from any level at any place are what matter."

Welch also says that passion is a must for any CEO or leader. "If there is one characteristic all winners share, it's that they care more than anyone else. No detail is too small to sweat or too large to dream." Welch's definition of passionate leadership doesn't necessarily mean being boisterous or loud. Passion comes in all shapes and sizes and takes many different forms. Ultimately, passion can come from only one place. "From deep inside," as Welch puts it.

This kind of passion drives an organization to achieve things most team members never dreamed possible. Passionate leaders get people to look inside themselves and give more, create more and risk more. What can be more important than that?

Now let's talk communication. Welch says that whenever he had an idea or message he wanted to drive into the organization, he could "never say it enough." In his book, he says he would often repeat a message or theme over and over at every meeting and review for years "until I would almost gag on the words." Some felt that Welch would often go too far in this area. Yet he says he often went "over the top" in order to get hundreds of thousands of people behind a particular idea. Bottom line, you cannot truly lead without being an exceptional communicator committed to constantly finding new and different ways to get your message across to sometimes skeptical and wary audiences.

As for having a business strategy, Jack Welch says this comes second to having great people in the right jobs. "I sat for years looking at promising strategies that never delivered results. We had great plans for ultrasound (at GE), but we could never make it happen until we found the perfect person with ultrasound in his veins."

Think about it. Inevitably, the workplace success we recognize is not about organizational charts or voluminous strategic plans. It's about people who make a difference at every level of an organization. Apparently, GE's former top guy Jack Welch understood that and a lot more.