Essay
Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric Corporation, started his story when was at Salem High School which is north of Boston, as a senior. The hockey team he was part of lost to their rivals yet again. Jack throws his stick down the ice in an angered rage and then goes into the locker room. A short few moments later, his mother walks through the locker room and reprimands Jack, telling him in no uncertain terms he has no business playing if he does not know how to lose, by saying “If you don’t know how lose, you’ll never know how to win” (Welch, Byrne, 2003, Loc. 189 of 6927). Jack’s mother taught Jack the importance of competition in numerous ways throughout his childhood and while becoming his primary influence. Jack learned to lead with warmth, aggressiveness, toughness and generosity through his mother. She instilled management beliefs in Jack that included knowing how to compete while also and facing reality. His mother taught him attentiveness, and he learned that people are motivated through both reward and discipline. Though humility was one of his outwardly weakest management attributes he admitted he was rather humble internally, especially once he won the CEO job.
These ideals that Jack’s mother instilled into Jack ran true through the book as he went through some of his most notable accounts of his career. Jack certainly exhibited the numerous traits his mother instilled in him listed on page 38 of the Daft text.
As I read the text the most notable traits were energy, passion and self-confidence. These traits were followed closely by a lot of courage. Daft stated courage as “Many people know intuitively that courage can carry you through deprivation, ridicule, and rejection and enable you to achieve something about which you care deeply” (Daft, 2015, p. 180). Jack took a lot of heat from the media most notably when he was dubbed “Neutron