Bob Cancalosi: Training A New Generation of GE Leaders

Bob Cancalosi: Training A New Generation of GE Leaders

From a terrific story in JSOnline:

At General Electric Co., Cancalosi is one of five GE executives around the world who spend their time developing leaders. "We are known and benchmarked as the world's greatest leadership development company, and my job is to make us better at that," said Cancalosi, 45. It's an important role at a company that takes leadership development very seriously, and top GE executives get involved in evaluating potential leaders. ...

Cancalosi spends about two weeks every month either kicking off or running an advanced leadership class somewhere in the world. This year, he visited London seven times, Scandinavia five times and six states in this country.

Cancalosi's credentials include 14 years in the sales, marketing and quality areas at GE Plastics. He came to GE Healthcare's Waukesha operation in 2000 and spent four years in managerial positions before becoming the GE subsidiary's chief learning officer in 2003.

He said he has mentored 63 people over the last six years. They sign a contract with him promising to accept his feedback and efforts to take them out of their comfort zone. He promises to discuss the employees and their projects in front of senior management.

I used to work directly for Bob Cancalosi, and I can't think of a better guy to be in his position. He knows more about developing people than anybody I've ever met in business, by a wide, wide, wide margin.

I wrote this story about my job interview with Bob. But Bob himself is legendary within GE for working on an important project right through the midst of a kidney stone attack. As the story goes, he'd be at the whiteboard, working out ideas, then when the pain got too bad he'd excuse himself and go to the men's room, then come back and work at the whiteboard some more, excuse himself again, and on and on until the job was done. I've had kidney stones before, and I can't even imagine doing that. Amazing. Again, I can't think of a better guy to train a new generation of leaders.

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General Electric is one of the most important companies in the world, also is the most respectful in our country.

[Andy O'Hearn]

I grew up as next door neighbor and best friend to Bob Cancalosi, and I can honestly say that he was a coach, learning advocate and out-of-the-box thinker from a very early age. It's great to see how much and how many continue to benefit from his approach.

[Woody]

It took real stones to do that.