About Jeffrey Immelt
Jeffrey Immelt, former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, participated in two public events in May 2026. At the Imagine 2026 conference on May 19, Immelt discussed leadership during technological disruption and the adoption of AI. He stated that an "AI winter" is inevitable, where people may say "it doesn't work" or that too much money has been spent, and emphasized the importance of perseverance through such crises. Immelt also said that AI will differentiate performance between hospitals, banks, and airlines, and that leaders must "exercise new muscles." He advised that tech professionals should not be the ones to explain technology to the public, saying "we should never let tech people talk about tech."
On May 1, Immelt appeared as the inaugural Teevens Center Leadership Fellow at Dartmouth College. During the conversation, he said that leadership involves giving people truth and context, and that "there are two magic words to being a leader: blame me." He reflected on his own experience with imposter syndrome, stating he was "not comfortable enough in my own skin to say, I don't know." Immelt also commented on organizational culture, saying "your culture is only as good as the worst person you're willing to tolerate." He praised Dartmouth's current position, calling it "the best house in a bad neighborhood" and a "differentiated opportunity."
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Jeffrey Immelt's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Interviewer0:00
As your career was advancing, Jack Welch one time assigned you what appeared to be a terrible job. There was a troubled appliance company in Kentucky, and he said, "It's your job to fix that." Tell us about that experience. Were you glad to get the assignment? Do you hold a grudge to this day?
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Jeffrey Immelt0:23
It was... I was 32 years old, and it really made me, gave me the confidence to do what I do today. I had started my career in the plastics business, which was a super high-growth, very fast-paced business. And then our appliance business in the late 1980s, we made a compressor where 100 of them failed, internet failing, right? And so I went in to join the service organization and lead the service organization that had the responsibility of going into people's homes and fixing it. And when I tell people today about career advice, I always say, hopefully you don't cause it, but be around a crisis early in your career. Because we can't tell anything about you when the sun's up. We can't tell anything about you as a leader when times are good, but we can tell a lot about culture and leadership and things like that when times are really tough. And I had this for three years, from ages 32 to 35, with 7,000 people working for me. And it was an amazing experience. I made all of our leaders, including me, learn how to fix a compressor. Now fixing a compressor turns out to be really hard. The average time it took was 105 minutes for a good technician. My best time was like 300 minutes, right? And I'd sit on somebody's kitchen floor while the ice cream melts. You learn a little humility doing that, and you learn a lot about your organizations. And then I would say, Bill, at a very early age, this was the highest reserve the company at that time had ever taken. And I had to go to Fairfield with my bosses and present to Jack Welch, who was a reasonably tough guy. And we made the presentation. It was the toughest four hours I can ever remember. And I'm walking out the door, and he... believe me, this was tough. And he puts his arm around me and says, "I just want you to know, you're doing a good job." I said, "Didn't feel that way the last four hours." But it taught me about leadership in his case, which is setting high standards. And I got that at an early age. It was great.
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Interviewer2:37
Okay, so I want to jump ahead a little bit because you eventually, after an arduous succession plan that Jack did, you were chosen to be the new CEO of this multinational, multi-billion dollar company. You may have had the shortest CEO honeymoon in corporate history. How long were you in the CEO chair before the 9/11 crisis happened?
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Jeffrey Immelt3:07
So I became CEO on a... chairman on a Friday, September 7th, and then I was in Seattle, Washington making a sales call on Boeing on September 11th. And it impacted virtually every part of the company. I mean, it's an amazing tragedy. So whatever happened to the company or to me is small by comparison to what happened to our great country. But it was, in many ways, Bill, I think about the incident, but I think about it also a lot of things were going on at the same time. You had Enron, you had 9/11. It was really the end of a relatively stable and, in retrospect, period of time, the 1980s and 1990s. And we just live in a more volatile time today. You know, since then, the financial crisis... I mean, if you get up this morning in the hotel and turn on TV, 30 minutes you're pretty bummed out. Really, it doesn't matter what channel you watch. And we sold our media business, so I really mean that. But I think people... it goes back to your theme of what you're trying to do, which is leadership. We live in a volatile time, and we're going to live in this time for a while, not a year or two. And people aren't going to be given the luxury to go backwards. We're not going to be able to go back to 1956 or 1997 or the founding fathers or 2005. We don't have that luxury. And I've had the chance to lead a great company during a very volatile time. But I think the best leaders go forward. I think the best leaders keep their people safe, keep their company safe, don't do foolish things. But the best leaders go forward, see the world as it is, figure out a way to accomplish what you have to do. And I've never seen a time in our company, anyhow, and I've worked here for 32 years, where the value of leadership is more important. People want to know: what am I working on? What can I believe in? Where can we go? And I think leaders today more than ever have to do it. And there's great opportunity. I was at the Heads of State Summit last week in Washington, DC with Africa for Africa. The year I became CEO, GE had, let's say, $300 million revenue on the continent of Africa. This year we'll have $6.5 billion of revenue. That's 10 or 12 years. So there's opportunities out there, but you have to go seize them. And you just need to give people a sense of: here's the future, we're going to work on it together, we're going to play to win. But we're going to live in this period of volatility, I think, for a while.
