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Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. Under his leadership the GE stock went up by 4,000 per cent, making it the most valuable company in the world. Fortune named him the ‘Manager of the Century’ in 1999

Suzy Welch is a former editor of Harvard Business Review. She is also the co-author of Jack Welch’s latest book Winning

You can e-mail Jack and Suzy Welch questions at winning@nytimes.com

(Please include your name, occupation, city and country)

Telecommuting is suggested by many these days. What do you think of it?
– Jennifer Heizer, Waltham, Mass.

We love it. Telecommuting allows us to write this column from Boston or Buenos Aires, or wherever our life happens to land us any given week. Our editors are a phone call or e-mail away and we communicate with them as easily as if we were stationed in a cubicle down the hall from them in New York. So all in all, telecommuting is a perfect deal – for us.

For you, telecommuting may be ideal or it could be a total disaster – that is, if you harbour a desire to climb the corporate ladder. Because, even in this day of ubiquitous technology and open-mindedness toward flexible work arrangements, telecommuting still comes with a cost: diminished face time. Sure, that won't kill you in your early career. As long as you are an individual contributor with enough talent, you can do almost any job from home: write code, analyse legal documents, design marketing materials or sell financial services ... the list goes on and on. Indeed, it gets longer every day with the expansion of the intellectual economy and e-commerce.

But what you can't do very well from home is lead. To lead, you can't just show up for important meetings and strategic retreats. You have to muddle in the muck in between. People have to know how calm you stay in a public-relations crisis, how decent you act toward new employees who haven't got the hang of it, how much you sweat during a tough deal and how hard you work without complaining about an unexpected deadline.

Which brings us back to face time. Companies rarely promote people into leadership roles who haven't been seen and felt. It is a familiarity thing and it is a trust thing. We are not saying that the people who get promoted are stars during every crucible moment at the office. But at least they're at the office. And their presence says: work is my top priority. I'm committed to this company, I want to lead, and I can. For anyone who has dreams of leadership in any meaningful way, telecommuting can only get you so far. The road to the top is paved with being there.

My company places a great emphasis on colleague feedback in conjunction with the annual performance review, sometimes eliciting anonymous comments from as many as 30 people for an assessment. The whole process is so time-consuming. Is it worth it?
–Name Withheld, St. Louis

You're referring, we assume, to the cott-age industry known as 360 Feedback, which first popped up about 20 years ago and has since spread across the business terrain. And for good reason: 360 Feedback is an unvarnished way for people to receive a wake-up call about behaviours that distress their peers and subordinates. One of us once attended a leadership training programme where another participant, a middle manager from a technology company, practically went into shock over his 360 results, which were a veritable Greek chorus of negativity.

"Impossible. My people love me," was his reaction. "They must have mixed up the paperwork." They hadn't.

But the problem with 360 Feedback – and it's a big one – is that invariably, after about the second time around, it gets gamed. The system devolves into a highly negotiated affair. Colleagues work out nuclear deterrence treaties with each other and all the feedback shooting back and forth starts soun-ding the same, i.e. positive. Perhaps such behaviour is all-too-human, but it renders the process useless.

Now, we know that 360's proponents – and they are a legion – claim the system has safeguards, and surely it has some. But your question is whether the whole long process is worth it.

And to that, we would have to say traditional appraisals – boss to subordinate – still win hands-down. They generally work, save everyone time and are very hard to rig. We would suggest your comp-any not eliminate 360 Feedback, but use it only every few years. Its main value is to ‘out’ the unspoken. After that, almost everyone's in on the game.

You talk a lot about passion being the key to personal success. Is passion innate or can it be ignited at any point in a person's career?
–Bob March, Fairfield, Conn.

Every one of us knows a few people (or more if we're lucky) who are perpetually on fire. They are madly in love with their work, they are wild about college basketball or the hometown team, they go crazy over old jazz or modern art – whatever. They just pour their hearts and souls into life. And, given their unrelenting intensity, you can be pretty sure something innate is going on.

Let's not talk about them. Like people born with blue eyes or high arches, they are what they are. It's more useful to talk about the second part of your question: whether people can actually go from blasé to burning hot. And to that, as every good manager already knows, the answer is a resounding "Yes." Passion can indeed be ignited, but it demands you draw on your own inner fire, giving your people powerful answers to the questions: "Where are we going?" "Why?" And "What's in it for me?"

Now, we realise that it's probably hard to imagine this set of questions – or any, for that matter – igniting the glazed-eyed employees who, sadly, populate too many companies, counting the minutes until sadly, populate too many companies, counting the minutes until they are free of managers who don't seem to care or make sense or both.

But we have seen passion uncorked in even the most benumbed cubicle-dwellers. Consider what happened at a business we are familiar with, let's call it Acme. About three years ago, Acme was an orphaned division floundering inside an international manufacturer. Its profits weren't growing and its people were about as motivated as hedgehogs in winter.

Enter a private equity firm, which took Acme private. Critics, of course, focus on private equity's flaws. But one of its greatest virtues is that it can, and often does, transform an acquisition with zea-lous attention to people, rigorous execution and fresh ideas. That's what happened at Acme.

Yes, some employees were asked to move on. But for those who remained, many of them in their 50s and 60s, the new owners offered an exciting vision of the future with a compelling upside for those who bought into it: new opportunities for career growth, financial reward and just plain fun at work.

Fast forward to an Acme business review that one of us recently attended. Instead of people acting like a dreary collection of clock-watchers, they were exchanging turnaround stories, boasting about productivity gains and excitedly comparing notes on attacking previously untapped markets.

The cynicism of the old days was replaced by optimism, and something more – genuine engagement. Clearly, Acme's once passionless people had learned the game, how they were supposed to be playing it and how they would benefit if the team won.

Fortunately, you don't need a private equity investor to make that happen in your company. Even if you are managing three people, the concept applies. Passion gets ignited by purpose. And it's every leader's job to make that purpose come alive. Shout about it. Paint the future in vivid colour. Before long, people who once looked bored may very well burst into flame. They just needed you to push the starter switch.

My problem may not seem like a problem to you, but it has me completely panicked. My last project was considered a huge success, and as a result, I was promoted up three rungs to a run a department. I don't have the experience or the knowledge to do this job. What should I do?
–Anonymous, Hartford, Conn.

You're right – we don't often get letters from people who are worried about rising too fast. In fact, the vast majority of job-related laments we receive are from people burs-ting with frustration over the slothlike pace of their ascent. But don't take that to mean you're alone. There isn't a good manager in the world – new, old or in between – who doesn't have a daily panic attack about the mother lode of stuff he doesn't know but should, the confounding challenges ahead, and the sheer impossibility of getting it all done.

So, congratulations. You have stumbled upon one of the best-kept secrets about work. Getting promoted is a double-edged sword: thrilling, yes, but terrifying too. Everyone is calling you with hearty congratulations and slapping your back, saying you deserve it, and you are smiling away for them all, feeling a lot less jovial than you look.

It doesn't matter if it's your first managerial stint or your move into the CEO's office. You are the only one who truly comprehends how little you know about the new job, especially when compared to the big, bold expectations your bosses keep mentioning. Whatever happened, you want to scream, to the perf-ectly logical idea of a grace period?

It's best not to scream, of course. After all, you've been told that leaders need to appear calm and in control, and that is true. Leaders should look and act like leaders for the sake of their people's respect and confidence and the organisation's forward momentum. But being a leader doesn't mean you can't ask questions: Good leaders are, by definition, insatiable learners, relentlessly probing the minds of people at every level for ideas and insights. They are voracious relationship builders too, and make sure they get to know everyone in the business who can open their eyes to the who, what and when of the job.

Obviously, you don't ever want to seem clueless, and we can't imagine you would, given your past success. You want to appear deeply inquisitive about every aspect of your business and passionate about helping your people to achieve everything necessary to win. Those traits won't undermine your authority. They will enlarge it.

Are we asking you to fake it? No. We're asking you to reinvent your self-perception according to reality. Right now, you are experiencing the same feelings that most new leaders do. Do you think that a president feels any different when he has made the leap from, say, running a little southern state to having his finger on the nuclear trigger? Being in charge of something new starts the game all over again, no matter what you have done before.

Consider the proposition that continually feeling a bit overwhelmed and underinformed is a positive thing for both you and your business. An insatiable hunger for new ideas and better ways of doing things makes you fight like hell to win.

Having both walked in your shoes, we feel your knees knocking. But don't turn and run. Make peace with your panic. It goes with the job.