Leadership?

I saw this interesting quote from Joel Ewanick who was head of marketing for GM up till Sunday when he was given the heave- ho. In what I presume was an earlier interview cited in an article in the WSJ, he confessed to being polarizing and adds:

"One of my jobs is to make sure people don't relax, to keep the tension high....I don't mean to hurt people, but everything matters now and we have to be great."

So, I like the notion of people not relaxing or getting slack. I agree that if you are doing anything well, everything matters and you need to convey that to all stakeholders. And, you should always try to be great. Does this invariably lead to tension and hurting feelings? I know it's easy to simply say no, it doens't have to lead to those things but I wonder. And, maybe it doesn't have to lead to those things, but there is a big cost to pursuing greatness without inducing tension and hurting feelings.

Of course, Mr. Ewanick was basically let go from GM, only two years after being hired by the firm. They pulled, or better, stole him from Nissan where he'd been working all of six weeks when GM called. That's not nice, or loyal.