Southwest Airlines

By: Dynafrom Wang

Background Information

Southwest Airlines have been regarded, and recognized by the industry for its profitability for over 30
years. A leadership strategy developed by co-founder Kelleher produced employees with high
motivation and strong aptitudes for customer service. In an industry where customer service is not the
forte, Southwest has succeeded in this regard, and so much more. Kelleher’s leadership and direction
helped carry out his philosophy of fair respect for employees, and for employees to develop
relationships with customers, and internal customers as well. By having good employee relations,
Southwest maintained relatively low turnover rates for the industry. However, leadership had not just
come from Kelleher, but from his coworkers as well. Gary Kelly and Colleen Barrett have been successful
in maintaining Southwest’s culture and success. Above all, their key to maintaining their success is by
maintaining high employee satisfaction, and focusing on internal customers, which in turn leads to
better quality of service for external customers. Kelleher exemplified Peter Drucker’s definition of old
styled leadership by defining core values; delegating trust and responsibilities to other. Respect and
responsibility goes hand in hand at Southwest, and is shown in high employee morale, and trust. It is his
belief of core values and integrity that moulds Kelleher’s style of leadership into Drucker’s notion of old
style leadership.

Problem
Southwest Airlines has to maintain its leadership pool in order to ensure the survival of Kelleher’s
philosophy, and a pool of future leaders.

Implications
With no profits in the last quarter, and reduction in air travel due to the global recession, Southwest
airlines may take this time to restructure, or to enter new ventures. Otherwise, it may find itself in a
debt spiral which may hurt future growth.

Alternatives
There is only one solution for Southwest, and that is to develop its leadership pool. However, the
solution is in place already and encourages employees to innovate, communicate, understand, and care.
Rather than having a human resources department, Southwest Airlines has a People and Leadership
Development Department. Truly, Southwest had not operated as a business, but operated as a person.
Leadership is developed by treating employees with respect and encouraging employees by telling them
they are better than anyone who can do the job. How does Southwest build leadership? They maintain a
People University, where facilitators help build a learning environment using basic tools such a
leadership class called Leadership Southwest Style using MBTI assessments for self-discovery, as well a
chance to help supervisors understand differences in employees. Because current measures are being
taken, no alternatives would be suggested since most employees have had leadership education, as well
they practise it on a daily basis.

Best Solution

Given the current situation, leadership is not in short need in the company. However with such an
abundant amount of resources being used to maintain the leadership pool, the obvious question is
should they cancel the program until the health of the economy regains itself? It remains to be seen if
there is a real benefit for their leadership program, however they have proven to be successful given 33
years of consecutive profit. Through House’s Path-Goal Theory of Leadership, Kelleher developed a
successful organization. By making work enjoyable for employees, as well as facilitating, coaching to
help them achieve both personal and organizational goals. Due to the flexibility of this system of
leadership, Kelleher was able to develop more leaders to follow this system, and thus far have proven to
have successfully implementing it. The only solution is to do nothing, and ride it out.

Justification

Given poor performances from rival airlines, Southwest will most definitely get past the economic
recession and rise as a leader again. With 33 consecutive years of profit under their belt, there should be
no need to change yet. Leadership has been proven to be plentiful, and successful in its implementation.