Herb Kelleher (Co-Founder of Southwest

Herb Kelleher (co-Founder of Southwest Airlines)

Herb Kelleher

Offer Better Quality at a Lesser Price adds Value and Spiritual attitude of employees and the result' is an unbeatable success formula. Herb Kelleher is credited to lift Southwest Airlines from the brink of disaster to be the most successful airlines with unmatched 26 years of profitability and emerge as the model of Lost Cost Carrier -- LCC. This paper discussed at length the unique leadership qualities of Kelleher and the manner in which he helped in transforming the airline. His leadership skills, along with his myriad self-motivated personality, have been envied by many but hardly replicated by few. His leadership philosophy is putting 'employees first, customers second and shareholders third'. He believed that a company needs to build trust with his employees such that they will feel empowered to perform on behalf of the customers. His leadership style highlights three things. The lowest costs, the best customer service which is a very crucial constituent of value and intangibles which is a spiritual infusion. A very simply philosophy with Kelleher is 'treat your employees well and they will return the favor'. Another leadership quality of Kelleher is giving vent to the basic personality of everybody while at work. Kelleher believes in not trying to train anything different from what one really is.

Kelleher's leadership style is to be humble and open-minded in whatever one does. His functioning style enabled to transform SWA to be the fifth-biggest U.S. airline and it did not have ever to lay-off a single employee. His employees enjoyed a casual, fun-natured work atmosphere. Kelleher never 'ruled' his employees, but instead, ruled with his employees. He believed that leadership is everybody's job and not the just the reserve of upper level management. He described SWA as an 'upside-down pyramid'. Patient hearing of employee problems enables leadership. Kelleher never implemented the dominant command-and-control type of leadership. Leaders like Kelleher don't just 'talk' regarding their values, but they 'walk the talk'. As against 'participation exercises' supported by the command-and-control leaders, liberating leaders grow 'a culture of dialogue' in which change is brought about by people-power. The impact of every member of the organization is being urged to think, act and learn is to continually enhance the competence and creativity of the organization as a whole.

Brief Biography on Herb Kelleher

Herb Kelleher, whose full name is Herbert D. Kelleher is the legendary co-founder of Southwest Airlines -- SWA was born and brought up in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, USA on 12th March 1931. His father is Harry a. Kelleher and mother Ruth Kelleher. (Soylent Communications, 2007) a photograph of Kelleher is given in Exhibit -I. He earned his Bachelor's Degree from Wesleyan University and JD from the New York University. Kelleher's mother is credited with the most significant influence on his life who emphasized that individuals count the most and the taught him the importance of contributing for the common welfare. In his early life, Kelleher served as a clerk for the New Jersey Supreme Court and also did private practice as an attorney before taking the plunge to start SWA with Rollin King way back in 1967. His concerted efforts transformed the airlines to be one of the successful ones in history celebrating its 35th anniversary. The phenomenal growth and success of SWA is attributed to the active guidance and leadership of Kelleher. (Two-Bit, Bio#2: Herb Kelleher, n. d.)

There are a lot of aspects of his life that have helped in shaping his unique leadership style, the primary among them are his dynamic personality, outstanding intelligence, integrity, and concern for people. Kelleher is regarded to be a prodigy in the sphere of aviation because of his keen business sense, and was chosen by Fortune as one among the ten best CEOs in the United States. His leadership skills, together with his colorful and self-motivated personality, have been a source of envy for several people but competently emulated by few. In the Second World War, Kelleher lost almost all his family members except his mother with whom he had a strong relationship during his formative years. In an interview, he recounted how his mother instilled very high ethical and democratic values in him which was responsible for his leadership qualities. He learned from her about basic behavior norms, setting life goals, leading an ethical life, functioning of business, mixing politics with business. As Keller was attending a public school, it was in a sense, receiving a twin package of public schooling and home schooling. Kelleher ascribes his basic value of being a Samaritan to his mother, who inculcated in him that an individual's fundamental value arrives from what one able to contribute to others. (Yeh; Yeh, 2004)

It is because of this, that right through his career; he remained unconcerned regarding his rank at SWA and stands tall as being one of the few renowned American CEOs rightly without any ego. He treated everybody as equal across the rank and file of SWA; a trait learned from his mother and chose to regard the sacredness of every person as a human being. In his earlier life when he was practicing law, his Secretary recounted how he treated his staff as equal and always asked for opinions even if his Secretary was not even a lawyer. One of the characteristic of his great leadership was his humility and approachability. He did not believe in hierarchy and made everybody feel comfortable working with him. However, he never aspired to operate an airline; rather his dream was to be a pilot. Nevertheless, following a protracted period of legal battles to fight for SWA's right to fly, he was unable to defy. Indeed, the higher the odds, the greater were his motivation to battle it out. He remembered his response to the initial court battles was the greatest motivations. In operating SWA, he was offering something better for the people of Texas and was determined that he will not allow the forces to upset the system and stand in the way from making it happen. Eventually it turned out to be an idealistic problem and also a societal one too with the legal system functioning in the manner it is expected to be. It is a fact that Kelleher came to be so motivated that he went on to offer his own money as legal expenses for the airline's court battle at the time when SWA decided to shut shop. (Yeh; Yeh, 2004)

One more aspect of his life that helped mold the leadership style of Kelleher is that to him the employees are the most precious asset of an organization and not customers or the shareholders. His leadership philosophy is generally summed up as Put employees first, customers second and shareholders third. If employees are treated well, they will in turn treat customers well. Customers will repeatedly come which will make the shareholders contended. Valuable and motivated workforce will strive for customer satisfaction and that in effect will make the shareholders happy. Besides, a company ought to have a personality which a customer will enjoy, remember and choose during the subsequent purchase. He believed that a company needs to build trust with his employees such that they will feel empowered to perform as essential on behalf of the customer. This belief translated SWA to have the credibility of delivering the best job security within the airline industry. Kelleher stressed on inspiring the employees towards the overall good. (Two-Bit, Bio#2: Herb Kelleher, n. d.)

Situation and/or Career Analysis: Leadership analysis of Herb Kelleher from events within SWA:

Kelleher made a landmark departure to launch a different kind of airline whose basic idea was "If you fly your passengers to their desired destinations when they wish to arrive there, on time, at the lowest possible airfares, and make definitely certain they have a good time doing it, people will fly your airline." What started off as a small Texas airline has grown to be one of the models Low Cost Carrier -- LCC and is one of the biggest airlines in the U.S. It files in excess of 83 million passengers annually to 63 major cities throughout the nation and it does more than 3,300 times daily. During May 1988, SWA was the first airline to bag the Triple Crown for a month i.e. Best on-time Record, Best Baggage Handling and Fewest Customer Complaints. The feat has been repeated by SWA in excess of 30 occasions and also won five annual Triple Crowns from 1992 to 1996 in a row and no other airline has contributed greater to the advancement of the commercial airline compared to SWA. ("We weren't Just Airborne Yesterday: Times flies when you're having fun," 2007)

The airline is the pioneer among the Frequent Flyer Program to credit passenger for the number of trips taken and not in the number of miles flown. SWA also started the senior discounts, fun fares, fun packs, air freight delivery service on the same day, fly-now-pay-later and a host of other first-time programs. During the year 1972, the All Houston service was transferred to Houston's Hobby Airport from Houston Intercontinental. This move was prompted by Kelleher who said that after all why customers have to drive 45-minutes to take a 40-minute flight. With several illustrious years, the year 1977 saw SWA carrying its fifth million passengers and its shares are listed in the NYSE as "LUV." In 1978, Kelleher took the reigns from the outgoing President Lumar Muse and becomes the interim CEO and the Chairman of the Board. SWA's airline N52 is named as the "Herbert D. Kelleher" to honor the co-founder of the airline. In the later part of the year, Kelleher is given the post of permanent Chairman of the Board. ("We weren't Just Airborne Yesterday: Times flies when you're having fun," 2007)

The year 1982 saw Kelleher become the permanent President, CEO and the Chairman of the Board for SWA and the airline expands its routes to cover San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. In 1985, SWA becomes the most convenient point-to-point carrier in the country and in 1986; the airlines completed 15 years of low fares, good times, and high spirits. Passengers of SWA enjoy more fun with the launching of Fun Fares and more than 13 million flyers assume the company as "The Company Plane." The starting of the 1990s witnessed SWA touching the billion dollar revenue and is recognized as the "Major" airline and in 1991 SWA completed two decades of fruitful business. In 2005, SWA declared its 32nd straight year of profitability which is an industry record and started giving out online boarding passes through its website. It also launched the pioneering direct link to customer's desktop delivering live-updates regarding the hottest deals, and also the southwest gift card. Presently it flies more than 3,000 daily flights. ("We weren't Just Airborne Yesterday: Times flies when you're having fun," 2007)

During November 2003, Kelleher was awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Strategic Management Society -- SMS, the esteemed international association of academic and corporate strategists. In an industry where it is difficult to stay afloat, let alone earn profits, SWA is the only airline with 30 consecutive years having profitability where no other airline company has been capable enough to earn profits for even five years in a row. The achievements of SWA, under the able stewardship of Kelleher are ascribed to its continuous focus. From the very beginning, the strategy at SWA has been to bring passengers not from rival airlines, but from other means of transport such as cars, buses, and trains by giving them the opportunity to a mode of transport which has the lowest cost and is also the fastest service available. Its hallmark of success has been the groundbreaking point-to-point service against the conventional hub-and-spoke model. (Chuck, 2004)

Nevertheless, the core of SWA's success is its culture and employees. According to Kelleher who is popular for his readiness to party very much with his staff holds the view that the spirit of an individual is the most powerful entity of all. It is his leadership style which maintains that three things interested him the most. The lowest costs in the industry, the best customer service which is a very crucial constituent of value and intangibles which is a spiritual infusion. These are the most difficult elements for the competitors to duplicate. It has been the leadership style which prompted SWA to adopt the low fare strategy as the passport to success in any situation. In this manner it enabled more people to fly. The modus operandi has been that when the load factor gets into the 70 or 75% range over a reasonable period of time, the fares are not hiked but new flights and more seats are added. The low cost arrives from the intangibles i.e. through the inspiration which are given to the people and their productivity, the reality that they perceive they are performing something which is truly important and that they enjoy. (Chuck, 2004) very simple philosophy with Kelleher lay in the simple belief that 'treat your employees well and they will reciprocate in the same manner. Keller claims that his people are different and to prove that he ran a campaign in various media like TV, Radio and newspapers that the workforce at SWA was different and they are better and that they are special and they welcome customers. The ad campaign was continued for six or seven years and there was never any complains to the contrary. Another leadership quality of Kelleher is giving vent to the basic personality of everybody while at work. A good example is the flight attendants who sing as they want to do so. Kelleher believes in not trying to train anything different from what one really is. One does not have to be automation when arriving to work. One can just be himself. Kelleher's leadership style is to be humble and open-minded in whatever one does as he believes that unless one is humble and open-minded, he cannot be disciplined and what the company does is establishing a clear and simple set of values which the company conceives. (Chuck, 2004)

Kelleher at no point of time used fashionable titles for empowerment, total quality and so on. This is because Kelleher believed that applying labels to things prevented them from thinking expansively. SWA started out promising to give more to people for less and not less for less, with new aircrafts, best on-time performance and the best workforce who are the most hospitable. Functioning in a strikingly different pattern, Kelleher never did a long-range planning which is a very basic necessity in a lot of businesses. At the time when planning was a buzzword in the airline industry, Kelleher was approached by an analyst ridiculing that SWA was functioning without a definite long-range plan. Keller replied that he had the most atypical plan in the entire industry. It is doing things and that's the plan. What is done by strategic planning is that they define themselves and thereafter redefine themselves. (Chuck, 2004)

Leadership Analysis: Supporting the Leadership style position and characteristics of Herb Kelleher:

Kelleher's unique leadership style enabled to transform SWA to be the fifth-biggest U.S. airline. Its employee centric policies made sure that it did not have to ever lay-off employees in its entire period of functioning. Because of this, the employees of SWA enjoy a casual, fun-natured work atmosphere. The development of the company's culture surfaced while they assumed an open philosophy in which they would not hide anything that includes any of their problems from the employees. An analysis of the leadership style of Kelleher is directly opposite of the several autocratic leaders which have achieved business success. Kelleher never 'ruled' over his employees, but instead, ruled with his employees. It was his belief that leadership is the job of every employee and not the sole exclusive of just the upper level management. He held that every employee must have the capability to determine situation and be capable of acting on their own decisions and employees must be able to lead other employees to arrive at decisions. He described SWA as an 'upside-down pyramid'. Placed at the bottom are the upper management personnel and at the top are the front-line employees. The front line staff is regarded as the experts inside the organization while the top management as the support help group. (Madron; Jopling, n. d.)

Kelleher's capability to lead is backed the leadership offered by all of the employees in the organization. Paying attention to employee ideas enables leadership. The moment employees perceive that they have been heard by their colleagues, they will be keener to listen to ideas from others. Kelleher did not have to take recourse to the dominant command-and-control type of leadership. This is due to the fact that his values and core beliefs are powerful enough to make them look out for varied ways of operating the organizations they lead. And above all, leaders like Kelleher do not merely talk regarding their values, but they walk the talk by constantly and consistently proving them in their behaviors and in the decisions they arrive at. As opposed to the 'participation exercises' supported by the command-and-control leaders, liberating leaders develop 'a culture of dialogue' wherein change is ushered through people-power and soft-systems methodologies. The impact of every member of the organization is being urged to think, act and learn is to continually enhance the competence and creativity of the organization as a whole. (Madron; Jopling, n. d.)

Leadership Development is sometimes seen in terms of education and training, job experience and coaching. The two important components of leadership self-development are self-awareness and self-discipline. It is a fact that self-discipline is responsible for the continuous monitoring of one's behavior to make sure that the necessary self-development happens. Majority of the leadership happens through means other than self-awareness and self-discipline or leadership development programs. Leadership is such a wide-ranging process that nearly any life activity can help people prepare for a leadership role. The three important life and work experiences which plays a role in leadership development are education, experience as a leader of the caliber of Kelleher, and mentoring. It is seen that a lot of people obtain the opportunity to hold a position of business leadership with the pre-condition that they have achieved a level of education. A more vital issue compared to the statistical association between leadership and formal education remains the manner in which education plays a role in leadership effectiveness. (Dubrin, 2007)

Majority of the top-level leaders are intelligent, well-informed people, who acquire knowledge right through their careers. Knowledge accruing from their formal education and self-study equips them with information for innovative problem solving. Because of their intellectual alertness, it also helps them put influence through logical persuasion. One more important constituent of capitalizing experiences is for the leader or manager to be given latitude in preference in the manner in which to resolve the problem. In an interview study of 80,000 managers in more than 400 companies came to the conclusion that that the ideal manner to nurture talent is to outline the appropriate outcomes and subsequently encourage each person to discover his path towards these results. Tasks that are work-related can also help in contributing to leadership development as part of a leader's role has to be an effective and innovative problem solver. Kelleher took the mentoring approach which is one more experienced-based means to develop leadership capability and he led SWA to be coached by himself -an experienced, knowledgeable leader. He assumed the role of a mentor due to his massive experience and developed a protege capability by means of tutoring, coaching, guidance, and emotional support. The mentor, a confidante and guide, is archetypically a person's manager. Kelleher helped build an emotional bond between the protege and the mentor. It has been seen that mentors improve the career of proteges in a lot of ways like suggesting their names for promotion and assisting them in establishing important contacts. (Dubrin, 2007)

An important facet in the leadership approach of Kelleher was that business can never boil down to a simple formula like in mathematics which everybody looks for. It has to be emotional, spontaneous and come right from the heart. Such was his overall impact on SWA that Herb Kelleher and SWA were the mirror image of one another because successful companies sometimes mirror their top executives. Therefore SWA is more than Herb Kelleher because simply stated Kelleher is the personification of everything SWA is about. Even if he is not around, SWA will continue to run. The freedom, informal atmosphere and interplay that people enjoy permit them to act in the best interest of the company. Kelleher wanted his customers to have a pleasant and memorable flight and experience a difference compared to a lot of other flights so that his customers share the unique experience of flying in SWA flight with others. Kelleher stressed on the importance that it is good for their people, and the most difficult one for the rivals to emulate. Kelleher believed that psychic satisfaction is a two-way traffic. The staff needs it also and because of this he keeps on telling that they are fighters in a battle. Customers get their psychic satisfaction, their freedom to travel inside the nation and the employees receive their psychic satisfaction also in their role as the defender of that freedom. Kelleher held that it is vital to extend psychic satisfaction for one's employees. (Guinto, 2006)

Perhaps the best example of motivational leadership is Kelleher. The powerful the impact the leader puts over his employee, he will attain more success in motivating them to complete the objectives or driving them to reach towards a stage of self-actualization. Kelleher built his unique style of labor relations. He took pride on formulating an "I care" element into SWA. Even he is willing to assume the role of a joker and prankster of the company when the situation so demands, however he combined it with unconditional dedication to his staff and organization. Kelleher knew the first names of all his employees and due to the embracing character of the company, every employee is keen to work harder just for Kelleher. At SWA, pilots have been seen to willingly does the job at the boarding gate when matters have become slow, and even the tickets agents willingly accept baggage to hasten matters. Leadership theories and style have surely undergone change throughout the years and more human element of leadership is coming to be addressed. ("Leadership," n. d.)

Leadership Training and development nevertheless entail wider, less structured behavior, like inspiring others and locating problems. One more problem is that lesser organizations are ready to randomly allocate managers to costly and time-taking leadership development programs. Adhering to the conventional method of assessment, a useful method of gauging the result of leadership development is to distinguish types of learning and to gauge them distinctly. Areas of probable alterations are pointed to as domains of impact. Competency domains have been suitably classified into four types. These are (i) Intrapersonal skills-which is being effective with oneself, like possessing good self-awareness (ii) Interpersonal skills-dealing efficiently with others (iii) Leadership skills which is influencing, inspiring and convincing others, as also giving proper vision and a lot of other potentials. (iv) Business skills i.e. cognitive skills like planning, budgeting, forecasting, cost-saving, holding meetings, preparation of reports and the like. (Dubrin, 2007)