Leadership Lookout

I’ve been hearing about Southwest Airlines and their venerated employee culture since I began in business school over three decades ago. Then we joked about the “love” theme. Considering that SWA closed 2008 with the second-best on-time performance of the nation’s commercial air carriers and that SWA carries more domestic passengers than any other U.S. carrier, perhaps SWA is getting the last laugh. Did you ever wonder how Southwest “did it”?

In a recent article on Beyster Institute’s online magazine entitled, Leading by Example: Three Questions for Colleen Barrett, president emeritus of Southwest Airlines, Colleen answered the question “How do you motivate and inspire employees and build a winning team?”

How many of the points that were part of her answer are part of your corporate culture?

• leading by example,
• treating our employees as family members,
• storytelling,
• being all-inclusive in our celebrations,
• having an “employee first” mentality,
• allowing mistakes as long as those mistakes are not caused by immoral, unethical or illegal actions,
• exhibiting “golden rule” behavior at all times and expecting the same from our employees, and
• celebrating our victories and learning from our failures.

To see more of the short article go to: Leading Companies Online Magazine.

Filed under: Passed On, Recommended