Paraphrased from ASTD article, December 2007 by Kelvin Phuan
The "Everyone Can Fly" slogan of AirAsia could be applied to America’s SouthWest Airline. The airline took off very fast with a combination strategy of low fares and avoiding big congested airports. Employees refer to the founder and chairman as "Herb" and passengers adopt a relaxed spirit of doing business with Southwest. And for 30 years or so, that has propelled the airline to great heights.
"I don’t think you can be successful in business unless you’re good at it"
However, new realities threaten to stall its growth; rising fuel price that has pushed its cost up by 20 percent and intense competition from legacy carriers and similarly modeled airlines.
The CEO, Gary Kelly, interviewed by ASTD Chairman/CEO and Executive Director turned out to be a leader who believes in the need for education and leadership development. He supports very strongly the on-going successful technical training which has been running for decades as most of their employees except for the pilots, join with no prior experience working in airports. He also emphasises on teaching of leadership skills and customer service skills along with his two key people, the Director of Leadership Development and the Vice President of People and Leadership Development department. The course of their work for the past two years had revealed that the company needed strategic changes in education and leadership development and significant efforts were then made in this direction.
"You can’t be good at it unless you’re passionate about it"
Gary had also ensured that change-management efforts which involve services-featured training and development were being carried out by rank-and-file Southwest Airlines employees.
As for the leaders, he saw the need to integrate setting expectations for leaders, developing performance-management system, followed by developing leadership training. | Now, it is so integrated that their leaders can even recite all the leadership expectations which are:
- employees live the Southwest way-warrior spirit, servant’s heart & ‘fun-luving’
- leaders to develop people
- leaders to build great teams
- think strategically
- get excellent results
The CEO, with his Director of Leadership Development work hard at nurturing Southwest culture, especially of constructive feedback and expanding people’s opportunities in their thinking and gaining new experience, thereby allowing them to live up to their potential. He believes that to achieve results in the overall company scorecard, training and development contributions must hit earnings targets, making it a great place to work and developing their teams.
".....the only way you can be passionate about it is to enjoy it"
Gary personally ensures that there should be a fixed number of hours put into training for each employee and cutting spending on T&D is a big mistake for any organisation. He uses education forums as one of the means of communication, especially goals and strategies. Even if these forums have only one reason to get people together and develop relationships, it would still be a worthwhile investment.
In Southwest Airline, employee engagement is not a problem as he treats his people as his number one strength. He does that by sharing heartwarming letters from customers with his employees to encourage ideas generation and build interest in the company.
Gary shares that even though new challenges are hitting them hard, he will not back down from their culture nurturing. This is what he has to say about the culture, "Fun is a funny thing, It doesn’t mean you party all day long at work but it does mean celebrating successes. It also means enjoying your work and your customers. It means not being afraid to laugh, and it certainly means enjoying your co-workers as if they’re friends or family". |