At a time when the airline industry is under assault from skyrocketing fuel prices and a sluggish U.S. economy, it's hard to imagine that a talk by the president of the leading American carrier would not be dominated by discussions of job cutbacks, reduced routes, higher fares and a difficult future ahead.
But then there aren't too many major airline executives quite like Southwest Airlines' Colleen Barrett, 63, who rose from legal secretary to the front of the corporate suite over a span of 23 years. It was Barrett, working closely with mentor and company co-founder Herb Kelleher, who pioneered Southwest's unusual and now legendary approach to customer service, which aims to treat the company's 35,000 employees like family, to make the workplace fun -- and then to carry that upbeat attitude to consumers. It's a strategy that has made an upstart discount carrier into America's busiest airline by passenger volume.
"Our mission statement is posted every three feet, all over every location that we have, so if you're a customer, you've seen it," Barrett noted in her recent talk at the 12th Annual Wharton Leadership Conference, sponsored by Wharton's Center for Leadership and Change Management and Center for Human Resources. "It's to follow the Golden Rule -- to treat people the way that you want to be treated, and pretty much everything will fall into place."
To be sure, Southwest's success took more than being nice to customers and employees.
[continue]
Page 1 of 8
> >>