Why is it that real leadership is so hard to find? I thought about this over the long Memorial Day weekend when reading a New York Times story that contrasted the annual shareholder meetings last week for Southwest and American Airlines. Both airlines are headquartered in Dallas, of course, but that’s where the similarity ends.
As the Times notes, “The [American] meeting itself could not have been more downbeat,” and the discussion by CEO Gerald Arpey was about all the bad things the airline industry is suffering these days—$130-per-barrel oil, capacity cutbacks, worker layoffs and customer surcharges.

Contrast that with this: “The Southwest Airlines meeting began a few hours later,” according to the Times, “[and] Southwest, of course, is the great success story of the airline business—the only company that has been consistently profitable through these tumultuous times. … Its annual meetings tend to be love fests. This year’s [meeting], though, was the love fest to end all love fests. The company’s beloved co-founder, Herbert D. Kelleher—known to one and all as Herb—was stepping down as chairman after 37 years.”

The story goes on to talk about how an overflow crowd at the Southwest meeting—everyone from shareholders to members of the pilots union to rank-and-file employees—showed up to sing the praises of Kelleher on his retirement. But the outpouring of love and affection for Southwest’s outgoing chairman and longtime leader raises a simple question: Why does Kelleher command such loyalty, love and respect from his workforce? Outside of Warren Buffett and a couple of others you hear about here and there, very few CEOs or senior executives command the kind of loyalty—or have the kind of impact and success—that Kelleher has had at Southwest. How does he do it?

Well, simple questions sometimes have deceivingly simple answers, and if you listen to Herb Kelleher tell it, he succeeded in large part because he simply cared about his people.

“Over the years,” the Times noted, “whenever reporters would ask him the secret to Southwest’s success, Kelleher had a stock response. ‘You have to treat your employees like customers. … When you treat them right, then they will treat your outside customers right. That has been a powerful competitive weapon for us.’ As he stepped away from the company this week, his line didn’t change. ‘We’ve never had layoffs. …We could have made more money if we furloughed people. But we don’t do that. And we honor them constantly. Our people know that if they are sick, we will take care of them. If there are occasions or grief or joy, we will be there with them. They know that we value them as people, not just cogs in a machine.’ ”

I’ve worked for a number of years at a number of companies, and if I have observed any common principle it’s this: Consistently treating workers right—with fairness, dignity and compassion—is the exception and not the rule. Herb Kelleher’s style, despite its obvious success, is something far too few executives seem willing to follow.

“When you look at a company like American, with its poisonous employee relations and its glum customer base, and compare it with Southwest, with its happy employees and contented customers,” the Times observed, “you can’t help thinking that Kelleher was on to something when he put employees first.” 

The Times is right; Kelleher was on to something. But it makes you wonder: Given how little original management thinking seems to be out there these days, why don’t more CEOs who are looking for a successful leadership model to emulate try copying Herb Kelleher?