Southwest Airlines Servant Leadership. Management Essay

Southwest Airlines Servant Leadership
Name
Institution
Southwest Airlines Servant Leadership
The principle of servant leadership holds that the objective of the leader is to serve people instead of focusing on the success of the organization. Therefore, such a leader shares power, helps people develop, and put the needs of workers first (Kohntopp & McCann, 2018). Similarly, Southwest Airlines is one of the companies that have effectively applied the principle in its operations. Hence, the work focuses on how the company applies the principle in its operations to ensure it performs as highly as possible.
Integration of Servant Leadership Principles
Southwest Airlines was found around the 1960s, which was marked by stiff competitions from other airline firms. However, the main focus of the firm was to offer top routes, but this was not enough to overcome the competition as the other companies also had the same focus. Therefore, it decided to shift is objective to servant leadership which enables it to be rendered the most prominent servant leadership example globally (Cote, 2018). The principle is achieved by offering better services to customers to keep them coming back regularly. It regarded its customers as the most valuable asset to the organization and treated them importantly.
Impact on Community and Greater Good
Since its inception, Southwest Airlines has instilled ‘’soft staff’’ into its organizational operations. The strategy has enabled people to gain trust and respect regarding the services which are offered by the company. Specifically, the philosophy of the firm encourages trust, listening, collaboration, foresight, and ethical use of power to improve its leadership capacity among its team members and itself (Sims, 2018). Moreover, the firm avoids layoffs of its employees, and also offers them job security through the continuous learning process. The idea is to enable its workers to market the company and be responsible for their actions to keep high-trust relationships with other stakeholders such as customers. Hence, the job op...