Servant Leadership Organization: Southwest Airlines
Servant-leadership places the interests of the subordinates before the desires of the managers through self-service, humility, and compassion (Giolito& Van Dierendonck, 2015). This leadership strategy focuses on balancing management and leadership in corporations to ensure employee satisfaction and efficiency in operations of the business activities. Lack of balance between management and leadership in modern day corporations has led to poor strategic orientation and imbalance in the activities of the firms thus causing firms to fail to meet their corporate objectives in the highly dynamic business environment. According to Northouse (2015), while management concentrates on seeking order and stability; leadership works towards ensuring adaptive and constructive change (p. 13). Often, overemphasis on managing people and resources in the organizations has led to poor employee morale, lack of job satisfaction, and consequently, high turnover rates (Cheng, 2016). Therefore, adopting servant leadership has enabled corporations to compete favorably and influence positive individual attributes in the staff which translates to high employee satisfaction.
Southwest Airlines has incorporated the principles of servant leadership in its mission statement to determine the direction of the firm. The mission of Southwest Airlines is “dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit” (Southwest Airlines, 2017). Through its mission statement, the airline company has utilized servant leadership to manage its staff, design operations and enhance customer services. Moreover, Southwest has established its brand as a fun-loving, enthusiastic and low-fare brand that values customer experience that exhibits the characteristics servant leadership that advocate for egalitarianism (Waterman, 2011). Southwest Airline advocates for the removal of inequalities among people by facilitating “Fun-LUVing Attitude” amongst the staff. The “Fun-LUVing Attitude” influences the employees to be passionate about their work and participate in company’s activities that ensure innovativeness.
Additionally, the organization culture also demonstrates the inclination of the company to influence its followers to adopt essential leadership attributes such as empathy, love, and compassion to build the community. Southwest Airline is a steward of the principles of servant leadership through its “Servant’s Heart” culture (Southwest Airline, 2017). The company extends its services to the local communities through engaging in community-based activities such as participating in charities for the sick and their families. The Airline also encourages its employees to possess “a true Servant’s Heart and always goes above and beyond to help others”. Southwest Airline encourages its staff to take the initiative in community development which indicates the commitment of the organization to implement the principles of servant leadership which are compassion, love, and self-service.
Robert Greenleaf postulated that servant-leadership enables a leader to focus on the vision and orientation of the firm instead of only concentrating on ensuring efficiency and mastering routines or doing things right (McCann, Graves & Cox, 2014). Southwest Airline uses the policy of focus on the people to model its operations and strategies. Selection and recruitment at Southwest Airline involve finding the right people for the job, instilling values and vision, and then influencing the individuals to work towards attaining the goals of the organization. The airline is committed to offering the highest quality of Customer Service by focusing on people through passion and “LUV” (Southwest Airline, 2017).
Nonetheless, there are challenges in implementing servant leadership in most companies today. In the contemporary organizations, leaders face problems such as developing relevant skills to ensure management effectiveness, the challenge of managing relationships, politics, and brand and developing the employees to take charge of the business operations (Latham, 2014). As such, relying on servant leadership may become a major challenge in most firms today. For instance, a lot of effort may be directed towards influencing the subordinates to love their work instead of focusing on the traditional functions of management which are planning, organizing, staffing, and controlling that ensure order and stability of the firm (Northouse, 2015). Therefore, organizations experience the issues with ensuring the balance between leadership and management in their organizations.
However, servant leadership may encourage a more meaningful and optimal human functioning with a strong sense of community to current-day organizations (Parris & Peachey, 2013). Because of the positive impacts of leadership in influencing organizational change and employee morale, there is the need to adopt servant leadership that ensures better performances and competitiveness. The Southwest Airline has effectively implemented the principles of servant leadership provide service to customers, hires and manages employees, and models its operations and policies which have enabled the firm to compete favorably in the U.S airline industry.
In conclusion, servant leadership is necessary and effective to ensure customer satisfaction, boosting employee morale (Parris & Peachey, 2013). Servant leadership influences the subordinates to show compassionate love will encourage a virtuous attitude regarding humility, gratitude, forgiveness, and altruism (Waterman, 2011). These attributes are important in many organizations especially in the nursing profession where nurses directly engage with patients to offer direct care. Thus, to ensure effectiveness in organizational management and competitiveness, businesses must guarantee the balance between leadership and management through servant leadership.
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References
Cheng, M. (2016).Promoting Trust in Academic Professionalism.In Quality in Higher Education (pp. 59-68).SensePublishers
Giolito, V., & Van Dierendonck, D. (2015, January).Servant leadership: influence on financial business-unit performance and employee’s well-being.In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2015, No. 1, p. 18378). Academy of Management
Latham, J. R. (2014). Leadership for quality and innovation: Challenges, theories, and a framework for future research. Quality Management Journal, 21 (1), 5
McCann, J., Graves, D., & Cox, L. (2014).Servant Leadership, Employee Satisfaction, and Organizational Performance in Rural Community Hospitals. International Journal Of Business And Management, 9(10). http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v9n10p28
Northouse, P. G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and practice (7thed.). Sage publications
Parris, D. L., & Peachey, J. W. (2013). A systematic literature review of servant leadership theory in organizational contexts. Journal of business ethics, 113(3), 377-393
Southwest Airlines (2017).The mission of Southwest Airlines. Retrieved from, https://www.southwest.com/html/about-southwest/index.html?clk=GFOOTER-ABOUT-ABOUT
Waterman, H. (2011). Principles of ‘servant leadership’ and how they can enhance practice. Nursing management, 17(9), 24-26
