Herb Kelleher is a co-founder of Southwest airlines which made its maiden voyage in 1971, but it wasn’t until 1978 that he was the acting President, CEO and the Chairman of the Board but did not hold these positions for long. A guy by the name of Howard Putnam was elected President and CEO but Herb Kelleher remained as the permanent Chairman of the Board. Four years later though Herb Kelleher was brought completely into power as the new President, CEO and also holding down his original position of Chairman of the Board.

Herb Kelleher believes “Southwest Airlines has a reputation as the wild and crazy guy of commercial aviation.” (Kelleher, 1997). He believes business should not just be business, he believes it also should be fun. Herb Kelleher wants h

is employees to be themselves and not some boring usual business person who looks like they have no sense of humour (Kelleher, 1997).

The benefits that Southwest airlines sees’ from Herb Kelleher’s management and leadership style is that everyone in the Southwest airline family has a task to be performed while they are at work and Herb Kelleher wants them to feel a sense of satisfaction when their set task has been completed. He likes to know that his employees can feel that he is easily accessible for assistance in whatever the problem is and he lets them know by going out to each area in the field and visiting them, finding out how they are going and keeping them all up to date not only in how the company is going but also how the industry is going and what he expects to happen in the future with the industry so the employees know all about which direction the company is in and what they can do to try and keep the company going in the right direction. Unlike a guy by the name of Frank Lorenzo, who was the former CEO of Continental airlines, and was only interested in buying up the struggling airline in order to takeover their assets and make lots of money without really caring for the people who worked the hardest to make the company a success. The difference with Herb Kelleher and Frank Lorenzo is Kelleher really cared about his company and his employees where Lorenzo was only in the industry to make money for himself and himself only. Lorenzo did not care for his employees. (Pannell, 1999) says from her article “Lorenzo was lousy on people issues” and has Lorenzo saying “I'm not paid to be a candy ass” (Pannell, 1999).

I think if there was many more people in the aviation industry like Herb Kelleher all over the world who like to interact with employees and gives them a sense of job security and makes them feel wanted, with Kelleher who knows where aviation could be today, but when there are money greedy people like Frank Lorenzo it just brings the industry down from neglecting his employees and cuts unions out and brings in people who will work for not much money and employees just don’t feel as though they have a safe job that they can make a career out of, and I think that it just turns people away from avia

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