Gary Kelly: Servant Leadership

In the video, Gary Kelly displays several traits and actions on what it takes to be an effective leader. Leadership itself is the compilation of specific skills and traits. Some traits an effective leader has is a vision, communication, admit their mistakes, treatment of others, ability to delegate, and make their employees feel important (Daskal, 2016). In the short video about the Chief Executive Officer of Southwest Airlines, you can identify some of these traits. Taking the time to know the employee’s names that he will be interacting with will mean a lot to these employees. Who does not like to feel appreciated and recognized? In addition, by sitting in the back of the plane displays that the welfare of his customers is more important to him than his own comfort. This sets a good example for the company’s employees as well.
Secondly, there are definitely benefits in treating your employees better than your customers. Your employees are the face your customers are going to see when they interact with the company. Whether the interaction is daily, weekly, or monthly you want the

customers to have the same exceptional service with each visit. That employee could mean the difference between a good, bad, or excellent experience with your organization. If your employees are treated well and happy with their job, then the benefits they could provide your company increase exponentially. What better way to promote your organization than to have an employee that generally cares about the product and the service they provide. Finally, you should treat your employees the way you want and expect them to treat the customers.
Additionally, upon further analyzation of the video, you can see that Gary Kelly tries to lead with some Servant Leadership in mind.

Servant leadership has become more of a popular leadership style over the recent years. In a traditional leadership structure, the employees are serving their bosses, but in a Servant Leadership style, the idea is the leader serves the employees (Economy, 2015). In this leadership style, the leaders are said to genially care about their employee’s ideas and input. From experiences, I can say that some of the best ideas could come from your employees in problem-solving strategies. It never hurts to have a fresh pair of eyes that could possibly provide a different view on a situation. After all, if they are going to be the person executing the decision made, why not involve them in the process of how obstacles will be

overcome.
After doing a little research on the internet, I was able to get a list of companies that utilize the Servant Leadership model. One company on the list was Starbucks. This is an extremely successful company. They have seemed to expand their empire to every block in every single city across the globe. As a customer of their products from time to time, I really had no idea of their business practices. However, it seems their service to their employees was exceptional. This list includes non-standard benefits, college tuition, and a CEO that believes valued employees leads to a great company (Sivasubramaniam, n.d.). The Marriott was another company on the list, and they are a well-known company as well. I would definitely say they way they treat their employees directly affects the success of these companies. As I stated earlier, employees are the face your companies see when they interact with any company.