The Southwest Airlines Way

Product Details

"If you look at Southwest Airlines, and I admire what they do, they've been the most successful airline in the industry."

--Gerard Arpey, CEO, American Airlines

"Through extensive research Jody Hoffer Gittell gets to the bottom of what has sustained Southwest Airlines' positive employee relations and high performance through good and bad times."

--Thomas A. Kochan, professor, MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Global Airline Industry Program

In an industry with losses in the billions, Southwest Airlines has an unbroken string of 31 consecutive years of profitability. The Southwest Airlines Way examines how the company uses high-performance relationships to create enormous competitive advantage in motivation, teamwork, and coordination among employees. It then goes further to show how any company can foster these powerful cooperative relationships and explains how to:

• Lead with credibility and caring
• Invest in frontline leaders
• Hire and train for relational competence
• Use conflicts to build relationships
• Make unions its partners, not its adversaries
• Build relationships with its suppliers

Product Reviews

(5 stars) - An excellent book on the relationship between employee empowerment and success
The Other Kind of Smart: Simple Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence for Greater Personal Effectiveness and Success

While almost all organizations pay lip service to the claim that their employees are their most valued asset, in reality few really live up to that claim. The kind of success that Southwest Airlines has experienced has only been possible by the organization really treating their employees like they are really are the most important thing to them. I believe that at some level every one of us yearns to be work for an organization that we feel we can give our all to because we truly believe they are truly concerned about our well being. Unfortunately, at some point we often begin to realize that we are only a means to an end and hold back from fully applying ourselves. I read about a case where a competitor came in to one of the airports that Southwest was operating in and threatened to take away their business. Sensing a threat to their organization Southwest employees came in on their day off to work without pay in order to drive the competitor out. This is the kind of fierce employee loyalty that many organizations could only dream about. It is the level of loyalty that most of us reserve for our family and in indication that that particular group of employees saw themselves as part of a family.
Although they may not use the term, I believe that Southwest has created a very highly emotionally intelligent organization. They have become a model for organizations in on how to become successful through maximizing the potential of their people. While it is possible to replicate the process that an organization uses, it is the spirit of that organization that makes all the difference.

(5 stars) - Good companies outstand differently. Bad ones suck alike. This applies to books, too.
If it were not for the request of my best friend working in retail banking to help him answer some questions with reference to this book before his attendence of an in house managerial training, I would never have picked it up. I had read in pieces in many books that SW excels so I didnt expect much. Great that I had been totally wrong. I am not going to bore you with my answers. I just feel obliged to comment that this is one of the best on discussing the culture of an excellent service company. There are many books in the market descriptive of how good a company is. Seldom they compare directly the good ones against the bad ones like this book does. The author really told me why and how SW had been thriving for such a long time in a well organized and stylish manner. Highly recommended!

(4 stars) - The Southwest Airlines Way
Very interesting book I use Southwest when I fly. Interesting on how one man dreams came true and his style in customer service makes Southwest #1 airlines

(5 stars) - I'd love to review this book
But....seeing as I haven't received it yet, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere on your website for me to complain that I haven't received my book, I'm afraid Amazon's readers are just going to have guess what I think about it....as am I.

Anyone at Amazon reading this, I'd appreciate you letting me know how I can find out what's happened to my book. It's no fun not getting what you paid for in advance, and then not being able to tell anyone about your problem.

How's that for a review?

Have a nice day :-)

(4 stars) - Useful for IO Psyc class
Got the book for my Industrial Organizational Psychology class. It's a pretty interesting read. I recommend it to anyone looking to study IO Psyc.

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