Strategic Leadership and Its Effectiveness at Southwest Airlines - Essay Example

The paper "Strategic Leadership and Its Effectiveness at Southwest Airlines" is an outstanding example of an essay on business. Strategic leadership is an essential factor in organizational success. This enables good leaders to pass information to their juniors, assign duties, and handle workers with minimal resistance. The leadership system at Southwest Airlines that was characterized by personality in the 1960s has since changed due to the emergence of competitors in the United States airline industry. The transformation has been implemented to suit the customers’ demands and employee satisfaction to the success of this business. This paper determines the leadership and management approach that Southwest Airlines practices in order to sustain its effectiveness as a stable airline industry.

Based on organizational development theory, the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines traces back to the 1960s as an airline less recognized to achieve its competitive edge. Despite some of the negative perceptions that surround organizational leadership, it is quite significant to admit that the success of Southwest Airline has been achieved by appropriate leadership and management strategies. In contrary to the initial focus on labor force and supplies, the Southwest management strategy emphasized on the following to sustain its reputation (Ziegenfuss, 2007).

Value-added leadership development
While most organizations believe in hiring competent and intellectual employees, Southwest Airlines has a unique recruitment method that ensures not a single person is outsourced for the leadership position. The group has its own responsibility, which ensures that its leaders are chosen after the acquisition of adequate skills moderated as part of the company. Through the emphasis on leadership as an essential component to the realization of the business effectiveness, the company believes in the promotion of leaders who show the potentiality of team leadership, who have recommendable results and a sound mind.  The trend ensures the maintenance of the right etiquette leading to the sustenance and improvement of expectations thus business effectiveness (Lewis, 2007).

Pre-employment development
During the recruitment process, new personnel faces many challenges while coming into terms with the culture of a particular company. Besides, the orientation process consumes time vital to solving other issues. While addressing this situation, the Southwest airline’ Director of the On-boarding takes an active role in carrying out evaluation during the recruitment process through online orientations. Through this system, all the interviewees are exposed to the Southwest Airline’s organizational culture. Besides, they get the privilege to interact with the leaders of the company who give a preview about the norms of the business. This instills confidence in a new employee who gets the privilege to work for the company while ensuring the effectiveness is sustained (Lewis, 2007).

Employee motivation
In every organization where employees are given sufficient support in terms of appraisals, remunerations, and dignity, there are high chances of reflecting the same to the customers of Southwest Airline being a service-oriented company. The employees are treated with much concern based on an individual’s skills. The result is then reflected by an influx in the number of customers who are always willing to board the low-cost carriage crafts.  This has immensely led to the realization of bigger returns to this company (Lewis, 2007).

Conclusion
No company has proven to be a success without proper strategic leadership and management structure. In support of this, it is evident that Southwest Airlines has managed to achieve its competitive edge through the appropriate leadership style and recognition of the employees. It has also been pointed out that through value-added leadership; an organization can easily sustain its level of effectiveness. In conclusion, strategic leadership and management are an appropriate avenue to achieving organizational effectiveness.