The Southwest Airlines Way

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Southwest_Airlines_WayCHAPTER6.pdf

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C H A P T E R

Invest in Frontline Leadership

The most influential leaders in our company—aside from Herb—are the frontline supervisors.

—Donna Conover, Executive Vice President of Customers, Southwest Airlines

IR O N I C A L L Y , A LT H O U G H S O U T H W E S T Airlines is known as a flat, team-based company, it has more supervisors per frontline em- ployee than any other airline in the industry. This directly contradicts many contemporary management thinkers, who have argued that the purpose of supervisors is to perpetuate bureaucracy by controlling and monitoring workers who might otherwise act irresponsibly.1 Many organizations believe that teamwork and coordination are needed among frontline employees, and that supervisors tend to get in the way. Flat organizations with few supervisors should therefore perform better than more bureaucratic organizations.2 Despite this, data on the U.S. workforce show that managers and supervisors have increased rather than decreased as a proportion of the workforce consistently since the 1950s, and have continued to do so in the 1980s and 1990s despite the downsizing and delayering reported in the business press.3 These trends hardly suggest that supervision is becoming irrelevant.

This chapter will show why supervision continues to be relevant, despite predictions to the contrary. As we will see, at Southwest Airlines,

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Gittell, Jody Hoffer. Southwest Airlines Way, McGraw-Hill Trade, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/erau/detail.action?docID=4654913. Created from erau on 2022-09-17 04:18:05.

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leadership is not only relevant at the top of the organization. Leadership is better understood as a process that can take place at any level of the organization.4 Indeed, leadership at the front line can play a critical role in organizational success. Rather than undermining coordination among frontline employees, supervisors play a valuable role in strengthening coordination through day-to-day coaching and counseling.5

Supervision at Southwest Airlines

At Southwest, each supervisor is responsible for 10 to 12 frontline work- ers, the highest supervisor-to-employee ratio in the industry. The job of the supervisor goes far beyond a focus on measuring performance and disciplining the “bad apples.” Southwest supervisors are “player coaches,” having managerial authority but also performing the work of frontline workers. Supervisors take part in frontline work on a regular basis, even highly physical work such as baggage handling. A Southwest supervisor explained:

A supervisor fills in spots when people are on breaks, or when we are short on a zone. We make sure all the gates are [staffed] and that everything is run- ning smoothly, working in a timely manner. When agents see the supervisor working consistently, they give more in a crunch. Also, you get their respect by working with them.

Working side by side with frontline employees is conducive to building shared goals with them, and to developing the credibility and knowledge needed for effective coaching.

Southwest supervisors also spend more time than their counterparts in other airlines engaged in coaching frontline employees. Coaching takes the form of problem solving and advising. The Chicago station manager explained:

If there’s a delay, supervisors find out why it happened. We get ideas on how to do it better next time. If you’ve got that kind of relationship then they’re not going to be afraid. Say there was a ten-minute delay because freight was excessive. If we’re screaming, we won’t know why it was late.

The Chicago ramp manager confirmed this approach:

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We work real hard to remove that barrier so that agents can come in and talk to a supervisor or manager. There’s an open door policy so when employees have a problem, they know we can work on it together. It’s a totally different environment here. We sit and listen. When that person walks away, he’ll have self-esteem.

I learned this when I came to work the ramp [here]. Even when you did something wrong, they’ll ask what happened. You know you screwed up. They’ll tell you what you can do so it doesn’t happen again. You walk away so upbeat that you work even harder.

There was some supervisory monitoring, but the supervisory role was not focused on discipline. A Los Angeles supervisor explained:

If there is a problem like one person taking a three-hour lunch, they take care of that themselves for the most part. Peer pressure works well.

Southwest supervisors told me that the people who reported to them were their internal customers and that their job was to help them do their jobs better. A supervisor in Phoenix described her job:

We are accountable for what the agents do. It is very difficult sometimes, because it’s such a family-oriented company. You might feel like a sister to one of the agents, then you have to bring discipline. You have to step back and put the friendship aside and say, I don’t agree with what you just did. But the agents are our customers. We are here to help them do their jobs.

One supervisor explained how he had been chosen and trained to take on the supervisory role at Southwest. (He had been a firefighter in Chicago, and had joined Southwest as a frontline agent 8 years ago.)

You let it be known that you are trying to pursue a new position, preferably before the position opens up. Then that person will say, let me take you through the job performance standards, the attendance and other knowl- edge. The manager of ramp and ops might be the one to train you. You let it be known that you are grooming yourself for it. After you are chosen, you take the core courses in leadership training. This is the class that all brand new supervisors take.

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The supervisory training left an impression on him:

I wanted to change after taking the course. We learn that not everyone is the same as you or each other. You develop your best qualities and treat everyone as a human being. Every year or 18 months, there is more management training. It’s the same thing—a lot of focus on interaction between depart- ments. Everyone on the team is working toward a common goal.

One recent training session for Southwest supervisors included a les- son in the importance of coaching. Three groups of supervisors-in-train- ing were formed.

One member of each team was blindfolded and asked to throw a ball into a trashcan. Unknown to the throwers, one team could say nothing, the second was instructed to say only “good job” or “keep trying,” and the third could give detailed information about where the bucket was.

Not surprisingly, the third group had the most success. The person who had received the best instructions said: “I couldn’t wait for it to be my turn again.” “Wow!” said facilitator Chris Robbins. “How does that relate to work? How many agents do you think we have out there who are told noth- ing or just ‘good job’ instead of people really listening to them?”6

In sum, supervision at Southwest was hands-on and intended to be informative and supportive in nature. It was not arm’s-length supervi- sion—interactions were intense and performance measures were not used as a substitute for these interactions.

Benefits of High Supervisory Staffing Levels

The supervisory role at Southwest Airlines, with its emphasis on coach- ing, counseling, and working side by side with frontline employees, required high levels of supervisory staffing. Relative to the other airlines included in this study (United, Continental, and American), Southwest had very high levels of supervisory staffing.7 In a study that included two American Airlines sites, two Continental Airlines sites, two Southwest Airlines sites, and three United Airlines sites, a statistical analysis sug- gested that high levels of supervisory staffing contribute to higher levels of relational coordination. Supervisory staffing levels also contribute to

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improved flight departure performance, particularly faster turnaround times, greater staffing productivity, fewer customer complaints, and fewer lost bags.8 To observe the effects of supervisory staffing on rela- tional coordination, we can plot supervisory staffing for each of the nine sites against relational coordination. Exhibit 6–1 suggests a clear impact of supervisory staffing levels on relational coordination.

Supervision at Continental Airlines

Continental Airlines intended for its supervisors to have a strong coach- ing and counseling role, but supervisory staffing levels were too low to do justice to the role. Their job description included coaching and coun- seling, but a good deal of their time was spent completing paperwork regarding wages and scheduling. Nonmanagement “lead agents” played a role in directing the operations, but played only a minor role in coach- ing and counseling. Still, station managers in Boston placed high priori- ties on coaching and counseling and encouraged supervisors to do it despite their limited numbers.

In the interests of increasing productivity, supervisory levels were cut again in the mid-1990s. At the same time, the role of supervisors was expanded even further to include working side by side with frontline employees. One obvious problem, which had yet to be resolved, was how supervisors with lower staffing levels and increased numbers of direct reports would be able to perform this frontline leadership role effectively.

Exhibit 6–1 shows Continental’s moderate staffing levels for its supervisors, relative to Southwest Airlines, and its correspondingly lower levels of relational coordination.

Supervision at United Airlines

Supervisory staffing levels at United were reduced in the 1980s with the intent of improving productivity and empowering frontline employees. Supervisors at United had both administrative and operational responsi- bilities and were stretched quite thin. As a result, frontline employees spent little time interacting with supervisors, and the coaching and coun- seling role of supervisors had become relatively neglected. A Los Ange- les customer service manager voiced his concerns:

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[Frontline employees] only get to see supervisors two or three times a day. [Supervisors] make sure that people are there at the start of the flight, then go off to the next. They deal with crises only. As a result, customer service reps aren’t getting the attention they need on critiquing their work. Also there is no help with their career plans. The operation takes precedence. There is no softer side. On the coordination of the departure, yes, you get feedback. But critique without the benefit of analysis. . . . We haven’t devel- oped our talent.

In the mid-1990s, United’s top management team redefined the role of supervisors to include a specific focus on coaching and mentoring. According to the Los Angeles ramp supervisor:

Supervisors are to become coaches, to support team members. We will use our clout and ability to support the people who are closest to doing the job.

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* Each circle denotes one of the nine sites included in the study. Supervisory staffing is mea- sured as the number of supervisors per hundred frontline employees. Relational coordina- tion, coordination carried out through relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect, is measured as the percentage of cross-functional ties that are strong or very strong, based on an employee survey. Relational coordination in turn has a positive impact on quality and efficiency performance, as illustrated in Exhibit 3-4.

Relational Coordination

13.0

2.4

28% 62%

CON2

UAL2

UAL3

CON1

AMR2 AMR1

UAL1

SWA1

SWA2

Exhibit 6–1 Impact of Supervisory Staffing on Relational Coordination*

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Formal training in leadership and team building was offered to help supervisors take on this new, expanded role. However, their role would have to expand without an increase in supervisory staffing. The customer service manager explained:

The word supervisors does not exist in the CEO’s nomenclature. . . . Super- visors and managers will not grow.

The United Shuttle was designed with a philosophy of using even less supervision than the rest of United. The initial design teams decided that supervisors were not needed at all. In the implementation, however, it was decided that Shuttle employees needed supervisors in an advisory role. The Shuttle supervisors were called team advisors, and were sup- plemented by supervisors in the non-Shuttle operations who also had some responsibility for Shuttle employees. The supervisors’ job was not conceived to involve monitoring, per se, since Shuttle employees were expected to be self-monitoring. But given their staffing levels, supervi- sors had a hard time playing even the advisory role that their job descrip- tion called for. Ramp employees built a self-monitoring group with lead agents in charge, and wanted to have nothing to do with management. Customer service agents complained that supervisors were never avail- able when needed. Neither frontline group had a strong relationship with either their supervisors or higher levels of management.

As we will see in subsequent chapters, the United Shuttle differed in many of its organizational practices from those of United Airlines, and had correspondingly higher levels of relational coordination and perfor- mance. However, supervisory staffing was one of the few ways that the Shuttle remained exactly like the rest of United. After a brief experiment with lower levels of supervision, the United Shuttle ended up with nearly the same supervisory staffing levels as the rest of United. Exhibit 6–1 shows United’s low staffing levels for its supervisors, relative to Southwest Airlines, and its correspondingly lower levels of relational coordination.

Supervision at American Airlines

Supervisors at American Airlines were staffed very leanly, with responsi- bility for more than 40 employees each. Supervisory staffing at American had been reduced as part of a companywide effort to create a leaner, flat-

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ter organization with greater employee empowerment. However, due to their lean staffing levels, supervisors had little time to carry out support- ive functions. Instead of building shared goals with frontline employees, working side by side with them and providing them with coaching and feedback, supervisors spent their limited time communicating perfor- mance standards to employees and measuring their performance.

One typical comment from frontline employees at American was that supervisors “only care about delays. Otherwise the little report card won’t look good that week.” The concern with delays did not appear to be reflected in supervisory efforts to analyze and engage in problem solv- ing, however. Instead, the focus was on allocating blame for the delay to the function responsible for causing it so as to comply with reporting requirements from headquarters, and to pressure frontline employees to improve performance. The reliance on performance measurement al- lowed for a largely hands-off relationship between supervisors and front- line employees, consistent with the low levels of supervisory staffing and the large numbers of direct reports for which each supervisor was responsible. To the limited extent that supervisors could focus on indi- vidual employees, their approach tended to focus on monitoring com- pliance with directives. According to one supervisor in Boston, “we only have time to focus on the bad apples.”

To assist supervisors, nonmanagement “lead agents” were appointed from among the frontline employees to help carry out supervisory func- tions. Their job was to help supervisors direct the operations. However, they were not responsible for providing discipline, leadership, coaching, or feedback to frontline employees. Because leads were clearly nonman- agement, and did not see themselves as management representatives, they were not well positioned to align frontline employee goals with those of the organization.

Meanwhile, supervisors themselves had little opportunity to bridge the management/nonmanagement divide or to participate in frontline work. They had few opportunities to observe the work process directly and to provide coaching and feedback to frontline employees. They had little contact with any given employee, and little opportunity to build the relationships and know-how that would allow them to play a supportive role. In sum, supervision at American Airlines was primarily arm’s-length in the sense that supervisory interactions with frontline employees were quite limited, and tended to focus on performance measurement.

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Exhibit 6–1 shows American’s extremely low levels of supervisory staffing, relative to Southwest Airlines, and its correspondingly low lev- els of relational coordination.

The Southwest Difference

Interaction between supervisors and frontline employees ranged from infrequent and arm’s-length in American Airlines, to frequent and inten- sive in Southwest. These differences were consistent with levels of super- visory staffing. Higher levels of supervisory staffing at Southwest gave supervisors fewer direct reports, enabling them to engage in more fre- quent and intensive interaction with their direct reports, while supervi- sors at American, United, and Continental, with more direct reports, engaged in less frequent and more arm’s-length interaction with their direct reports.

With fewer direct reports, Southwest supervisors also had greater opportunities for working side by side with the frontline employees they were responsible for supervising. Working together appeared to reduce informational and social distance between supervisors and the supervised, and to support the creation of shared goals. Shared goals in turn made frontline employees more receptive to supervisory coaching and feedback, and reduced the role of supervisory monitoring even further as employees began to monitor each other. With fewer social and informational bound- aries between themselves and their direct reports, supervisors were also able to perform their coaching and feedback functions more effectively.

In sites with low levels of supervisory staffing, a different story emerged. Supervision had been reduced to economize on staffing and, ironically, to increase participation by frontline employees. Supervisors had arm’s-length relationships with their direct reports and played a largely bureaucratic role, relying on impersonal rules to allocate respon- sibility for late departures and other errors. Their role was primarily to monitor compliance with performance targets set by headquarters, and with basic rules of behavior such as being on duty at the scheduled times.

The Case for Reduced Supervisory Staffing

Some organizational scholars acknowledge that supervisors can play an important role in supporting coordination and teamwork, but they claim

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that this supportive role requires less supervisory involvement, not more.9

According to team theorists Richard Hackman and Gregory Oldham:

When a group is first formed . . . it may be necessary to help members get off to a good start by inviting them to participate in some “team-building” activ- ities intended to establish the boundaries and identity of the group and to assist members in coming to grips with their shared authority for managing internal group processes. Then, as the group gains a sense of its identity and begins to develop its own ways of dealing with task and organizational issues, the manager or consultant can gradually withdraw from prominence in group activities.10

The gradual reduction of supervisory involvement is argued to be a win/win proposition for frontline employees and for the organization. Employees can have more autonomy and the organization can achieve better performance once supervisors have handed off their responsibili- ties to frontline employees.11

Consistent with this view, an empirical study in the 1980s found that the elimination of supervisory positions was associated with improved productivity in a manufacturing setting.12 An analysis of multiple studies conducted in the 1980s concluded that work teams without supervisors performed better than work teams with supervisors.13

The Case for Increased Supervisory Staffing

But because effective leadership is both time-consuming and relation- ship-intensive, more time rather than less may be required to perform the job effectively. According to Douglas McGregor, founder of the “human relations” approach to management:

Roles cannot be clarified, mutual agreement concerning the responsibilities of a subordinate’s job cannot be reached in a few minutes, nor can appropri- ate targets be established without a good deal of discussion. It is far quicker to hand a subordinate a position description and to inform him of his objec- tives for the coming period.14

Higher supervisory staffing levels increase the time a supervisor can spend with each employee, increasing the opportunities for working side

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by side, building shared goals, and providing coaching and feedback.15

Even Frederick Winslow Taylor, the founder of “scientific manage- ment,” agreed with this reasoning:

More than all other causes, the close, intimate cooperation, the constant personal contact between the two sides, will tend to diminish friction and discontent. It is difficult for two people whose interests are the same, and who work side by side in accomplishing the same object all day long, to keep up a quarrel.16

With higher staffing levels, supervisors can add value by building strong relationships with frontline employees. They are more available for coaching and feedback,17 have more opportunity to interact with individual subordinates,18 and have more time to provide support, en- couragement and recognition to individual subordinates.19 With lower staffing levels, by contrast, supervisors are more likely to make autocratic decisions20 and to handle problems with subordinates in a more formal- ized, impersonal manner, using warnings and punishments instead of coaching and feedback.21

Summing Up

Higher levels of supervisory staffing lead to improved performance in many settings other than the airline industry. In new product develop- ment, groups in which frontline supervisors play a significant role have been found to perform better than groups with greater autonomy from supervisors.22 Even in manufacturing, higher supervisory staffing levels permit “more intimate and informal” relationships to develop between supervisors and frontline workers, setting the context within which shared goals can be developed.23

With insufficient staffing, supervisors are forced to focus on the “bad apples” and to play an arm’s-length, oversight role. With higher staffing levels, as we saw at Southwest Airlines, supervisors can work side by side with frontline employees, gaining their respect and becoming suffi- ciently familiar with the work so that they can provide meaningful coaching and feedback to their direct reports. They can be more avail- able for conversations with their direct reports, thereby reducing the barriers between themselves and frontline employees, and creating a

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richer flow of information between frontline employees and those at higher levels of the organization. In addition, supervisors with sufficient staffing levels can facilitate the development of strong relationships among frontline employees.

Top managers at Southwest have repeatedly touted the important role that supervisors play in their organization. According to Libby Sar- tain, former vice president of people:

We’re only as strong as [our supervisors]. That’s where most organizations break down. [Now] we are putting even more time and effort into internal recruitment and training for frontline supervisors.

Executive Vice President of Customers Donna Conover concluded:

While other airlines are cutting supervisors, we have a large number of supervisors to encourage, guide, and give structure to people. It lends to the family atmosphere here.

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