The Southwest Airlines Way

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C H A P T E R

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Use Conflicts to Build Relationships

What’s unique about Southwest is that we’re real proactive about conflict. We work very hard at destroying any turf battle once one crops up—and they do. Normally they are not malicious or ill intentioned. Sometimes it’s a personality conflict. Sometimes it’s bureaucracy.

—Station Manager, Southwest Airlines

CO N F L I C T S A R E A fact of life in highly interdependent work processes that span multiple functions.1 People in different functions occupy different “thought worlds” that make shared understanding diffi- cult.2 Not only are conflicts more likely to occur in highly interdependent processes, those conflicts are also more likely to have intensified effects.3 In flight departures, for example, conflict is a common occurrence. There is tremendous pressure to get the plane out on time, and at the same time there are multiple functions involved, each of which tends not to under- stand very well the perspective of the others. From pilots to cabin cleaners, the functions whose coordination is essential to achieving performance outcomes in the departure process tend to be divided by the lack of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect. The resulting friction between these functions often contributes to poor performance.

To many people, conflicts appear to be destructive, and are to be avoided at all costs. However, there are potentially constructive aspects

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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 04:19:12.

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to conflict as well. Conflict expert Karen Jehn demonstrated that task- related conflict can improve performance when it takes place in a setting where it is valued.4 But what does it mean to value conflict? How does an organization make conflict a constructive rather than a destructive force? This chapter shows that proactively identifying and resolving conflicts is a way to strengthen the relationships that underlie effective coordina- tion. Conflict resolution is an often-overlooked opportunity to build a shared understanding of the work process among participants who do not fully understand each other’s perspectives. As we will see, Southwest Airlines invests a great deal of time and effort in doing just this.

Conflict Resolution at Southwest Airlines

At Southwest, managers are expected to take an active role in resolving cross-functional conflicts. A customer service manager explained her approach to conflict resolution:

You’re going to have conflict. You try to get them to talk it out. They can bring it up to the supervisors and myself. Hopefully they’ll do it in a positive tone. Maybe a wrong call was made in the heat of the moment. You give them the other side of it. It [sometimes] works to bring them together. . . . You just shed light on why they did what they did.

When conflicts arise at Southwest and are not resolved by the parties themselves, a conflict resolution process is used. A customer service agent in Phoenix explained:

Some flight attendants have a “better than thou” attitude but they are by far the exception. We try to minimize that attitude. . . . You can turn people around, even if they have an attitude, by the way you treat them. Most peo- ple can be turned around.

If it’s a real conflict, we bring the people together and we don’t leave here until it’s resolved. If it’s a conflict across groups, we might have an informa- tion-gathering meeting where we all sit down.

These information-gathering meetings were quite common at Southwest for resolving conflicts across functions and in some locations were called “Come to Jesus” meetings, suggesting that conflicting parties

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were expected to bare their souls if necessary to achieve reconciliation. According to an assistant station manager:

When there’s really a problem, we have a “Come to Jesus” meeting and work it out. Whereas it’s warfare at other airlines, here the goal is to maintain the esteem of everybody.

An administrative assistant for the pilots gave her perspective:

When something really serious happens and you can’t work things out, the two managers involved call a “Come to Jesus” meeting, a face-to-face between the people who have the problem. You take the day off and bring everyone together. It doesn’t happen much, but it happens. It’s a matter of mutual respect. You are part of the company first. If a person can’t work it out. . . .

One of Southwest’s chief pilots explained his approach to conflict res- olution:

Because we are moving at a fast pace, miscommunication and misunder- standings happen sometimes. We take great pride in squaring it away as quickly as possible. Pilots and flight attendants—sometimes an interaction didn’t go right between them. They are upset, then we get them together and work it out, in a teamwork approach. If you have a problem, the best thing is to deal with it yourself. If you can’t, then we take it to the next step— we call a meeting of all the parties.

A flight attendant base manager explained his experiences with con- flict resolution and the positive outcomes that can result:

We are encouraged to intervene if there is a problem between employees. If a problem emerges between a flight attendant and a provisioner, for exam- ple, we will have a team building meeting. We investigate the problem, but it’s not a whodunit. Just get the two to sit down and face each other. Each will give their perception of what happened.

This happened recently with a flight attendant and a pilot. I get chills on my neck because of how wonderfully this worked out. Almost gag me with a spoon—it was such a blessing. Each one said—“that’s not what I meant.” We came away so enriched.

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The flight attendant had gotten a question from a customer about an unusual movement the plane made. The flight attendant asked, and the pilot did not respond. He felt she was questioning his judgment. She was asking because the customers are our most prized possession and the customer wanted to know. That pilot will have a different sense with every other flight attendant he sees. The meeting will have a ripple effect. The idea here is to pay a lot of attention to little things because they are so important.

Of course, it is not easy to engage in conflict resolution, and it is not always effective. President and Chief Operating Officer Colleen Barrett pointed out:

It’s not easy to pull these meetings off if the flight attendant is based in Bal- timore and the gate agent is on the West Coast. Every now and then one will blow up. Sometimes the problem is magnified by bringing them together, rather than resolved. But I think when that happens, the bottom line is that both don’t belong here.

Executive Vice President of Operations Jim Wimberly agreed:

Some people don’t get it. We’ll normally encourage them to pursue oppor- tunities elsewhere.

The Southwest philosophy is that individual conflicts should be dealt with on an interpersonal basis, and should serve as a learning experience. However, the success of this philosophy depends a great deal on its implementation. At Southwest’s Los Angeles station, which was strug- gling to stabilize staffing in the mid-1990s, conflict resolution was not being actively pursued. The Southwest philosophy regarding conflict resolution would have been helpful during this period, but rather than being actively surfaced, conflicts appeared to be suppressed, due in part to the station manager’s anxiety about his performance.

Southwest’s top leadership played a critical role in getting conflict resolution back on track at the troubled Los Angeles station. One of headquarters’ first moves in responding to the need for help was to encourage a dialogue between parties that were in conflict, particularly between the pilots who flew out of Los Angeles and the ramp agents there. Pilots agreed to work on the Los Angeles ramp for a week to

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increase understanding between the two functions. The effects were reportedly quite positive. A Southwest pilot who participated in the ini- tiative explained how it worked.

I was part of the Cutting Edge team [the name given to the initiative]. After working a week here with people on their jobs, I see what they’re up against. Out of it we got some goodwill, and a lot more understanding.

A ramp agent concurred:

It’s true. Especially here with certain flights with the heavy on-load and off- load. Pilots really learned what the delays were. The other day we took a 20- minute delay on an originator. The pilot came down calmly to talk—it made all the difference in the world.

Benefits of Conflict Resolution

Relative to the other airlines included in this study (United, Continental, and American), Southwest took a far more proactive approach to conflict resolution.5 This study, which was outlined in detail in Chap. 3, included two American Airlines sites, two Continental Airlines sites, two South- west Airlines sites, and three United Airlines sites. A statistical analysis of these approaches to conflict resolution suggested that proactive conflict resolution contributes to higher levels of relational coordination. Pro- active conflict resolution also contributes to improved flight departure performance, particularly faster turnaround times, greater staffing pro- ductivity, fewer customer complaints, and better on-time performance.6

To observe the effects of conflict resolution on relational coordination, we can plot conflict resolution for each of the nine sites against relational coordination. Exhibit 8–1 suggests a clear impact of proactive conflict res- olution on relational coordination.

Conflict Resolution at United Airlines

United Airlines took a traditional approach to conflict resolution: sub- merging conflicts between functions and focusing instead on labor/ management conflicts. However, the United Shuttle was far more proac-

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tive toward resolving cross-functional conflicts. The cross-functional teams that were used to design the Shuttle were also used to surface and resolve conflicts among functional groups. Cross-functional briefings before and after shifts were used to resolve more immediate and inter- personal conflicts among members of different functional groups. Partly as a result of these opportunities for conflict resolution, relationships between functional groups at the Shuttle were more accepting and respectful than the relationships normally observed among United employees. A United customer service agent who went to work in the Shuttle explained to me:

Over there [in the mainline United operation] they say, “Oooooh, how can you hang out with someone who cleans the toilets?” Here they say, “Need a ride?”

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* Each circle denotes one of the nine sites included in the study. Proactive conflict resolu- tion is assessed on a 1-to-5 scale. Relational coordination, 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 effi- ciency performance, as illustrated in Exhibit 3-4.

Relational Coordination

P ro

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28% 62%

CON2

CON1UAL2

UAL1

SWA1

AMR2 AMR1

SWA2 UAL3

Exhibit 8–1 Impact of Proactive Conflict Resolution on Relational Coordination*

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As a result of the Shuttle’s approach to conflict resolution (and other practices highlighted in this book), the United Shuttle achieved signifi- cantly higher levels of relational coordination compared to United’s non- Shuttle sites (55 percent versus 42 percent of cross-functional ties were rated by employees as strong or very strong). Exhibit 8–1 shows how these higher levels of relational coordination are related to the Shuttle’s conflict-resolution practices. The United Shuttle, denoted by UAL3 in Exhibit 8-1, has higher levels of relational coordination than its non- Shuttle counterparts (UAL1 and UAL2), corresponding to its more proactive approach to conflict resolution. In addition, as we saw in the previous chapter, the Shuttle outperformed its non-Shuttle counterparts at United on both quality and efficiency dimensions.

After the employee buyout, managers for both the Shuttle and main- line United received training in conflict resolution, and all United employees were scheduled to receive such training. Soon after the buy- out, conflict resolution began to occur in United’s mainline operation in Los Angeles. The ramp and freight departments were engaged in ongo- ing conflict over their interface in the departure process. According to the ramp manager:

At first, we would blame them and they would blame us. So we started hav- ing joint meetings, twice monthly. At first they were bitch sessions. Now they’ve evolved into—“I can take that on, I can do that.”

One meeting was the turning point, the manager recalled.

The meetings started out first with attacks on management, then attacks on each other. Terry [a ramp manager] came in with flip charts and thought it was chaotic. But Charlie [a ramp lead] said, it’s the best meeting we ever had. Everyone spoke their minds, and people were behind the scenes saying “here’s what we’re going to do.”

There was still a hesitance by supervisors to address conflicts openly, according to a Los Angeles ramp manager.

Supervisors don’t like to deal with conflict. . . . We need to be convincing people, teaching them how to have conflicting conversations.

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From another manager’s point of view, however, United had come a long way.

We’re always dealing with conflict now. It’s movement for our company.

Conflict Resolution at Continental Airlines

At Continental, management evaluation during the study period was reported by station managers to focus almost exclusively on bottom-line results. The airline was still recovering from the legacy of Frank Lorenzo, a leader who paid little attention to employee relations and who led the airline into bankruptcy twice before leaving in 1990. Accord- ing to a flight attendant who worked for Continental during that period:

When you went to work for Frank Lorenzo, there was no compassion. The employees, they were a commodity like a file cabinet, like a desk or a chair. They just moved the pieces around, and you weren’t to have any feelings, or they didn’t care if you liked the job.7

However, station managers reported a change in the mid-1990s, with the arrival of a popular new CEO, Gordon Bethune, who spoke exten- sively and with credibility about teamwork. Despite the lack of formal mechanisms for conflict resolution across functional groups, Continen- tal’s Boston station management was quite attentive to resolving these conflicts. Supervisors were expected to mediate between employees. A customer service supervisor explained:

Ultimately a supervisor will hear both sides and act as the referee. We get people to work it out. No hard feelings. It’s a very important part of the supervisor’s job. It’s all a part of coaching and counseling, part of the training that supervisors get. Supervisors are valued because they can identify and solve problems in communication.

One of the potential high-conflict areas at Continental was between pilots and flight attendants about pay and authority differentials. Accord- ing to the Director of Inflight Service:

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There is some animosity because of the money. The pilots make so much. Also due to “I say it because I’m the captain.” There are some flight atten- dants who don’t mind letting men make decisions. . . . But we are not immune from pilot/flight attendant conflicts. To be respected, you have to behave a certain way, I tell them. I show them through my relationship with the chief pilot. My message is that certainly I respect you as the leader on the aircraft. I want respect as an individual fellow employee.

In addition to addressing conflict through these individual behavior strategies, Continental developed a new training program for addressing conflict between pilots and flight attendants, focused on communication and leadership skills.

Exhibit 8–1 shows Continental’s moderate attention to proactive con- flict resolution, relative to Southwest Airlines, and its correspondingly lower levels of relational coordination. In addition, we see substantial variation between the two Continental sites, with CON1 showing con- siderably greater attention to proactive conflict resolution, and corre- spondingly higher levels of relational coordination, relative to CON2. Again, local managers can make a difference.

Conflict Resolution at American Airlines

As at the other airlines, conflict at American Airlines often occurred around the flight departure process. At the same time, American Airlines as an organization failed to send a clear, consistent message to its man- agers about the importance of identifying and resolving cross-functional conflicts. Instead, managers in the field perceived that headquarters cared only about bottom-line performance. In the early 1990s, the man- agerial report card for stations was changed to include a score for “lead- ership” along with scores for operating performance. Unlike the other categories, however, leadership received zero weight. A customer service manager gave his perspective:

They look at individual traits like leadership skills. Conflict resolution is implicit in that. But if the department’s numbers aren’t good, I’ll get canned anyway.

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This belief was confirmed by an employee relations manager at Ameri- can headquarters:

Some of our station managers use the carrot and others use the stick. But they [headquarters] don’t care how the station managers get the results— they just want to see the results.

The conflict resolution processes that did exist at American were largely designed to address union/management conflicts rather than conflicts among peers in different departments. Still, there were some exceptions. Though only a half-day program, the Commitment to Cour- tesy was a clear example. A flight attendant manager described the rea- son for the program:

We wanted to improve the interaction between flight attendants and gate agents, since it’s been pretty contentious around departures. . . . We needed this because the boarding process is the most stressful and chaotic part of any flight. Gate agents and flight attendants have typically worked against each other rather than together. We wanted them to have a chance to sit down and find new ways to interact. . . . But we are getting a lot of complaints from flight attendants and some have refused to do it.

Another example was Crew Resource Management, an ongoing training program for pilots that American expanded to include its flight attendants. The new version encompassed not only technical skills but also periodic training in interpersonal relations and dispute resolution. However, flight attendant participation was voluntary, and most refused to participate, not seeing the value. Though aimed at the right target, these efforts appeared to be too isolated to have a strong effect on the relationships between functions.

Exhibit 8–1 shows American’s lack of attention to conflict resolution relative to Southwest Airlines, and its correspondingly low levels of rela- tional coordination.

How Conflict Resolution Evolved at Southwest

Although many assume that Southwest’s success has come relatively eas- ily, its leaders point out that many years of effort have been required to

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develop the practices, such as proactive conflict resolution, that support high performance relationships. As Jim Wimberly testified, “We have worked for years to get to this point.” Around 1990, Southwest leaders promoted the idea of “internal customers” to get people to respond to each other. “We were trying to improve communication across func- tional boundaries,” Colleen Barrett explained. To reinforce the idea of internal customers, she and Wimberly revised the old irregularity report and made it into a device for conflict resolution among employees. Wim- berly explained:

We have a very heated, potentially dangerous, operation on the ramp. There is a lot of stress when the plane is on the ground. Inevitably some conflict will arise. If something happens out of the ordinary, if you feel someone didn’t handle something correctly, you fill out a report.

Under the old system, these reports would go from frontline employ- ees to senior managers of their department, and on to the CEO. Accord- ing to Wimberly:

So if there was a conflict between a flight attendant and a gate agent, or a ramp worker and a pilot, me and Flight Ops and Kelleher would get reports from everybody involved. . . . Employees were taking the time to fill them out, and department heads were reading them—but usually not with high priority. And they were not getting back to the employee.

As a result, top managers began trying to push resolution of these con- flicts and problems down to where they actually occur. Barrett explained:

We got so many reports after awhile, we changed the form. We added a line. “If it involved a Southwest employee, have you discussed it with him or her?” If we got a form where the answer was no, we would call and say, why don’t you all have a little chat?

The meetings themselves were relatively straightforward:

The local managers . . . will help get the people together. When the senior managers get the final report, we decide if a “Come to Jesus” meeting is needed, if it looks like they haven’t resolved it. We tell them this is not a dis-

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ciplinary meeting, nobody needs union representation, we’ll leave the room if you like. We are just moderators, the focus is between employees and on how important teamwork is.

At these meetings, said Barrett, “it is wonderful to see the lights go on in people’s eyes when they understand the other person’s point of view.”

Summing Up

As we noted at the start of this chapter, conflicts can be expected to erupt in processes that span multiple functions, particularly when those processes are highly interdependent. In health care, as in many other industries, functional boundaries are reinforced by professional identi- ties, specialized knowledge, and status differentials, undermining rela- tionships and making communication more difficult.8 Status differences between doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers, and others create divisions among the parties who are involved in caring for the same patients. Managed-care pressures and the resulting speed-up of care delivery have put additional pressure on care-provider relationships, increasing the incidence of conflict.9 Case managers are typically expected to take a hard line on limiting resource utilization, for example, while doctors and nurses are expected to push back to assure high- quality care for their patients. In addition, a nurse explained:

Miscommunication between the physician and the nurse is common because so many things are happening so quickly. But because patients are in and out so quickly, it’s even more important to communicate well.

However, processes for resolving conflicts are not always well devel- oped. In some hospitals, no formal processes of any sort exist for cross- functional conflict resolution. Other hospitals take advantage of multidisciplinary meetings that were convened regularly for other pur- poses to work out conflicts about patient care, while others developed cross-functional councils or protocols dedicated to the resolution of cross-functional conflict. In one hospital, all staff members were required to take a pledge that they would seek to resolve conflicts by following a series of agreed-upon steps, and would seek help if unsuccessful. Statisti- cal analyses showed that the hospitals with formalized conflict-resolution

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processes in place enjoyed higher levels of relational coordination among their doctors, nurses, physical therapists, social workers, and case man- agers, as well as higher-quality, more efficient outcomes for patients.

Management theorist Louis Pondy noted that one way to prevent con- flict is to reduce interdependence by “1) reducing dependence on common resources; 2) loosening up schedules or introducing buffers, such as inven- tories or contingency funds; and 3) reducing pressures for consensus.” He also noted, however, that “these techniques of preventing conflict may be costly in both direct and indirect costs,” and that ultimately, “interpersonal friction is one of the costs of ‘running a tight ship.’”10

Rather than reducing cross-functional conflict by introducing costly buffers, and rather than simply accepting it as a cost of running a tight ship, this chapter shows that organizations can approach conflict as an opportunity to build relationships. Organizational theorist Andrew Van de Ven argued that conflicts are necessary to process the uncertainty and information that is present in highly interdependent processes.11 In addi- tion, he argued, conflicts among interdependent parties can serve as an occasion for learning about the process and for developing a clear under- standing about goals, expectations, and behaviors.12 This perspective on conflict resolution is consistent with Karen Jehn’s finding that conflict leads to improved performance when it takes place in a context that val- ues task-related conflict.13

Organizations should proactively seek out conflicts rather than allow- ing them to fester. Then managers should bring the parties together to better understand each other’s perspective. If organizations do not iden- tify and resolve cross-functional conflicts, those conflicts will weaken crit- ical relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect. When managers treat cross-functional conflict as an occasion for learn- ing, they strengthen relationships between employees and boost perfor- mance of the work processes in which those employees are engaged.

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