Leadership in Crisis: Airlines

What were the key lessons you took away from 2008 and 9/11, in terms of managing a crisis, as an airline exec?

I’d say, three things. The first thing you’ve got to do, emotionally, is never despair. No matter how bad it is, believe in yourself. If you’ve been entrusted with a role of significance, you cannot doubt yourself. You must go for it. One of the most important things about that is to keep a sense of humility and your place in the organization and trust your people and work with them. That’s number one.

Two is, always face reality. No matter what it is, you must deal with it. If you put those two factors to one side, there are three things you’ve got to do. One is that you must live on top of the data and that means, what your revenue is, what your cost structure is, what you can continually do about it, what your profit forecast is. You don’t delegate that to people. People do it, but you live on top of it. The next thing you’ve got to do is provide leadership and that’s just so important. Leadership is not sending out an email to everyone that you work with. It means that you walk around, you talk to people and you make it personal and you make yourself accessible. The idea of, my door is always open, it can’t be like that, because you’re in meetings and you’ve got other things to do. But you should be highly accessible and you should be highly visible. You’ve got to get out there, people have got to be able to relate to you, chat to you and talk to you about what they want to. It’s only that way that you can address their personal fears and that’s very, very important.

Then, and this is the most important thing, to be credible to your team, you’ve got to be able to come back and do something about what you’ve said you’re going to do and do it pretty quickly. The most important thing we’ve always found, whether you’re dealing with little kids or with adults, is being quick. Saying thank you, two weeks after somebody has done something for you, doesn’t count nearly as much as giving them quick call or a text that afternoon saying, hey, I really appreciated what you did. It meant a lot, thanks. It means the world to people.

Be visible, listen to people, respond and show appreciation. Very, very important. The old days of being a really powerful and important manager are gone. You’ve got to be a leader and somebody that people look to for guidance and respect. You’ve got to be the boss, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got to be a harsh person.