CASE STUDY
Organizational Behavior-740
Case Study: Comparing Leadership Styles- Jack Welch vs Herb Kelleher
Marie RevekantVictoria Roberts
Tummala Reddy
Rushi Patel
4/6/14
Success can be defined by many different parameters, but no matter how a company defines it, it’s something they want to achieve. In order to help realize success, leadership is one essential factor that plays a key role. Having a CEO that can lead the company to the promise land of financial and reputational success is essential. In fact for the reasoning of furthering their business and evaluating effectiveness, many CEO’s have elected to participate in reality TV shows like Undercover Boss, where their success and shortcomings are put on ‘blast’. In the case examined below the leadership styles of two great CEO’s, Jack Welch of General Electric (GE) and Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, are compared.
Jack Welch versus Herb Kelleher on Effective Leadership Styles
Why are they leaders?
Jack Welch and Herb Kelleher are regarded as two of America’s best leaders. First and foremost by definition Welch and Kelleher are leaders because they have followers; employees who do something opposed to nothing. Where the two are differentiated is in the types of followers that are underneath their hierarchy, in largely created by their personal traits and systems imposed. According to What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers, several of Jack Welch’s followers who ranked in manager positions were ‘activists’- trying to avoid differentiating employees. This differs from Herb Kelleher’s followers, who can be regarded more so as ‘diehards’- people who are so deeply engaged in the Southwest Company that allows it to end up as one of America’s top-10 companies to work for. One could regard the difference between the two CEO’s followers as good versus bad, but both had followers who engaged themselves.
Skills and Personality Traits
The major difference between Welch and Kelleher is their personality
Case Study: Comparing Leadership Styles- Jack Welch vs Herb Kelleher
Marie RevekantVictoria Roberts
Tummala Reddy
Rushi Patel
4/6/14
Success can be defined by many different parameters, but no matter how a company defines it, it’s something they want to achieve. In order to help realize success, leadership is one essential factor that plays a key role. Having a CEO that can lead the company to the promise land of financial and reputational success is essential. In fact for the reasoning of furthering their business and evaluating effectiveness, many CEO’s have elected to participate in reality TV shows like Undercover Boss, where their success and shortcomings are put on ‘blast’. In the case examined below the leadership styles of two great CEO’s, Jack Welch of General Electric (GE) and Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, are compared.
Jack Welch versus Herb Kelleher on Effective Leadership Styles
Why are they leaders?
Jack Welch and Herb Kelleher are regarded as two of America’s best leaders. First and foremost by definition Welch and Kelleher are leaders because they have followers; employees who do something opposed to nothing. Where the two are differentiated is in the types of followers that are underneath their hierarchy, in largely created by their personal traits and systems imposed. According to What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers, several of Jack Welch’s followers who ranked in manager positions were ‘activists’- trying to avoid differentiating employees. This differs from Herb Kelleher’s followers, who can be regarded more so as ‘diehards’- people who are so deeply engaged in the Southwest Company that allows it to end up as one of America’s top-10 companies to work for. One could regard the difference between the two CEO’s followers as good versus bad, but both had followers who engaged themselves.
Skills and Personality Traits
The major difference between Welch and Kelleher is their personality