Having Mentors

K: Where did your addiction to celebrating People’s success and praising their efforts come from, Colleen?

C: Once again, I would have to say it was from my Mother. She had a huge heart. She not only loved and cared for people, she respected them. Although she didn’t actually use the expression, she modeled The Golden Rule:

Do Unto Others
As You Would Have Them
Do Unto You

Mom’s guiding belief in life was that if you are good to others, others will be good to you. As long as you were respectful of others and treated people the way you would like to be treated, you would get that back in kind.

As a result of my Mother’s influence, my biggest expectation with our People is that they be egalitarian in nature. When I use the word egalitarian, I mean that everybody has the right to be treated with respect, and everyone should be required to treat others with respect. And, perhaps more importantly, everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute to the overall success and well-being of the Company.

Our mission at Southwest is “dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.” But you don’t have to know the mission word for word if you’re an Employee—although most can probably quote it to you—as long as you know that the number-one expectation is that you will practice The Golden Rule every day in a loving way.

“Colleen teaches us that
love is what matters and that
you have to lead with your heart
and know that the heart
will take you in the right direction.”

—Kevin Krone, VP Marketing, Sales, and Distribution

K: How did your Mother teach those values to you?

C: Using your terms, Ken, she constantly caught me doing things right. In fact, I have a great story about my cheerleading Mom.

A few years ago, I received a special airline industry award, the Tony Jannus Award. I was the first female to receive it, so I felt honored. But I don’t like having attention called to myself; I just hate the limelight. At this formal gathering, there were some five hundred people in the audience, including all the honchos of the airline and aviation industries. Also in attendance were a few special friends like Kevin and Jackie Freiberg, who together wrote Nuts,² a wonderful book about the People of Southwest Airlines. I also invited my baby brother (my other brother had died many years earlier at the tender age of 21) and other relatives, a number of whom I hadn’t seen in years. My family isn’t very large anymore, so all of them were seated in the front at one table.

I’m not in the habit of making prepared remarks. But Herb Kelleher, the Founder of Southwest Airlines who had received this particular award years earlier, told me that for this event I had to have prepared remarks. It was that important. I fretted for a week. I really worked on these remarks and was finally satisfied. On the night of the awards ceremony, I didn’t even dare have a glass of wine. I sat through the big presentation with this award hanging over my head. It felt like it weighed about five hundred pounds. Finally, after I was introduced, I went to the podium to make my remarks. Unbeknownst to me, my brother had snuck in twelve cowbells. As I was about to speak, my whole family stood up and rang those cowbells.

When that happened, my first response—besides getting really choked up—was to think: Oh my gosh, now all these people are going to realize that I am nothing but a hick from the sticks of Vermont! Then I just lost it. I got so choked up that I could not talk, nor could I see the words of my prepared remarks. So I skipped my prepared remarks and just talked from my heart, as I am prone to do. I was emotional as I explained that the rowdy group with the cowbells was my family. Then I told them the significance of the cowbells.

When I was growing up in Vermont, we didn’t have much of anything, but we had a lot of love in our family. We lived on top of a hill in a little house. There was really no place to play, so we had to go across to a cemetery that was parallel to our road. When it was time for us to come in from playing in the cemetery, my Mother would ring an old cowbell.

Over the years, this foolish cowbell became like an announcement of anything that was important in our family. For example, if somebody got an A on their report card, Mom would ring the cowbell. Or if we had company coming, my Mother would go out and ring the silly cowbell. The people on the street never knew what was going on, but when they heard the cowbell, they knew something was going on at the Crotty (my maiden name) household! When our house burned down, that foolish cowbell was burned to the point that it didn’t work. So Mom kept the old cowbell, got another one that worked, and the tradition went on. She did this until she died.

After that awards night, Herb said that my acceptance was the best speech I’d ever made. My values showed through.

K: I wish I had been there. It must have been a hoot. It sounds like Herb Kelleher has been an important role model for you, too.

C: He has, Ken. In the world of work, I couldn’t have had a better teacher, coach, or mentor than Herb. At the beginning of my career when I first met Herb, he had been at his law firm for ten years and had never had a full-time secretary. He just sort of went around and passed out his work, and whoever was available typed it. He also had not opened a single file. That was when I knew that he really needed me. He literally had two offices at this law firm: one that he worked in, and another that had no furniture whatsoever—only files and stacks of paper all over the floor. You cannot imagine what a mess it was. So I thought, as his executive secretary, I would save him, and I guess you would say the rest is history.

Herb and I are so different. It truly is a miracle that we’ve survived forty-plus years of working together, but I think it’s because we’re so different. Herb is really brilliant and incredibly visionary. And back then, especially, he would see the vision but he wouldn’t have any idea how many steps you had to take to get there; he would just want it done. At that time, I was pragmatic and systematic and quite organized. So that’s how our team, or partnership, started.

For many years as Herb’s executive secretary, I was so naïve and inexperienced that I don’t think I appreciated what he was doing for me when he took me under his wing. All Herb ever really wanted to do was practice law. He didn’t want to run an airline. It’s just one of those things that evolved and happened. But he had a small group of five people (two lawyers, a law clerk, and me), and anything that he did, we did. I didn’t know that that was unusual. If he went to Washington to lobby on something, I was there with him, as well as his law clerk. Whatever he did, we did. He always included us. We were all part of the team and part of the family. Herb was there to serve us, and we were there to serve him.

“The first word that comes to mind is family.
You know—you treat your family the way
you want to be treated;
you care for them; you respect them.
And everywhere I go in my travels,
I see that in Southwest Airlines Employees.”

—Southwest Customer Eric Krueger