Beautiful Leadership — Purpose and Herb Kelleher

Yesterday I wrote: “Purpose and the Corporation” and wrote:

“I ask businesses I work with to consider a different type of triple bottom line:

• Purpose
• People
• Planet

Yes, I always ask them to focus on the Profit they will make, yet Profit, to me, is the outcome of a corporation, a business focussing first and always on their Purpose, their People and our Planet.”

On January 3rd this year we lost Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines. Ever since flying with them in the early 90s, I have studied this airline and how Herb led it.

A true example of putting Purpose first, then the People of the airline. As to Planet, well, as I wrote about in “Being More”: the word more “takes away specific targets or goals, it simply creates space to be, to do more. More is an invitation. An invitation creates space for opportunities.”

I studied and learned so much about leadership from Herb Kelleher, today I’ll muse on this to share some of what I learned.

Herb Kelleher is inseparable from SouthWest and so to learn about what Herb stood for as a leader and what we can learn from him, we can quite simply look at the legacy he left with SouthWest.