Name: United Airlines' Failure of Leadership | Simon Sinek
Uploaded: 2018-10-30T02:03:32.000Z
Duration: 3 min 4 s
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So the question was "If I was sitting inside United Airlines what do I do to regain trust?"

So first of all, let us understand what broke.

It wasn't a flawed company policy of trying to get people off of a plane.

That's normal they offer us vouchers all the time.

There's no particular detail that was wrong, the problem there was

that there was a complete failure of leadership that started years and years ago,

that eventually when you have failures of leadership they will always culminate in something like this.

And so I think United Airlines, and they need to do the hard work of putting bandaids on the situation,

but what's more important is that they go deep inside and do a lot of introspective work

that "What in their culture is significantly broken?"

So, let me give an an innocuous example of the same thing.

I was getting ready to board a plane, and I witness a scene play out in front of me,

where one of the passengers attempted to board the plane before their group number was called,

which as everybody here knows is a felony.

And that is exactly how the gate agent treated him.

"Step aside, sir, I haven't called your group - please wait til I call you..."

So I spoke up! I said "Why do you have to talk to us that way?"

"Why can't you talk to us like we're human beings?"

And she looked me in the eye and said "Sir, if I don't follow the rules I could get in trouble or lose my job."

What she told me is that I don't feel safe in my own company,

and my leaders don't trust me to do the job for which I've been trained.

Where you have someone operating out of fear rather than using their own common sense.

That person knows exactly what the issue is which is:

"So what? Let them on, like nobody actually cares."  Right?

Which is why on Southwest it's so much more enjoyable to fly on the plane

For example, if an airline is four meals short the rulebook says you wait,

you delay the plane and you get those four meals - which is what most airlines will do.

Southwest Airlines says "Hey we're four meals short - umm, we can leave, but four of you won't eat - is that ok?"

And everyone's like "Let's get outta here!"

So what happened here was a fear-based society, where they didn't say...

First of all, they should have done it  before the people got on the plane.

And then if it didn't work, you offer more, and you offer more, and eventually

a couple of hippies will give up their seats.

And you get four seats it's not a big deal.

Or, and the problem is - they let them on, they didn't respond, they forced people off.

So I think the more significant issue is whether United will recognize the very, very serious cultural problems they have

that they're an airline of people operating out of fear without using common sense,

and this will happen; this is predictable.

I just don't know when but it - it always happens, when you have leadership issues like that.