From the Back Cover Foreword by Herb Kelleher, Founder of Southwest Airlines Once, there was a remarkable person who led with love. Her company succeeded where its competitors struggled. Customers were loyal, employees loved to work there, and it was profitable year after year--for decades. Colleen Barrett began her career as an executive secretary, yet Southwest Airlines’ founder chose her to succeed him as president. When asked why, he said, “Because she knows how to love people to success.” Lead with LUV is an extraordinary, wide-ranging conversation between Barrett and Ken Blanchard, the legendary author of The One Minute Manager . Together, they reveal why leading with love is the most powerful way to lead, how to make it work, and how it can help you achieve unprecedented business performance. It’s not about being “soft”! What leading with love really means in the organizational context The real meaning of “servant leadership” Love in action: how to make it work Handling inappropriate behavior or performance “Tough love,” redirection, and when to “share” your nonperformers Sustaining leadership with love Building the right vision and culture--and keeping them for the long haul About the Author Ken Blanchard has had an extraordinary impact on the day-to-day management of millions of people and companies. He is the coauthor of several bestselling books, including the blockbuster international bestseller The One Minute Manager and the giant business bestsellers Leadership and the One Minute Manager , Raving Fans , and Gung Ho! His books have combined sales of more than 18 million copies in more than twenty-five languages. In 2005, Ken was inducted into Amazon’s Hall of Fame as one of the top twenty-five bestselling authors of all time. Ken is the chief spiritual officer of The Ken Blanchard Companies, an international management training and consulting firm. He is also cofounder of Lead Like Jesus Ministries, a nonprofit organization dedicated to inspiring and equipping people to be Servant Leaders in the marketplace. Colleen Barrett is currently President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines Co., a high-frequency, low-fare, point-to-point airline that prides itself on its excellent Customer Service qualities. Prior to stepping down as the Company’s President on July 15, 2008, Colleen oversaw management, Leadership, and budget responsibilities for the following areas/ groups: Marketing, Corporate Communications, People (Human Resources), Customer Relations & Rapid Rewards, Labor & Employee Relations, Reservations, Corporate Security, Culture activities, and the Executive Office. She was also a member of the Company’s Executive Planning Committee, and she chaired numerous special teams, task forces, and committees relating to internal and external Southwest Customers. Colleen served as a member of the Board of Directors from 2001 to May 2008 and as Corporate Secretary from March 1978 to May 2008. She was Vice President Administration from 1986 to 1990; Executive Vice President Customers from 1990 to 2001; and President from 2001 to July 2008. Before joining Southwest in 1978, Colleen worked for several years as Executive Assistant to Herb Kelleher (Southwest’s former Executive Chairman) at his law firm. She serves on the Ken Blanchard College of Business Board of Trustees at Grand Canyon University, the Becker College Board of Trustees, and the JC Penney Co. Board of Directors. She is active in numerous civic and charitable organizations in Dallas, Texas.
Features & Highlights
Once, there was a remarkable person who led with love. Her company succeeded where its competitors struggled. Its customers were loyal, its employees loved to work there, and it was profitable year after year, for decades. This loving leader began her career as an executive secretary, yet the company's founder chose her to succeed him as president. When asked why, he said, "Because she knows how to love people to success." She is Colleen Barrett, President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines.
Lead with LUV
is an extraordinary, wide-ranging conversation between Barrett and the legendary Ken Blanchard, author of
The One Minute Manager
. Drawing on personal experience, Barrett and Blanchard reveal why leading with love is the most powerful way to lead and how it can help you achieve truly amazing levels of performance. Discover:
What "love" really means in the organizational context.
What "love" really means in the organizational context.
Why leading with love is not "soft" management!
Why leading with love is not "soft" management!
How to use redirection and tough love to handle inappropriate behavior or performance.
How to use redirection and tough love to handle inappropriate behavior or performance.
Why "servant leadership" is love in action, and how to make it work.
Why "servant leadership" is love in action, and how to make it work.
How to build the compelling vision and culture that sustains leadership with love.
How to build the compelling vision and culture that sustains leadership with love.
Customer Reviews
Rating Breakdown
★★★★★
60%
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25%
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15%
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Most Helpful Reviews
★★★★★
5.0
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A New Way of Leading
If there's one thing that can be said about Ken Blanchard, it's that he's consistent throughout his books, both in style and content. "Lead with LUV" contains more of his people centered management advice delivered in a chatty manner and peppered with lots of stories. This isn't a bad thing. It's just what I've come to expect (and appreciate) from Blanchard.
"Lead with LUV" is essentially a 150+ page dialogue between Blanchard and Colleen Barrett, former President of Southwest Airlines. LUV is Southwest's symbol on the New York Stock Exchange and a ready pun for a book about leading/managing with love.
Don't let the word love, or the scattered religious themes, scare you off this book. Blanchard and Barrett know how to successfully run a business and offer solid, commonsense suggestions for change. Look at Southwest Airlines, which is easily the best run of the US airlines.
The approach outlined in "Lead With LUV" is essentially an elaboration on Blanchard's "Servant Leader" model. Basically, this approach "upends the pyramid" by training management to be accountable to and appreciative of customers and ground level employees. They, in turn, are loyal to the company.
The book is filled with wisdom for creating a better company culture, but I will only mention a few examples. First, the authors emphasize making a company an employer of choice, an investment of choice, and the provider of choice. Second, they also promote the idea of having raving fans, rather than just normal customers. Third, three key values among Southwest employees, warrior spirit, servant's heart, and fun-luv-ing attitude are explored in depth (imagine that, a company that emphasizes a sense of humor!). Finally, the authors end their conversation by focusing on the traits of love and how these would look in a company environment.
Perhaps the most helpful feature of the book is a series of "stop and think" boxes that ask processing questions about the topics addressed. These would be ideal for discussions among team members or managers.
Overall, I highly recommend this book to employees, managers, and even those in less formal leadership roles. Like most people, I've had some horrifying workplace experiences, largely connected to poor senior leadership and decrepit company culture. The challenge is translating what sounds great on paper into radical culture change in companies where profit margin and personal advancement are still primary.
However, I give Blanchard and Barrett a lot of credit. They are trying to make this much needed change and are providing the framework for it. And, as Southwest Airlines shows, treating employees well, emphasizing great customer service, and having a sense of humor can translate into a great business model.
25 people found this helpful
★★★★★
1.0
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Missed Opportunity
Barrett is a brilliant servant leader. I have met her and found her to be inspiring, eloquent, filled with grace, and wise. This book had so much potential to capture her wisdom, intelligence, spirit, and leadership skills yet the format is tedious, folksy, and shallow. For such a brilliant person, the opportunity to share her insights in a way that would be truly helpful to other leaders and followers was missed. Blanchard used his formula which after reading his other books is just getting tired and old. I hope Barrett has the opportunity to tell her story again in a way where her eloquence can shine through. This is a shallow overview, written poorly, and presented weakly. There are gems of insights that are wonderful but you have to sift through a poorly presented book. It feels like their notes rather than a finished, polished product of elegant insights and wisdom. What a missed opportunity.
12 people found this helpful
★★★★★
1.0
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Read something else
This should have been a magazine article.
I'm a big Southwest fan but was disappointed with the book.
6 people found this helpful
★★★★★
2.0
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I'm Not Feeling the LUV
Southwest Airlines, the company that shot to the stratosphere with its revolutionary low fares and first-come first-served seating arrangements back in the eighties was an airline that broke all the rules. They're a successful mainstream company that we're all familiar with today. If you're curious about some of the principles and approach to business from the perspective of a former CEO of the company, this book is for you. Created as an interview-style book, it is a conversation between President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines, Colleen Barrett, and Ken Blanchard, a management consultant. The book attempts to create a framework of the core values that Barrett, and her mentor, Herb Follett, founder of the company, espouse. Right away I cringed at some of the terminology: there are no managers, they are "leaders"..."catch someone doing something right," "Servant Leadership..." All employees are called "People," "soar like an eagle, don't quack like a duck"...okay, whatever works. If you call a jail a "correctional facility," you're still in a prison. The bottom line is, this book is a disjointed, hot mess of reminiscences, feel-good phraseology, and nothing substantive other than the overt and flagrant overuse of the word love. As goofy as I found some of the concepts, clearly, Southwest Airlines is successful, and they have something to share. However, the book's biggest problem is that co-author Blanchard seems intent on using the book as a platform for his own storytelling and insights. The entire book seems more like a fantastical hot-air balloon ride or perhaps a warm-up for a management consulting motivational speech tour.
6 people found this helpful
★★★★★
4.0
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You are better than what you are accepting
I've not written a review of any book in a while as not many have moved me and frankly, I may have been in a down cycle regarding having an optimistic outlook on business when so many jobs have been turned negatively and the pyramid of service flipped back to serve the heirarchy first. This book was a quick kick in the ass to remind me of what is slipping away in this economic downturn where bullies rise to the top in favor of cost control. In an interview format Ken Blanchard teams with Colleen Barrett of Southwest to highlight that while airlines are struggling, going bankrupt and merging out of necessity Southwest values have shown that aside from safety, if your people first, your customers second that profit will come and costs will be controlled by the love you receive back. Stating the values of a Warrior Spirit, a Servant's Heart and a Fun LUVing attitude (ode to Southwest) it was the right book at the right time to wake up the dormant leader inside of me.
4 people found this helpful
★★★★★
3.0
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A good book, but doesn't provide the same value as others on the same topic
My review is based on the value of Lead With Love when compared with the competition--other books you can buy instead. There is certainly value in the book and its concepts. However great, there simply are other books that also present the concepts better, and also go much deeper. For example, Tribal Leadership and Delivering Happiness. A short book (Lead With Luv at 150 pages) can either do a good job of reducing the number of stories and cramming in a lot of information, such as Pleased But Not Satisfied by D.L. Sokol (another great book), or it can instead have a little less content (which isn't inherently a bad thing). In Lead With Luv, I felt the conversational writing structure took up a lot of space (text like, "Can you explain that?") without real content. Certainly with the success of Southwest Airlines, there is a lot of great knowledge that did not make it into this book. I also found the back-and-forth conversational style of writing to be a little less smooth to read.
Overall, I did enjoy the book. It is worth reading. I gave it three stars because that's the Amazon rating for "It's OK", which is appropriate given the other books available on the same topic.
4 people found this helpful
★★★★★
4.0
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a little cheesy and idealistic but a true story nonetheless
not really a travel book or business book but a mix of those two plus a dash of seriously useful philosophical suggestions for a better world, this book reads easily because it is a genuine dialogue between old friends. using the approach of good customer service and using that golden role mentality, the result was (and is, i assume) the basis for the highly impressive success of Southwest Airlines. having working in travel, with my IATAN card years ago, I knew a thing or 2 about the industry and was blown away by the greed of the top execs. Ms Barrett is clearly not like that at all, in fact she's the antithesis to all selfishness and greed. instead, she outlines in witty dialogue with Mr. Blanchard, the basis and steps to good customer satisfaction and takes it s step further to talk about how employees are also a valuable aspect. instead of thinking of the bottom line and going all greedy like a Gordon Gekko type, Ms. Barrett insists and outlines and details why true leadership is about love, not a weak soft, pushover love, but how if we only use the golden rule and value employees and remember the little things in life, that not only will business be better but the world would be a happier AND MORE PRODUCTIVE place which would yield more profit anyways which is what the greedy types want anyways so why not just use the L.U.V. approach anytime in any company? if only people did.
3 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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The Southwest Way Of Leadership
*** Disclaimer: While I am an Employee of Southwest Airlines, the views and opinions expressed in this review are my own and in no represent any statement on behalf of the Company. ***
I've been at Southwest for almost 10 years now (and over eight of these in a formal Leadership role), and I hope that I can give you a unique perspective on this book by Ken Blanchard and Colleen Barrett. First what you will find in Lead with LUV is genuine Colleen. I've had the privilege of hearing her speak on a few occasions over the years, and this is spot on in both style and substance. However I think it is more significant that Lead with LUV outlines the way that we really do things at Southwest. In a word this book is authentic.
You may think, "That is all well and good, but why should I be interested in Lead with LUV? Is it worth my time and money?" I think that the answer to this depends on what you hope to gain. What you will not find is a set of instructions that you can follow in order to create a successful company. Lead with LUV is more philosophical in nature, and the authors regularly invite the reader to "STOP AND THINK" after concluding one idea before moving on to the next. The book is written as the transcript of a conversation between the authors. As a result it is very informal and a quick read. However I would caution readers to take their time with it. If you are interested in evaluating yourself and your company in light of the topics listed in the table of contents, then you will find reading Lead with LUV worth your time and money. While you might not agree with everything you read, you will at least be confirmed in your values and way of doing things. Readers looking for something more direct and instructive should try [[ASIN:1422139069 Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down]]. While both books are philosophically consistent, they treat the subject matter with different intent and perspective. Perhaps there is even room on your bookshelf (or Kindle) for both.
Overall: A
3 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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Another Little Gem from Ken Blanchard
Many of us cut our management and leadership teeth of Ken Blanchard's "The One Minute Manager." That little book put him on my radar screen. Since the overwhelming success of that bestseller, he has continued to write, to consult and to study leadership. In his latest collaboration, he has teamed with Colleen Barrett, President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines, to write "Lead with LUV - A Different Way to Create Real Success."
I really enjoyed this book, and found in it much to ponder and to share. I will be giving away multiple copies of this little gem. I find it interesting that in much of my reading about leadership recently - whether the focus be leadership in the military or in the business world, the topics of "love" and "Servant leadership" keep popping up. Clearly, there is a strong movement away from the "Theory X" approach to managing people.
I love the succinct definition of leadership with which the authors begin: "Anytime you seek to influence the thinking, behavior, or development of people in their personal or professional lives, you are taking on the role of a leader." (Page 5)
The format of the book is that Blanchard and Barrett have a protracted conversation about the nature of leadership and how Colleen executed her leadership roles at Southwest. In an early interchange, they are discussing the importance of celebrating positive achievements.
Ken Blanchard: "That's why I think you and I are soul mates, Colleen, because that's one of my core beliefs, too. If someone said to me, 'Ken, from now on you can't teach anything you have taught or written about in the past except one thing; what do you want to hold onto?' I know exactly what it would be. I would want to continue to share the belief that the key to developing people and creating great organizations is to catch people doing things right and accentuate the positive by praising them." (Page 8)
Conversely, the authors talk about taking a loving and constructive approach to correcting inappropriate or sub-optimal performance. In contrast, they caricature the "seagull manager": "Do you fly in, make a lot of noise, dump on people, and then fly out? Or do you deal with people in a straight and loving way as soon as you observe inappropriate behavior?" (Page 12)
I am also seeing a positive trend in the direction of leaders being willing to be both transparent and vulnerable with those in their organization and beyond. The authors address this trait with a pithy quotation: "People admire your strengths, but they respect your honesty regarding your vulnerability." (Page 106)
This is a book well worth reading and passing on to others in your organization or network.
3 people found this helpful
★★★★★
5.0
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Lead with Luv
This is yet another excellent book written by Ken Blanchard with co-writter Colleen Barrett. I know this type of Leadership works, and I just don't understand why Big Business just does not get it. Large Corporations are killing the United States work force. I hope that the book is promoted through the US and every Manager will read it so they may turn into a fantastic Leader. KISS just read it Corp. American, before you put us all under.
