Leading Teams

1

The Challenge

You are director of in-flight services for a major airline, responsible for some 2,000 flight attendants who look after passenger service and cabin safety.

Most of the markets in which your company operates are highly com-petitive. You dominate a few of them, but rank second or third in others. Recently, your load factors (the percentage of available seats actually occupied) slipped a couple of points in some key markets. The vice president of marketing, to whom you report, commissioned a study to find out why. The results reinforced what was found in previous market research. After price and schedule, the most important factor affecting repeat business is the quality of the service passengers receive.

Although your position is ...