Lessons from a year as an airline CEO

One year ago today I had the honor of accepting the position as Delta’s new chief executive officer. After more than 20 years at Delta, including serving as the company’s president, I felt prepared for the job. But I’ve learned a lot of lessons over the past 12 months that come only from sitting at the CEO’s desk.

The past year has been an exhilarating experience, and I’m thankful to count it among the most successful in the company’s history, due to the hard work of every member of the Delta family. As I reflect on my first year as Delta’s CEO, I thought I would share a few of my thoughts for LinkedIn readers.

Listening is half the job. During my first year, I traveled extensively throughout our worldwide network, meeting with Delta customers, employees and investors. I spent much of that time just listening to their suggestions, complaints, travel stories and most importantly ideas on how we can do our jobs better. I have learned an enormous amount from our frontline employees about the day-to-day work that keeps Delta going around the clock. That feedback has been a valuable tool.

Maintain a constant connection with your people. I frequently appear at employee meetings and celebrations, to listen, talk and sometimes just pose with a colleague for a selfie. But with 80,000 employees, I can’t meet one-on-one with everyone. So I also communicate via weekly videos on our corporate intranet, including a regular series in which I answer questions sent in via email. It’s important to use every tool we have to stay connected.

Empower your team – then get out of the way. I’m fortunate to have the best team in the business at Delta. That’s why one of my goals is always to make sure they have the tools they need to do their jobs. When the right people have the right tools, it’s best to step aside and let them work. Meddling isn’t good management at that point, you’re just getting in the way.

Make diversity part of every day. It is critical to hear from a wide array of voices and a diversity of opinions. You can’t do that unless you’re actively surrounding yourself with colleagues that represent the world, not just one narrow slice of it.

Embrace the audacious. New leaders sometimes focus too much on avoiding mistakes. It’s important to learn how to balance the appropriate amount of caution without missing out on opportunities. For example, later this month Delta is relocating its operation at Los Angeles International Airport – a complex move that we’re conducting while maintaining our daily flight schedule. It’s an ambitious plan that, when completed, will help us better serve our customers in Los Angeles and enable future enhancements and growth in that important market.

Always look ahead – far ahead. As CEO, one of my chief responsibilities is ensuring that the company is strong for the next generation of Delta employees and customers. That means looking beyond short-term results and playing the long game. For example, partnerships we have launched this year with Aeromexico and Korean Air are laying the groundwork for Delta’s long-term growth in Latin America and Asia. And our investments at airports in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and elsewhere are helping to build the airports of the future.

It's OK to stumble, as long as you get up quickly and move forward. Delta is the industry leader in reliability, but weather and technology issues hampered our operations on a few occasions, and we let our people and our customers down. But we took those opportunities to do a deep review of our systems and processes to learn from our mistakes – and we’re working on solutions across our company to reduce and eventually eliminate the chance of it happening again. And transparency with your key stakeholders is essential during that process.

Celebrate your success. When hard work produces good results, it’s important to take the time to celebrate together. We have a big party across our system every year when we pay out our profit-sharing checks, and we also enjoy company block parties in Atlanta and Minneapolis, and smaller events throughout the year. We’re a big family, and so it’s important that not all of our time together is all work.