Southwest CEO Bob Jordan shared that he was brought to tears as he grappled with the decision to lay off around 1,750 employees earlier this year — the first such action in the airline’s 54-year history.
Jordan’s comments came during an interview with leadership author David Novak on the How Leaders Lead podcast.
“As we processed the layoff, I had a lot of times where I was sitting in my office crying, to be honest, crying about the decision,” Jordan said. “Not crying as in making that decision, but just the difficulty it was going to be for our people.”
He described the layoffs, announced in February, as necessary to streamline operations and reduce overhead, primarily affecting employees at the carrier’s headquarters and in leadership roles.
The layoffs were part of a broader plan to cut $1 billion in costs, doubling an initial $500 million target.
“So we eliminated functions that we decided we just don’t need any longer. Two different departments doing the same thing, put them together, layers of leadership that we just didn’t need … because those layers add more and more decision making and more and more meetings and more and more process,” he continued.
Jordan said he accepted full responsibility for the decision. “If folks are upset, be mad at Bob because Bob made the decision,” he said. He emphasized that the airline aimed to carry out the layoffs “the Southwest way.”
When asked how he manages stress during challenging periods, he described his approach as focusing on the work itself. “I’m probably an oddball in this because I’ve not ever been a stress person. What I do in tough situations is go to work. My outlet is to go do the work,” he said.
“There’s no one that can be accountable for something like a job layoff other than the CEO,” Jordan added. “You’ve gotta be truthful about the reasons, you gotta take care of people, and then you gotta be accountable.”
