In an industry where 90% of airlines have filed for bankruptcy, Southwest Airlines maintained profitability for 45 consecutive years. Their secret? A culture built around one simple question that transforms conflict into strength.

Through operational efficiency and a distinctive employee-first culture, co-founder Herb Kelleher and his successors led Southwest Airlines on a remarkable 45-year profitability streak. They are known for their FUN-luving attitude (one of their actual core values) and a corporate culture where employees take themselves lightly, but their jobs seriously.

But getting to that point was difficult, and in the book, The Southwest Airlines Way, Brandeis University Professor Jody Hoffer Gittell shares the story of the one-sentence question that created the winning team culture at Southwest Airlines.

But why was that question necessary?

Autonomy is necessary, but can cause conflict

From the very beginning, they had wanted an independent work culture, giving employees as much decision-making autonomy as possible. But at times that culture was interfering with their strategic advantage of efficiency. It took a lot of coordination to have their planes spending less time on the ground than the competition. That fast pace and the times when the planes didn’t get back in the air fast enough created relational conflicts and finger-pointing.

Before Southwest, it was just expected that pilots, gate agents, and flight attendants didn’t often get along. And that’s to say nothing of the people on the ground. Southwest didn’t want to prevent conflict, they wanted to use it to build relationships.

So they created a report that employees could fill out if they felt like someone didn’t handle something properly. Those reports would go from frontline employee to senior managers of their department, and on to the CEO. Employees were filling them out and managers were occasionally reading them, but rarely getting back to the employee. So they weren’t resolving conflicts as intended.

The one question

Until they added a line to the report. “If it involved a Southwest employee, have you discussed it with him or her?” If the answer was no, the employee was encouraged to have a little chat with that person. That led to two benefits that transformed their culture.

1. Forcing employees to resolve conflicts together created the stronger relationships that were the foundation of Southwest’s enviable culture.
2. Learning from those conflicts improved work processes in real time. Employees didn’t want conflict, so they fixed the processes that caused conflict without having to ask anyone for permission.

What happened when employees didn’t work things out – when conversations magnified rather than resolved conflict? Southwest managers could step in to help, but they also took it as a sign that those people probably didn’t belong at Southwest.

Which is exactly how you build a great company culture. You define the expectation and the people who don’t fit are encouraged to find another place to work.

Three Ways to Implement Southwest’s Conflict Resolution Approach

1. Create a Simple Conflict Resolution Framework. Introduce a streamlined reporting process that requires employees to answer “Have you discussed this with the person involved?” before escalation. Provide basic conversation starters for uncomfortable discussions.
2. Train and Model Direct Communication. Hold sessions on healthy conflict resolution and ensure leadership visibly demonstrates proper conflict handling. Recognize team members who resolve issues constructively.
3. Link Conflict Resolution to Performance Management. Include conflict handling in performance reviews and company values. Identify employees who consistently avoid direct communication as potential culture misfits, while rewarding those who strengthen relationships through effective conflict resolution.