Good morning. As Delta Air Lines celebrates its 100th anniversary, CEO Ed Bastian reflects on the leadership lessons he has learned during his tenure.
In a fireside chat with Barbara Humpton, CEO of Siemens USA, at the Economic Club of Washington D.C.’s event on Wednesday, Bastian said he was 25 years old “before I stepped foot on an airplane.” He traveled from LaGuardia Airport in New York to Chicago for business. Bastian often mentions this experience in commencement speeches to encourage graduates that their futures are unlimited. As a college student, he had never flown on an airplane, so he never imagined he would one day lead a global airline.
Humpton highlighted Bastian’s longstanding rise at Delta by taking a look back: “It’s 1998, the millennium is approaching,” she began. “We’ve got Google, this new company that’s just started. Celine Dion is topping the Billboard charts that year, and Ed Bastian joins Delta as VP of finance.”
Bastian served as CFO for several years before becoming president and then CEO in 2016. In these roles, he has helped guide Delta through 9/11, bankruptcy, the COVID pandemic, and now a century of business.
Reflecting on leading the Fortune 500 company for almost 10 years, Bastian shared some key lessons:
What has changed the most is the need to manage many constituencies—shareholders, customers, government, community partners, and, most importantly, employees, he explained. Everything seems to move at hyper speed, and that’s changed dramatically over the last 10 years, he said.
There’s no manual for it; you have to be in the game, learning as you go, Bastian said. “Stakeholder management is one of the most important things CEOs do.”
At Delta, he’s responsible for 100,000 employees. “I’m proud of how the company got through COVID; we didn’t have a playbook for the pandemic,” Bastian said. He emphasized that during such moments, you must ensure you’re taking everyone with you and keep people moving forward.
One way to do that is to portray a positive vision for the future—people want to follow leaders who can guide them somewhere meaningful, he said. As CEO, you must think about what 20, 30, or even 100 years from now will look like, Bastian said. “You can’t delegate that to a planning department,” he said. “You can’t delegate that to a board.” An effective CEO must believe in and embody that vision every day, he added.
A recent Fortune cover story by my colleague Shawn Tully explores how Bastian’s leadership has boosted Delta’s bottom line and reinforced stakeholder alignment.
