Leadership Evaluation of Michael O’Leary: A Ryanair Case Study

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Case study: Evaluation of the leadership of Michael O’Leary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report is based on the article written by Nicola Clark which was published in Newyork
Times in 28th October 2018, titled “Ryanair, Scorned in Europe, Turns on the Charm". This
article was fairly appreciated and praised by people at the time because of its depth on
incidental abstract of O'Leary's life with Ryanair
Being blunt and straight-forward in personality is among the most noticed trait of O'Leary and he
has made a reputation in the market in that sense however, the management skills and
innovative methods for his cost reducing pursuit are still being praised and appreciated which on
a level ensured the growth and success of Ryanair as one of the world's profitable and biggest
airline in terms of passengers carried.
O’Leary that has made Ryanair see the heights at which it is now. According to him, profit-loss
and business fluctuations are not surprising events, they are part of every business
organisation, he said, “we should look beyond these fluctuations and temporary challenges and
focus on what we want to deliver our customers in their paid amount”.

INTRODUCTION
This case study report is an essence of leadership and management purview of Michael
O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, an Ireland based airline known for its cheap fares. Being CEO of
Ryanair for almost 25 years in a row, O’Leary has developed a unique reputation in the industry.
The business strategy and model implemented by him on the airline to provide the cheapest
flight fare possible to people of Ireland and the UK is still a riddle for modern high flying airlines
(White, 2017). He has been criticized for many things he has said over the period and decisions
he took for a projected future of the airline Ryanair. This report will discuss the leadership and
management approach of O’Leary and which among them is dominant in his business sense
and style. The discussion will also include the contribution and efforts that O'Leary has put in
building Ryanair as one of Europe's biggest airlines and a remarkable and fascinating fleet size
with considerable low fare. In his long career as CEO of Ryanair while started from a common
accountant in Ireland O’Leary has come a long way. There are many things to discuss, judge
and criticise him for his statements and acts but with a small review of his character based on
this, the discussion will keep its focus on the leadership traits in O’Leary which has led him to
what he is now, a riches person of his country and a king in providing cheap air travel, reaching
to the heart of middle-class families of the area.

DISCUSSION
CASE STUDY BACKGROUND
The case study is based on this article published in Newyork Times by Nicola Clark in 2013
regarding the depriving business of Ryanair in Europe while coming up with ambitious ideas and
plans. The article has focused operations of Ryanair in London and the role of O'Leary in taking
the business on his shoulders while moving on a bumping road. The article begins with the
personal sketching of O’Leary along with his decisions for Ryanair’s future plans and growth
perspectives. Clark has used many fancy terms in his article while describing O’Leary’s
personality and has mentioned small dialogues and comments said by O’Leary which have put
him in limelight many times. According to Clark, the reputation of O'Leary is only the result of his
outspoken character and "weird" business model. The article is concluded on a suggestive
remark for O'Leary about his choice of words in public speaking, that he should be more
sophisticated while communicating with people (Clark, 2013).
MICHAEL O'LEARY: A LEADER AND A MANAGER
Michael O’Leary is an Irish billionaire and chief executive officer of Ryanair, an airline famous
for its low fare flights across Europe with a fleet size of staggering 438 aircraft. Keeping himself
in news and a blazing topic of discussion, debate and mockery among news podcasts and in
business streets, O’Leary has admittedly made his public reputation, known to all (White, 2017).
In his 25 years old career as an airline operator and executive personality in Ryanair, O’Leary
has seen many ups and downs along with Ryanair and while he suffers huge criticism on many
of the issues he later felt sorry, it has also helped him in gaining a distinct image and growth to
his business. He has been called the opposite of Sir Richard Branson who is also famous for
branding his business by branding himself (Nwagbara, 2011). The management insights from
his work and results have been used by many struggling airlines to build themselves stronger.
Although regarding his leadership style, highly directed towards encouraging his employees for
more efficiency and cost savings in every possible place has been praised and condemned in
different situations by different people and communities (Thomas, 2015).
On a positive note, even in the dark shadow of Brexit on the European market and the entire
airline industry, O'Leary kept fighting with consistency. According to the article Ryanair had
seen that fall in net profit in 2013 after decades of being the most profitable airline, all thanks to

Brexit vote. Being an accountant for a long time O'Leary knew how to make corrections and
save money in business operations and he used his skills with his all new business model
specifically designed according to the aircraft he owned and customer he targeted (Govers,
2011). In his perception which evidently does not share by a majority of people, his air services
were "immaculate and phenomenal”. The article criticises this notion made by O’Leary in a
sarcastic way. However, in the same discussion, Clark also says that O'Leary's "explosive
growth" and highly cost-effective business model has fiercely transformed airline business of
entire Europe, making it competitive than ever and more robust. Ryanair was founded by
another Irish billionaire named Tony Ryan in 1985 and in the leadership of Michael O’Leary, it
has been reached from 80,000 customers to 80 million (Forbes, 2018).
A leader does not manage its employees but it gives them the freedom to evolve and flourish on
their own while contributing towards cumulative growth of the company. O'Leary may not be
stand firm on this statement about an ideal leader and he may have known for managing the
employees but he did that in his unique way ensuring the growth of the company making it
among the most profitable airlines in the world. A major defect in the leadership of O’Leary
which can be identified from Clark's article is that his decisions are not thoroughly analysed and
neither have they suggested the use of democratic leadership style by O’Leary (Gwyther, 2015).
Just from the decisions like “standing-room seats” in Boing 737s and charging extra for
overweight people etc., it can be understood that he used a clear autocratic leadership or
authoritarian approach for executive-level decisions (Clark, 2013).
Twitter has contributed significantly to the life of O'Leary, providing him with a perfect place to
speak and put his radical thoughts in front of the public. He has been criticised for many of his
tweets where he said something irrelevant and totally out of context things for others and on
general notes (Clark, 2013).
Although the leadership style of O'Leary is not very fruitful and appreciable as can be observed
from a series of small life events and decisions he took, his management is evidently
phenomenal. He knows how to get things done and in exactly the way he wants them to be.
Being an accountant he learned critical points of cost-cutting in various operations and he
realised where the customer is paying more and they shouldn't have (Ruddock, 2008). He did
person analysis and assessment on all such factors and places where he could save fare cost
of the aircraft and came up with the business model which is still an interesting topic of
discussion for management scholars in every field.

However, the management of O'Leary has also been questioned in many events where his
airline Ryanair left its passengers on their own device in the event of strikes, volcanic activities
and bad weather etc.
ROLE OF O’LEARY IN THE GROWTH OF RYANAIR
The low-cost model developed by O'Leary is said to be originated by Southwest Airlines.
O'Leary put intense efforts in that model to customise it and made it perfectly compatible with
his business and airlines. In his interview with Sunday Times he said that while other companies
keep asking him on how he managed to provide that cheap a flight cost, he always said that his
attempts are not on how to reduce cost but asks himself how to get rid of them. He did many
compromises in cost-cutting and the business model he envisioned used onboard shopping
receipts, car hire, internet gaming, booking hotels by the passengers to recover revenue of seat
bookings etc. He also made a deal with various airport authorities and owners' negotiating on
landing fees of Ryanair's aircraft. He has the role of CEO of Ryanair Airline since 1994 and has
a history of working with the founder of Ryanair, Tony Ryan (Forbes, 2018). During his tenure,
Ryanair ran from 400 flights daily to over 2000 flights in 33 countries in Europe, Middle East and
Africa (Clark, 2013).
The business model presented by new airlines such as Virgin Airlines provided luxury services
in their flights and at normal costs which obviously higher than Ryanair but within the budget of
the common man for small distance travels. This business model changed the perception of air
travellers in Europe and even through Ryanair had a record of cheap and punctual flights, it was
not enough. A million of passengers group, who was avoiding Ryanair on the count of quality
service requirement, was becoming the reason of slowly progressing loss of Ryanair and
O'Leary knew that. O'Leary said that it is a common incident in the airline industry and the
history of the airline has witnessed many greater challenges (Box and Byus, 2007). It has been
noticed in many incidents that O’Leary used his employees for bringing disrupting changes in
airline operations for example when he gave freedom to the airport staff and cabin crew to
“deal” with heavy and overweight luggage of customers. Evidently, he has loyalty and command
on his employees which made it possible to run the business with such strategy making Ryanair
am profitable and successful airline (Olischer and Dörrenbächer, 2013).
Bringing the air travel cost down to nearly half and even lower in some cases O’Leary broke the
airline market and started a race where all other new airlines started to compete with each other
on the same ground. This strategy made Ryanair gain a huge market share in the record time

and at one point becoming the biggest airline by the number of passengers in Europe.
According to experts such as the London based aviation consultant Chris Tarry, the business
strategy of Ryanair needed to attract people who are willing to pay more than its average
customer pay (Clark, 2013). O'Leary admittedly said that Ryanair is trying to accommodate
business class travellers with their new set of benefits on the name of premium class flight
experiences like priority boarding and seat reservation. In the article Clark said that O'Leary
knew and realised finally that his outspoken personality and taking decisions without peer-
reviewed by at least his associates has impacted his business enough and he should work on
building that. Although there are many criticism based article has been written on the personality
of O'Leary but there are many people who believe that it is the hard work and dedication with a
clear goal and vision of CEO O’Leary which have made him a legendary CEO (Clark, 2005).
REVIEW OF O’LEARY’S LEADERSHIP STYLE
O’Leary’s leadership style as discussed in the above part is found out to be autocratic based on
a number of reasons like his decisions which looks like he has not given it a chance to be
second-guessed. Second guessing is important in a leadership process, one must know what
he doesn't know and what he should know to deal which certain situation (Creaton, 2007).
O'Leary was found unaware of this and took many out of context and unnecessary decision in
his life and he got what he sowed. His leadership style has been put on a question many times
especially in the events of strikes among the airline employees at the airport and in his company
as well. According to O'Leary, in the airline business and air travellers, what matters the most to
customers is a good deal based on the price they have to pay (Gwyther, 2015). He says
travelling is something people have to do and they have no choice in it so they feel very
unsatisfied when they have to pay prices for something they don’t want to do (White, 2017). In
an article, his leadership style was even called aggressive, however not in terms of that he
behaved and handled his employees aggressively but the decisions he took in aggression which
was totally uncalled for. The major source of his problems along with Ryanair’s problems was
his autocratic-aggressive leadership style (Thomas, 2015).
Due to this style, he also suffered a common problem in this case which is employee turnover.
In the year 2008, he saw a huge turnover of inexperienced employees from the airline operation
bringing the airline almost on the verge of collapse. In his company, according to an internal
report the pilots had to pay a hefty amount of 25k Euros to get training where they were not
being paid too. For almost 6 months the pilots had to pay their own accommodation and food
expenses, which seems very unfair in comparison to other airlines and their treatment with their

employees and especially pilots. O'Leary is still known to have no care for his employees and
his main focus remains to earn high profit from the airline while keeping low-cost flight tickets.
The issue of employee welfare is quite related to his leadership style and hence necessary to
discuss while reviewing O'Leary's leadership style.

CONCLUSION
Michael O’Leary is not an ideal CEO or a leader in many aspects but he has made a sinking
airline with huge capabilities in the most profitable and among the largest airlines of the world
with more than 2000 flights in a day. Shareholders of the company have however been quite
satisfied with the growth and the profit they were earning from Ryanair’s shares but the
personality and outspoken nature of O'Leary with his fairly unjustified decision for cost-cutting
have made a complex image of him in public along with impacting the brand image of Ryanair
as well. While Ryanair needed to enter in the prime league of the airline with facilitating quality
and luxury services to its customers at a marginal price which was what other airlines were
doing, Ryanair was still working on its cheap fare model. Various techniques which were later
adopted by him in his pursuit of cost-cutting made him realised the mistake he was making. On
a conclusive remark, O’Leary used an autocratic-aggressive leadership style for his endeavours
which has taken its toll on the growth aspects of Ryanair and his personal image.

REFERENCES
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