Sir. Richard Branson Leadership Style (Research Paper Sample)

Leadership of Richard Branson
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Leadership of Richard Branson
Richard Branson, the founder and CEO of the Virgin Group, one of the world’s most prominent global brands. At only the age of 17, he founded the Virgin Group in the 1970s after he dropped out of school so as to concentrate on his business. 20 years later (the 1990s), the Virgin brand had become one of the top 50 brands in the world. Through his leadership, the Virgin Group became a diversified group of more than 200 private companies, with Virgin Atlantic being the largest. The Virgin brand is associated with efficiency and high-quality services. According to Jean et al. (2007), the group reports sales of over US$5 billion annually and employs over 55,000 people. Virgins’ success has been attributed to Branson’s innovative, entrepreneurial ideas, as well as, his leadership style. This essay will discuss Richard Branson’s characteristics and leadership style.
The key elements of Branson’s leadership include; team oriented transformational leadership, the ‘family’ culture, and extensive public relations.
Virgin’s leadership style is comparable to the team management style. Leaders motivate the employees to work together and do better while treating them with respect. The leadership institutes a casual working atmosphere that makes the employees feel at home while they are at work. Interpersonal relationship with and among top managers is also emphasized. This way, the executive can know when to clear the way and allow other people get on with it. As such, the capable, high talented people surrounding Branson, enjoy the freedom to achieve their organizational goals. This type of leadership encourages innovation and efficiency. It allows the employees to enjoy their work while maintaining accountability (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010).
The Virgin Group culture is a worldwide phenomenon. Highfield, the HR Director at Blue’s Virgin Australia, describes it as being a ‘family,' characterized by fun and dynamism. Indeed, work is fun at Virgin. Such a culture treats all staffs with equal regards, and everyone does what is necessary to keep the business expanding. This type of culture was demonstrated by the establishment of Virgin Blues when highly regarded managers went to Australia to save the company during the start-up stage. The managers comfortably slept on rubber mattresses in shared accommodation with the rest of the top managers (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010). This just shows the family-like, work is fun, culture associated with Branson's leadership.
Branson’s leadership is not only media friendly but is also transparent to the company’s stakeholders and the public. In his article "Richard Branson’s 5 Elements of a Perfect Pitch," Gallo (2014) describes Branson’s PR communications as "particular, concrete and confident." Therefore, Branson’s leadership can convince investors and other stakeholders that it is worth to invest in Virgin Group. Branson is also able to convince stakeholders that the growth at Virgin is sustainable. Using his PR communication strategies, he actually demonstrates bench strength.
To some extent, these unique qualities of Branson’s leadership have helped the company face key challenges associated with the management of MNCs. Such challenges include workforce diversity issues, teamwork challenges, and the challenges of operating in many business industries.
They help the management at Virgin focus on maximizing and capitalizing on labor force diversity since such a workforce is associated with a high level of innovation. In particular, the ‘family’ culture plays a vital role in fostering smooth operation of Virgin's culturally diverse workforce. Virgin’s leadership attributes have been significant in controlling workforce diversity. This is because, workforce diversity without proper handling could be counterproductive, especially when employees are treated unfairly on the basis of their cultural background, nationality, race, and ethnicity among others (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010). Additionally, through teamwork, the 200 companies, and 400 brands within the Virgin family are appropriately managed to yield Virgin's high-quality notion and customer experience. Notably, a multinational and multifaceted corporation such as Virgin Group is constantly looking for diversity by employing individuals from across cultures, in order to become more competitive in the global market. The coming together of individuals with different traditions, religions, origins, and beliefs bring different talents and perspectives to the organization, and this has been crucial in Virgin’s expansion into various innovative businesses. In other words, all the aforementioned unique aspects of Richard Branson’s leaderships make it easier for the management to meet Virgin Group’s particular organizational needs.
The management of Virgin Group can be complicated since this multinational company has no particular industry of operation. The company is highly diversified and as such, it makes investments whenever favorable opportunities emerge. The organization operates in the transportation industry, telecommunication industry, travel and tourism industry, financial services, leisure, music, publishing, retailing, and health and wellness (Virgin.com). Obviously, it is not easy to manage all these brands, unless one has excellent PR communication skills to convince potential investors that the company has expertise to succeed in all of them. This is where Branson’s leadership PR communication comes in handy. The company’s growth into a multifaceted organization with multiple outlets around the world can be attributed to the management’s ability to lure investors from different areas of business.
Branson mainly employs two motivation methods, which are autonomy and feedback. According to Early (2005), these motivation techniques are based on the simple school of thought that happy people are productive people. Branson encourages the managers to run the business "as if it’s their own" (Kelly and McGowen, 2010, p210). He treats his employees with respect and institutes a casual atmosphere that makes it easier for employees to give and receive feedback. Branson once stated that "we want employees who feel involved and prepared to express dissatisfaction where necessary" (Kelly and McGowen, 2010, p210). From this statement, Branson believes that feedback, including constructive criticism is an indispensable asset that should be encouraged.
Branson’s ideal approach is not likely to work in a different organization setting. This is because his leadership style is deeply rooted in his personal character. According to Jean et al. (2007), some regard Branson’s behavior and sense of humor that dominates his leadership, as extreme and reckless. However, putting his character aside, his management principles can ideally be implemented in a different organizational setting. For instance, employee and customer excellence, the ‘work is fun’ philosophy, leading from the rear, and ‘herding the cats’ to name a few. However, organizations, that may try to exercise the level of autonomy that Branson exercises, may find themselves failing, particularly if the employees are not properly motivated to take complete responsibilities.
With his charisma, among other attributes, Richard Branson can communicate his vision of the company to the relevant stakeholders. Manz and Sims (2001) describe Branson’s leadership as an extension of his personality. He has a great deal of direct personal communication with his employees and a reputation for being accessible. He believes in decentralization and per se, lateral communication is the norm at Virgin. His idea of a boundaryless organization makes him a great corporate leader who can reach out and inspire all stakeholders. Consequently, he has been able to create a network of people who freely collaborate and assist each other while in the meantime experiencing fun and excitement. This makes it easy to nurture Virgin’s organizational culture and vision of becoming a world-class, high performing company.
Given the chance to work at Virgin Group as a manager, I would use the following criterion to determine if Richard Branson’s leadership is a good fit for me. As an advocate of team management, transformational and transactional leadership, I would look at his ability to nurture task identity, task significance, skills, autonomy, and feedback. This criterion would give me an idea of whether I would feel motivated to work in the organization. Task identity implies that workers do complete tasks with definite beginning and ending. Task significance suggests that workers understand the impact of the task on others. Nurturing skills implies that the leader nurtures talents and creativity and allows employees to use a range of competencies. Autonomy means that workers have the freedom and authority regarding their jobs. A leader, who supports feedback, ensures that workers receive explicit, frequent information about their performance. Richard Branson utilizes an unusual leadership style, which is a mix of different leadership styles including transformational and transactional. Branson style is to motivate his followers to do better. Therefore, I think I would comfo...