Art and Practices of Leadership

Leadership style of

Sir RICHARD BRANSON

Submitted By:

Dhruv Bansal

16/2013

Instructor

MAJ. GEN. (RETD.) G.G. DWIVEDI

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Introduction

This is a story that begins on July 18, 1950 in Shamley Green, Surrey, England. Growing up in a traditional family, Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson struggled throughout school due to an as of yet undiagnosed problem of dyslexia. He excelled in sports, serving as the captain of both his school’s football and cricket teams, but it was in business that he found his true calling. Despite failing in two early ventures – growing Christmas trees and raising Australian parrots – he was determined to create his own successful business.

Leadership skills were mainly part of his character though he went through tough times but his leading characteristics appeared at a younger age as well where at the age of 16 he founded a school magazine and called it “the student”. That magazine was the bedrock of his achievements and all his businesses where the success of the magazine pledged him to go further in the market and he became interested in music records and he founded the Virgin records in 1973 with assistance of young artist but his management skills and commitment to work and great leadership captured the attention of famous names in the music industry who became willing work with him like the Rolling Stones. The success of Virgin Records had been continued and Mr. Branson has been able to use the revenues in other investments and business expansions where the Voyager group; a travel company had been founded in 1980 and then followed by Virgin Atlantic; an air carrier and the last one was the Virgin Galactic; a themed business that provides outer space tourism tours to rich people where this idea is still new but yet the demand on it is very high. His consistency and commitment to work and his great leadership skills had made Mr. Branson a Billionaire and in addition to this he is an active person in the society and he is involved in many environmental and ecological causes. As certification for his leadership and achievements he had been awarded many times among which being named a Sir by her majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom. Today, Sir Richard Branson has more than 300 companies under the Virgin portfolio.

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Early Leadership Lessons

As much as the Branson name is tied to the Virgin brand, it is also connected to the success of 350 very different operations. Branson is as a person is related to whom he is as a leader and the identity of his companies. Branson believes that his leadership style has its origins in his upbringing, where his parents taught him to stand on his own feet. At age six, his mother would shove him out of the car and tell him to try to find his own way home. At age 10, she put her son on a bike to ride 300 miles. These lessons built character as well as endurance, says Branson, and also leadership qualities.

Branson believes he learned leadership through trial and error, since founding his first company, Student magazine, at age 16. What is the most important quality of a good leader? "Having a personality of caring about people is important," he says. "You can’t be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them." He reinforces that message with all his CEOs and top managers.

Beyond Branson's philosophy of leadership are the actual nuts and bolts. How does a man who owns 350 companies get it all done? Branson places enormous value on time management skills. As chairman of a large group of firms, Branson says he spends about a third of his time on trouble shooting, another third on new projects, both charitable and business, and the last third on promoting and talking about the businesses he has set up. He also makes time for family and vacation. How Branson allots his time relates closely to the values of his corporation. "I’ve had to create companies that I believe in 100%," says Branson. "These are companies I feel will make a genuine difference. Then I have to be willing to find the time myself to talk about them, promote them and market them. I don’t want to spend my life doing something that I’m not proud of." Branson leverages that philosophy even further by using his business skills and those of his employees and managers to tackle social issues around the world.

He learned early on to develop his delegation skills. "As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation," says Branson. "I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me."

Branson has been tagged as a "transformational leader" in the management lexicon, with his maverick strategies and his stress on the Virgin Group as an organization driven on informality and information, one that is bottom-heavy rather than strangled by top-level management.

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A Young, Fun Culture

In order for this process to work, employees must be happy. Branson says his philosophy of "look for the best and you'll get the best" helped him build an empire recognized for its young, fun culture. "For the people who work for you or with you, you must lavish praise on them at all times," Branson says. "If a flower is watered, it flourishes. If not, it shrivels up and dies. Its much more fun looking for the best in people. People don’t need to be told where they’ve slipped up or made a mess of something. They’ll sort it out themselves." Branson feels strongly that if an employee is not excelling in one area of the company, he or she should be given the opportunity to do well in a different Virgin Group job. Firing is seldom an option.

Motivational strategies extend to innovative ideas. The key to encouraging innovation within the Virgin ranks, suggests Branson, is to listen to any and all ideas and to offer feedback. Employees often leave companies, he reasons, because they are frustrated by the fact that their ideas fall on deaf ears. Interaction between employees and managers is fundamental. For the companies in which he serves as both chief executive and chairman, Branson writes his staff "chitty-chatty" letters to tell them everything that is going on and to encourage them to write him with any ideas or suggestions. He gives them his home address and phone number. He responds with a letter personally, even if he doesn't follow up and deal with the details. Sometimes people come to him with personal problems, while others have suggestions for improvements in their companies. Either way, they get the chance to be heard.

And then, of course, there are occasions when the boss needs to connect with employees while leaning up against a bar. "Some 80% of your life is spent working," says Branson. "You want to have fun at home; why shouldn’t you have fun at work? I think leaders have got to make a bigger effort to make sure the people who work for them are enjoying what they’re doing. If a chairman of a company visits Seattle, that chairman should take all the staff out in the evening and have a few drinks together, talk together and party together and not be embarrassed about the staff seeing the weaker side of you. They don’t lose respect for you because they see your human side. They actually gain more respect for you."

Building Trust

Branson has developed a level of trust with his top managers by setting the direction and then stepping back to let them navigate. "I come up with the original idea, spend the first three months immersed in the business so I know the ins and outs and then give chief executives a stake in the company and ask them to run it as if its their own," explains Branson. "I intervene as little as possible. Give them that, and they will give everything back."

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Trust in managers and employees is particularly important as Branson looks to build Virgin. Adding more companies to the cache makes it that much more difficult to be everywhere at once. Yet, for Branson, expansion is always a priority. "Virgin is an unusual brand," he notes, because it is a "way of life" brand, unlike Western brands like Coca-Cola or Nike that focus on one type of product. Virgin challenges big businesses in completely different sectors. "In Nigeria, we’ve been asked to set up a national airline," he explains. "In India, were going to build a phone company. In South Africa, the financial services industry is still stuck 30 years back with incredibly high prices. We are looking at getting in there and shaking up the industry. In America, we’re looking at space travel. Around the world were looking at taking the brand into a number of different industries. Our criterion is, will it fulfill the Virgin yardstick of being good value for the money? Will it enhance the brand by bringing great quality? Will we have fun doing it and can we make it profitable? If those criteria work, then we’ll seriously look at a new industry."

When asked what motivates him to grow now that he has money and fame, Branson says he sees his own life as the long university education he never had. "Every day I meet new people, challenging them and being challenged." Virgin is poised, he believes, to make a real difference. "Because I don’t see Virgin as a company but as a way of life and I fully enjoy it, I don’t think Ill ever retire," says Branson. "The world is a big place - and we’re going into space, which is an even bigger place. In the next stage of my life I want to use our business skills to tackle social issues around the world. There are issues that rage that should never have gotten out of control. Malaria in Africa kills four million people a year. AIDS kills even more. There are numerous other problems, as well. That’s something I plan to do. I don't want to waste this fabulous situation in which I've found myself." On 21 September 2006, Branson pledged to invest the profits of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains in research for environmentally friendly fuels. The investment is estimated to be worth $3 billion

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Leadership Lessons from Sir Richard Branson

1. Listening is one of the most important skills that anyone can have. That’s a very Virgin trait. Listening enables us to learn from each other, from the marketplace, and from the mistake that must be made in order to get anywhere that is original and disruptive. “I learn so much from guests and employees that way”, Mr. Branson Exclaimed.

2. Learn: Learning and leadership go together. According to Branson, “Too much credit goes to him for what he have achieved at Virgin but the successes happen from working and learning with some of the world’s most inspiring and inspired people.”

3. Laughter: Sir Richard says, “My number one rule in business, and in life, is to enjoy what you do.” Running a business involves long hours and hard decisions; if you don’t have the passion to keep you going, your business will more than likely fail. If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, then you shouldn’t be doing it.

4. Follow your passions. Branson has never been someone to back down from an idea because others criticized him for it and admires those who take the risk on something extraordinary.That said, Branson never jumps into a project that will ruin him if it fails. It's a lesson he learned from his father, who allowed him to drop out of school to start a magazine as long as he sold enough advertising to cover the cost of printing.He uses the investing term "protecting the downside" to describe this limiting of risk, and it's how he convinced his business partners to join him in making the huge leap into the airline industry in 1984.

5. Believe in your business. "A passionate belief in your business and personal objectives can make all the difference between success and failure. If you aren't proud of what you're doing, why should anybody else be?" Branson writes.

6. Don't give up. Whether he's developing a commercial space flight line or breaking a world record in a hot air balloon, Branson is always in pursuit of a difficult challenge to overcome.Like any other entrepreneur, he's failed at times - like when he tried to take on Coca-Cola with Virgin Cola or had to close the Virgin Megastore - but he's always moved on to another venture, all the wiser.Not all bets can result in a huge success, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't make them.

About Richard Branson & his Belief’s6

Branson's SkillsPublic relations genius - he understands what the media wants and gives it to them. He is likeable. He knows when to disappear

Branson on BusinessYour name, your brand is your promise. Don't let inexperience stop you. Don't go into a market just to make money - passionately believe that you can turn it on its head. Money is a way of measuring achievement.

SuccessLittle things matter. Move with the times. Follow your instincts. Leap before you look. Constantly review new opportunities. Constantly look for and respond to feedback. Position yourself as the small guy. Stand up and be counted.

NegotiationHaggle, everything is negotiable. Persuade others that they are getting the best part of the deal. Ask for more than anyone else would dare. Realize where the value of the deal really lies. Be patient. Learn when to talk, when to be silent, when to press and when to walk away

ValuesFor the Virgin brand - Value for money - first class at a business class price. Quality, reliability. Innovation and fun. For new markets - Best quality, innovative, value for money, challenging to existing alternatives, are fun and have a sense of cheekiness.

The Virgin Brand

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Richard Branson has created one of the most recognizable brands in the world. In Britain where he focuses much of his attention, Branson has managed to "Virginize" a very wide range of products and services. The variety of businesses he controls is as vast as the geographical coverage the brand has, with business located throughout The United Kingdom, the United States of America, Australia, Canada, Asian, Europe and South Africa.Some of the businesses Branson has collected include:

Virgin Atlantic - An international airline flying to many major destinations. Virgin Megastores - Music Super-markets located in major locations in the UK,

USA and Australia. Virgin Books - Publisher and distributor of books. Virgin Credit Card - Branson's attempt to provide credit card at a reasonable

price. Virgin Holidays - Book a holiday and fly Virgin Atlantic? Virgin Trains - Virgin making trains sexy in the United Kingdom. V2 Music - Largest UK based independent recording label. Virgin Active - Chain of fitness clubs throughout the United Kingdom. Virgin Galactic - Branson's planned affordable flight to space venture. Ulusaba - Luxury game reserve located in South Africa. Necker Island - Branson's own private island located in the British Virgin

Islands.

There are plenty more businesses that wear the Virgin name throughout the world and there will probably be more to come as Branson is always looking for an interesting business to start.

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Quotes By Sir Richard Branson:

You shouldn’t blindly accept a leader’s advice. You’ve got to question leaders time to time.

Money is a poor indicator of success.

You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.

Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.

The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.

The best way of learning about anything is by doing it.

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Conclusion

To learn about this Virgin Knight is to understand more about a man who has refused to follow convention, who has pursued and achieved his dreams his way, and who seems to have had more fun than most along the way. His biography is not a typical story of business success. Branson has used eccentric means and traveled unconventional roads to get to where he is today, but sitting atop a fortune of almost $4.8 billion, few can question his entrepreneurial savvy. In this report we had stated the leadership skills of Sir Richard Branson in a descriptive way where we donated more to his traits than considering the theories of leadership but yet we stated that he is more closed to the transformational leadership than other leadership schools. Sir Branson had always been an active man where it is most likely to state that he didn’t gather his wealth yet it is better to mention that he build it up because he founded each company separately and also he was hiring motivated people and give them stake in the company and make them partners so that they give everything to the company and that he can assure the success. He is a good listener and appreciates initiation of ideas by other people and also he has quick response to decision making where he doesn’t mention that he ever regret a decision but he states that sometimes he made mistakes and he learnt from them. Sir Branson like other leaders has strengths and weaknesses where is good in decision making and troubleshooting but at the same time he doesn’t have enough time for family and though he had made many achievements in his life and his career and become a billionaire and Sir but yet he is still regretting the time when he was involved in drugs and consider it a bad time of his life and a black point in his white history.

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