Sir Richard Branson
Richard Branson is a British national born in 1950 and a renowned businessman and author. He is a self-made billionaire and the founder of the Virgin Group. Being a serial entrepreneur, Richard has several investments in over 400 firms in a different field controlled by the Virgin Group (DuBrin, 2015). His desire for entrepreneurship begun at the age of 16 when he ventured into a magazine called Student. In 1970, he started the Virgin Records, which was later branded Virgin Atlantic airline (Feloni, 2015). As a businessman, Richard has lead in different capacities. Currently, he is the manager of Virgin Group, which made him one of the most influential people across the globe. The purpose of this commentary is to provide a critical examination of Richard Branson’s leadership styles and successes and failures in his leadership.
Niphadkar (2017) noted that Richard launched the Virgin records together with his friend Nik Powel in 1972 that was one of the most successful studios at that time. Due to his good leadership skills, Richard managed to oversee the Virgin Records register an exponential increase in revenues. Later in 1981, Richard ventured into the airline industry, forming the Virgin Atlantic Airways that provided Cargo and Virgin Holyday tour services (Brown, 1988). With a significant increase in his net worth of 5 million Euros in 1988, Richard decided to enter into the communication industry (Boje & Smith, 2010). His entry into telecoms ventures had a worldwide impact due to excellent services that met customer’s needs. Later in 2001, Richard explored space travel through Virgin Media that resulted in the formation of Virgin Galactic space Tourism Company (Shavinina, 2006). From 2008 up to the present date, Richard’s business focus is on hotels and healthcare services. It is also essential to note that Richard is one of the most influential people in the world, holding position 100 across the globe. This is due to his engagement in charitable organizations that help those in need worldwide.
From the above overview, it can be noted that the Virgin Group is a large organization with investments in more than four industries. Managing such a large organization, therefore, requires appropriate leadership skills that can help move the organization forward. Virgin Group is a large organization with operations in various sectors, has many employees that require skillful human resource management. Arnold (2020) revealed that the group has over 71,000 employees working in various sectors such as Banking, healthcare services, and aviation, among others. Due to the high number of employees, human resource management has been the major problem that Richard had to face. Some of the human resource challenges at Virgin Group include leadership development, training and development issues, compensation, and adapting the current technological changes to enhance innovation. Despite several notable progress that Virgin Group has made in space travel, the firm has experienced future uncertainty problems that are not desirable. Currently, the field of space exploration and tourism faces dynamism that takes a lot of time to cope with, which poses threats to Virgin Group’s space business success.
Further, as the leaders in Virgin Group, Richard has to handle competency problems involved in the process of recruiting and hiring of employees. Besides, as leader Richard has to ensure that Virgin Group operations align with current changes in the way business are managed. This requires new strategies and policies in technology, exploring data and customer services. Finally, it is not easy to monitor performance in large organizations such as the Virgin Group, and this may result in financial management challenges.
Despite the challenges that Virgin Group experience, Richard Branson employs a mixture of democratic, participative, and transformational leadership style (Damanska, 2019). The integration of the three leadership styles has moved Virgin Group forward since its launch. First, his democratic leadership styles are evident in the management structure. Despite being the founder of the Virgin Group, Richard left the CEO position to Josh Bayliss, who is mandated to perform all the duties and run the organization. The group subsidiaries such as Virgin Holidays, Galactic, and Atlantics are managed by subsidiary managers whose inputs matter a lot and are reflected in the main branch decision making body (Eagly & Johannesen‐Schmidt, 2001). During an interview with Dan Schawbel, Richard Branson noted that he does not use stringent rules while running the organization but instead gives all employment opportunities to air their views (Schawbel, 2014).
Further, Richard revealed in the interview that he employs a democratic leadership style to allow workers to use their innovative ideas to find a solution to various business problems. Richard Branson has made many attempts to develop a flat organization structure in which workers perform their duties in clusters to attain organizational objectives and goals. Employees at Virgin Group companies describe Richard as a leader who makes fun and friendly. Richard is also easy to share ideas with since he can be reached even by the very junior employee. Dan Schawbel records that Richard is an anti-establishment business environment. He does not set rules and regulations that limit worker ability to provide excellent performance.
Aronson (2001) pointed out that Richard Branson’s leadership style is also participative. It enhances participation and inclusivity of all the relevant parties engaging in the sharing of diverse ideas to come up with the best possible outcome from a situation. Through a participative leadership style, Richard ensures that Virgin Group and its subsidiaries maintain a healthy leader-member relationship. This has enhanced equity in the organization, whereby all employees are considered equal. Richard allows everyone to share their feelings, ideas, suggestions, and feedback about his leadership methods. By listening to what employees have to say, Richard’s leadership style experience continuous improvement. In his participative leadership style, Richard believes that he cannot be as successful as a leader; he has efficient followers. Consequently, Richard recruits employees for his team and maintain a positive relationship with them to listen to their views. By listening to their views and thoughts, he gets innovative ideas that are used to improve organizational performance.
Vroom (2000) argues that to enhance participation to a large dimension, Richard always delegates authority and duties. He believes that the key to attaining organizational goals is to identify the best person for the job and give them the authority to exploit their potential. Further, as a leader, Richard provides the employee with space and freedom to engage in decision making that enhances their performance and instills responsibility in the workers. According to Richard, teamwork essential. He is people-oriented and believes that teamwork is the best channel to help attain organizational objectives. In Virgin Group, teamwork and corporation is the culture of the day. All employees are expected to help each other by sharing ideas and collective performance of a task to realize the desired outcomes. It is vital to note that even though the Virgin Group focuses on teamwork, individual responsibility is prioritized to avoid confusion and smooth task flow. Every employee has his or her job description in which they take full responsibility for accomplishment or failures. The participatory leadership style exercised by Richard prioritizes employee appraisal, recognition, and benefits. The rewards system used in the Virgin Group is a combination of both intrinsic and extrinsic that motivate employees to be more productive.
The transformational leadership style employed by Richard in the Virgin Group is that which produces significant changes in the organization and employees (Singh, Nadim & Ezzedeen, 2012). It has transformed employees by identifying the needed changes and developing guidelines to execute the changes. The implemented modifications transform both the organization and the employees at the same time. By enacting transformation in the organization, Richard, as the leader, has inspired, encouraged, and motivated his employees. Consequently, employees put in their best efforts to innovate and impact changes that initiate new shapes of the organization leading to future success. The transformational leadership style at Virgin Group is evident since Richard has successfully created 400 firms with a similar brand name (Kippenberger, 2002). This implies that Richard employed continuous transformation in line with dynamics in customer needs and preferences. By applying new advancements in technology, Richard conducted successful training and career development programs for the employee to align with market job requirements. He also made appropriate changes in the business using current technology to ensure the gain of competitive advantage over rivals in the industry. In a nutshell, Richard Branson integrated participative, democratic, and transformational leadership styles to maximize employee efforts creating the highest level of labor utility to attain both short-term and long term Virgin Group organization goals and objectives.
The strength of Richard’s leadership style relies on the employee-oriented and leaders-member relationship. The integration of the three techniques focuses on creating a favorable working environment that ensures employees offer their best without interference. Further, as an individual, Richard has strength based on his entrepreneurial skills and experience in the business. Even though Sir Richard Branson left school with no credentials and important qualifications, he used his desire for entrepreneurship to gain knowledge about business management to become one of the most successful businessmen in the world. Another strength and reason for success is Richard’s focus on employee training and career development programs (De Vries, 1996). As a leader, he has ensured that employees undergo continuous training to help equip them with new skills and knowledge need to run business. Being aware of dynamics in the business world, Richard encourages and promotes employee career development programs to equip workers with appropriate skills to operate the business in the current world. Besides, Richard has also focused on an intrinsic employee reward system that does not blur and blocks their critical thinking abilities. By maintaining a good reward system, workers are motivated to work hard and produce the best quality and quantity of work. Using a reward system that enhances equity in all Virgin Group firms has enabled Richard and his human resource management system to maintain a low employee turnover rate. A low employee turnover rate means that there are many retained employees than the newly recruited ones at any given time. High employee retention rates and low employee turnover rates are associated with the high quality of work, increased rate of production, and overall improvement in performance.
In general, Sir Richard’s leadership practice is good and desirable. Nevertheless, if he could apply an adapting approach towards Virgin Group organizational cultures, then the result would be overwhelming. This would ensure that workers develop both formal and informal relations that enhance free interaction. Virgin Group is a large organization; therefore, it employs people from different backgrounds. This means that there is a need to increase the rate of formal and informal relationships between the employees to promote diversity and adaption. Implementing the approach would solve workplace diversity problems related to culture by promoting intercultural adaption and communication. The impact will be increased tolerance, acceptance, and appreciation of diversity at the workplace, which is a significant threat to organizational inclusivity.
In conclusion, Sir Richard Branson is a great leader with excellent leadership styles and skills despite a lack of credential qualifications. Having transformed Virgin Group from Virgin Records to a more substantial and diverse company with over 400 firms in various industries, it is undoubted that Richard is an experienced leader.
References
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Feloni, R. (2015, October 19). Richard Branson explains his ten rules for being a great leader. https://www.businessinsider.com/richard-branson-leadership-rules-2015-10?r=US&IR=T
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