Every leader has a unique, personal style. Few people, however, stand out like Richard Branson, the adventurer, author, and founder of the Virgin Group.
Trying to follow Richard Branson’s leadership style would exhaust most businesspersons, but he seems to have a wealth of energy that makes him one of the most exciting entrepreneurs in the world.
While you almost certainly cannot duplicate Richard Branson’s leadership style, you can learn from his approach to management.
What Type of Leader Is Richard Branson?
Richard Branson likes to emphasize that he never learned the rules of running a success business. It’s not surprising, then, that he never learned to fit into a specific style of leadership. Instead, his leadership style comes from his personality and learning from his own mistakes. He constantly takes risks to see what works and what doesn’t work.
While Branson doesn’t fit into a specific category, his style does show characteristics of:
- Transformational leadership
- Visionary leadership
- Servant leadership
- Laissez-faire leadership
Branson would likely laugh at any of these suggestions, but his decades of leadership speak for themselves.
Is Richard Branson a Laissez-Faire Leader?
In a way, Richard Branson is a laissez-faire leader because he believes in letting people learn from their mistakes.
While he might set a project’s goal and offer his team guidance, he expects them to do the work required to get there.
He shares what he knows, but he also understands that people learn best from action.
From his failures with Virgin Cola to his successes with Virgin Atlantic, Branson has embraced teams of experts and let them run the show as they see fit, which sometimes means letting them fail. Famously this came back to bite him during his infamous balloon trip that led to his partner, Per Lindstrand, jumping into the ocean and nearly drowning.
Is Richard Branson a Transformational Leader?
Richard Branson is absolutely a transformational leader. He constantly sets lofty goals for his companies.
He does, after all, own Virgin Galactic, a company that tries to make flights faster by leaving the atmosphere.
He doesn’t expect everything to fall into place the first time, though. Instead, he coaches his executives, managers, and employees to become better, more effective people.
He rewards people for excelling, but he also encourages people to turn their mistakes into learning opportunities. When someone does an excellent job, he praises them publicly to motivate others.
By showing his appreciation for hard work, he keeps everyone focused on their tasks.
Evidence of his leadership permeating a company can be seen by just about any Virgin Atlantic passenger, who is likely to have received a warm and welcoming customer experience when checking in or up in the skies.
Characteristics of Richard Branson Leadership Style
Some of the characteristics that define Richard Branson’s leadership style include:
- Motivation that helps people people move forward
- Encouragement that gets managers and employees to reach for higher goals
- Learning by taking action and making mistakes
- Communicating with team members to gain insights and share ideas
- Autonomy that lets executives and managers pursue their interests without excessive oversight
- Balance that brings fun to life and work
Richard Branson doesn’t believe in dedicating his time to boring tasks. He believes that every day should bring joy. This perspective fuels his leadership style by making him an open-minded, social person willing to take risks.
Is Richard Branson a Servant Leader?
Richard Branson likes to help the people around him, but he isn’t a servant leader.
Instead, he forms collaborations with people who can help him reach goals.
Is Richard Branson a Visionary Leader?
Richard Branson is a leader with a vision. Many, many visions, actually. Virgin Group owns about 400 companies.
Branson doesn’t have all of the skills needed to make his visions come true. For example, he doesn’t have engineering experience to build airplanes. He does, however, have a charismatic personality that gets other people excited about his ideas.
In some ways, Branson is too flexible to fit into the visionary leader category. While he rolls with the punches better than most visionary leaders, he does have high expectations.
Richard Branson Leadership Quotes
“To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.”
“As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. 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.”
“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?”
“I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.”
“I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.”
“From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That’s how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically.”
“Well, the odds must be against anybody being able to fly around the world in a balloon on the first attempt. All of us who are attempting to go around the world in balloons are effectively flying in experimental craft because these craft cannot be tested.”
“You get the idea. Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once. There are no rules. You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it’s because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over. It’s the greatest thrill in the world and it runs away screaming at the first sight of bullet points.”
“For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.”
“A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”
“What we are trying to do at Virgin is not to have one enormous company in one sector under one banner, but to have two hundred or even three hundred separate companies. Each company can stand on its own feet and, in that way, although we’ve got a brand that links them, if we were to have another tragedy such as that of 11 September – which hurt the airline industry – it would not bring the whole group crashing down.”
“Through the right people focusing on the right things, we can, in time, get on top of a lot if not most of the problems of this world. And that’s what a number of us are trying to do.”
“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”
“I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.”
“I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.”
“Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.”
“Well, I think that there’s a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you’re likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.”
“You get the idea. Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once. There are no rules. You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it’s because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over. It’s the greatest thrill in the world and it runs away screaming at the first sight of bullet points.”
“So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.”
Richard Branson Leadership Style
Richard Branson has a unique leadership style that makes him unlike any other entrepreneur. He takes genuine joy in his work and loves challenging ideas.
As a leader, he wants people to feel the same way, so he motivates them to become the best versions of themselves. According to his leadership philosophy, people will fail when they try new things.
His perspective reframes these failures as learning opportunities that make individuals, teams, and businesses more successful.
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