Leadership of Richard Branson - Essay Sample

Governance is an intrinsic attributes to delineate (Jiang & Probst, 2016). It is difficult to define, but it is certainly known when it is seen. Different leaders portray different traits and principles in their quest to attain their set goals. The analysis of who is a leader is very diverse as the term leadership is defined differently by different scholars. Leadership is an act of leading an organization or a group of people. The essay, therefore, seeks to illustrate the Richard Bransons style of leadership and the effect of his leadership style on his company Virgin Group.

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Richard Branson from his early childhood has demonstrated leadership skills (Rahman et al. 2015). At the young age of 17 years, he started a student publication named, Student. Even before this, Branson showed tactical skills through the budding of Christmas saplings and the vending of budgies even though these plans were futile. Branson was born in the year 1950 to Eva Huntley and Edward Branson. He was the first born of the three children within the family. Branson even though coming from a humble background, it was through perseverance and hard work that he has turned to be one of the utmost acknowledged UK trailblazer and prominent business leader globally (Jiang & Probst, 2016). Branson never inherited any company, but it is through hard work that he got to the top of the game.

Richard Branson is the Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Group. Virgin Group has many establishments with all of them bearing the logo of Virgin. Virgin started as a guileless mail order vending records that it eventually set up a recording studio and shops. He was heavily in debt at this time, and this made Branson expand his business quickly to pay off the debts (Rahman et al. 2015). With his wife Tomassi Kirsten then, he set up a clothing company Virgin Rags. From this point, the businesses grew stronger and stronger as he acquired a record pact through sex pistols besides the eventual launch of Virgin Atlantic Airlines (Syafii et al.2015).

In the UK, Richard Branson is amongst the prominent and efficacious business leaders. Branson is fun loving, hardworking, Charismatic, decisive, risk-taking, sensitive to other peoples needs, and innovative. With Branson possessing the above traits, he has proven to be an inordinate and efficacious leader in such a prosperous organization. Branson is professed to be a conscious industrialist with the establishment of Virgin Unite with the mandate of looking into the entrepreneur technique when it proceeds to societal and environmental issues. Besides, he set up Virgin Green Fund to deal with the issues of renewable resources.

His employees obviously love him as in most cases; he has been elected Britains ideal boss. According to Boe & Holth (2015), it is an escapade being employed by Branson, basically for the manner in which he motivates people. To be a successful leader, this is a basic skill. The staff of his company ever praises him, because he organizes bonding sessions with his employees thereby encouraging staff loyalty. Branson refers to every employee in his company as a family (Rahman et al. 2015).

The followers of Branson are many; they range from leaders who endeavor to lead him to those that he leads. He also leads other corporate leaders today. At present, most people are talking about the way in which Facebook and Google are great companies to labor for due to the laissez-faire style of leadership and the laid back tactic of working. However, in Virgin, Branson had this before even the birth of Mark Zuckerberg, and thus he steered the path to this bravura of leadership (Syafii et al.2015).

Also, Branson is famous for his communally conscious approach of thinking. Branson considers that corporations should toil for something past mere profits. On this again, Zuckerberg has trailed Bransons path of thought thereby avowing that these times, I believe many societies want to make use of services from corporations which belief in something past profit maximization (Mathieu & Babiak, 2015).

Bransons leadership panache is undeniably that of a transformational leader. According to Chin-Yi (2015), transformational leaders inspire their followers to surpass their personal safeties and have a profound and astonishing effect on them. Such a style of leadership provides members with an apparition to toil towards along with a sagacity of pride. All this can be additionally designated as inspirational impetus, intellectual spur, idealized effect and individualized deliberation (Mathieu & Babiak, 2015).

Idealized inspiration guarantees that leaders get respected and trusted by their cohorts because they are dynamic in the administration process (Gahye et al.2016). Branson is respected and trusted by those who follow him as previously mentioned; employees of Virgin Group recurrently proclaim their affection to Branson. In addition to above, inspirational motivation permits leaders to converse what the prospects of their cliques are (Chin-Yi, 2015).

Intellectual stimulation permits leaders to promote cognitive aptitudes such as rationality and problem-solving (Gahye et al.2016). Branson ensures this by assigning work as copious as possible. Also, he treats every establishment of the Virgin Group absolutely as a separate unit. He lets the directors of individual enterprises within the Group govern on their individual merit. Lastly, individualized consideration refers to the treatment of individual employees with individualized advice and coaching by the leader (Mathieu & Babiak, 2015).

Receiving a job offer as a manager to work for Virgin Group will be dreams come true. In appraising Bransons style of governance as a manager, I would first determine whether his style of governance accelerates the establishing of a mutual vision for the stakeholders, employees and the organization at large. A suitable style of leadership aids in the formation of the idea focused on creating a working philosophy that stimulates the implementation of corporate activities (Gahye et al.2016).

Secondly, I would try to determine whether Bransons style of leadership institutes an operational climate or not within the company employees. The capability of the governance style to craft a functioning environment would create an effective carrier out of me as a manager. A positive feedback imminent from these proportions would brand Branson bravura of governance fit for me as a manager. Furthermore, such a leadership style should facilitate cooperation amongst the junior employees and the manager.

Operational cooperation amongst the subordinates and managers is vivacious in guaranteeing that the manner of resolution making and execution is accomplished productively ensuring that the Corporation accomplishes its objectives easily (Boe & Holth, 2015). At the end of it all as a manager of Virgin Group under the leadership of Branson, I would draw the conclusion that his technique of governance does work perfectly in crafting a virtuous working connection between the managers and subordinate. Such leadership warrants a free milieu of interaction amongst the employees and the manager thereby ensuring the offering of suggestions by employees without fear of intimidation (Gahye et al.2016).

There are many styles of leadership that includes charismatic leadership and transactional leadership (Boe & Holth, 2015). A transactional leader is defined as one who treats leadership as give-and-take by giving cohorts what they need when they do what he requires of them. An example is Jeff Bezos, the Amozon.com CEO. Charismatic leaders are the ones who have the ability to motivate their juniors to surpass their anticipated performance. Examples are the CEO and Co-founder of Apple Steve Jobs. In all ways, even though, Branson is an efficacious leader (Hoffman & Acosta, 2015). All this is brought out in the way that he has managed to establish corporate empires with an internationally decipherable brand devoid of erstwhile knowledge on whichever the establishments that he started.

Branson never thrived in school owing to dyslexia but possess profound abilities that enable him to bond with different individuals and make them do things his manner (Gahye et al.2016). If we back to the definition of leadership at the start of the essay, it is the leading an organization or a group of people. This is Bransons case as he has managed to lead a big corporation expanding outside his home country. Truly, in my view, Branson is a global leader.

There are copious reasons that elucidate Branson as being a great leader. Chin-Yi (2015) states that Branson is a transformational leader. He continues to explain the ways in which only transformational leaders can motivate their followers in specific ways so that they can perform beyond expectations. Branson is a prosperous business trailblazer as specifically he has succeeded in making Virgin Atlantic Airlines an achievement in the market that was dominated by the American Airlines and British Airways (Hoffman & Acosta, 2015). He has been able to run business for more than 40 years relentlessly building his realm while warranting that persons devoted to him remain so. Being so prominent, he succeeded in getting individuals that toiled on the students doing so with no pay (Hoffman & Acosta, 2015).

In the next five years, Branson will remain to be the prosperous leader he is today due to numerous reasons. The view of Branson gives the impression that it is on track with the emerging or current issues affecting the world. The climate change issues for instance that Branson is working hard to prevent is an issue that affects the whole universe (Syafii et al.2015). With this, Branson is in line with the current matters that do affect people both at present and in the future.

Additionally, Branson embraces innovation that is vivacious in making him a progressive leader for the upcoming five years and more. Most of the success of the world largely depends on leaders such as Branson with the aptitude to nurture innovation. Finally, the relationship of Branson and his employees is one that emboldens allotment of opinions and free interaction. Such feature is vital in ensuring that Branson does obtain employee support base which is of vital significance in ensuring his success in the upcoming five years.

References

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Chin-Yi, S. (2015). The Impact of Intrinsic Motivation on The Effectiveness of Leadership Style towards on Work Engagement. Contemporary Management Research, 11(4), 327.Gahye, H., Youngsam, C., Froese, F. J., & Shin, M. (2016). The effect of leadership styles, rank, and seniority on affective organizational commitment. Cross Cultural & Strategic Management, 23(2), 340.

Hoffman, E., & Acosta-Orozco, C. (2015). Life-Metaphors Among Colombian Leadership Students: Core Values And Educational Implications. College Student Journal, 49(3), 438-446.

Jiang, L., & Probst, T. M. (2016). Transformational and passive leadership as cross-level moderators of the relationships between safety knowledge, safety motivation, and safety participation. Journal Of Safety Research, 5727-32.

Mathieu, C., & Babiak, P. (2015). Tell me who you are, I'll tell you how you lead: Beyond the Full-Range Leadership Model, the role of corporate psychopathy on employee attitudes. Personality And Individual Differences, 878-12.

Rahman, M. S., Osman-Gani, A. M., Momen, M. A., & Islam, N. (2015). Testing knowledge sharing effectiveness: trust, motivation, leadership style, workplac...