Introduction to leader and leadership

Leadership is a social process. It accomplishes the formation of the vision of a company or an organization, trains the team to accomplish the vision. Thus it becomes possible to lead the team to meet the vision of the organization. A leader is someone who does the job of leadership. Therefore, a leader is responsible to accomplish the vision of the organization. This paper analyses the leadership style of Richard Branson.

Leadership style of Richard Branson

For this report, a leader has been selected and the selected leader is Richard Branson. He is an English businessman and a venture capitalist. He is the founder of Virgin Group that encompasses more than 400 companies all around the world.

Different leadership traits of Richard Branson

According to Financhill, Branson is very much familiar all around the world for his charismatic leadership capability. In this part some of his leadership characteristics will be analysed very briefly:

Richard believes that the main fact of leadership is delegation. It means not doing all the things alone and not having very detailed views in all the organization. Rather he believes that if a leader has to do every details, he will be tired.

According to the findings of The Telegraph, the leader would rather delegate the responsibility to the people that can lead to their ways to reach the vision of the organization. Rule breaking is very important in leadership, according to Richard, because the rules are made to break. But that should be for a valid reason.

Forbes reported that to delegate the responsibility to the capable employees, Richard emphasizes much on employee selection. The personality and experience of the candidate is more important to him than the educational background.

Forbes also said that Richard believes that analyzing the competitors is not important at all. What is important is filling the market gap. He believes that a leader should be concerned to analyse the market gap and serve at that gap.

The personality and experience of the candidates is more important that educational background. This is one of Richard’s leadership traits while selecting employees.

Forbes

In addition to the above leadership characteristics, Richard has some other leadership qualities such as he likes to do good things, believes in himself and his business, he has fun at work and contracts with people of all levels in the organization, meet people from different industries, listens more but talks less etc. (Business Insider, 2014).

Analyzing the competition does not add value to the business. What is important is to meet the market gap- Richard.

Forbes

Information about Virgin Group

The organization selected is Virgin Group. Richard Branson leads the business. Virgin is a British multinational company that has more than 400 business ventures in different industries. The company was founded in 1989 and now it has business in banking industry, publishing industry, commercial flights, film industry, health care industry, internet, and IT industry. The company employs more than 50,000 employees all around the world.

Contextualization of leadership styles Richard Branson

In this part, three situations will be illustrated on the basis of the analysis found at the leadership characteristics of Richard Branson:

Situation 1:

Branson likes to delegate the leadership to the employees. He searches for capable candidates who can take the lead and reach the organizational vision. Finally he found some people who are really capable to take the lead and Richard delegated the leadership to them. But this is uncertain if the potential leaders will stay there.

Situation 2:

Richard doesn’t like to analyse the competitors and emphasizes on market gap and fills that. Recently he wants to start a venture that aims to fill a certain market gap and in this case his leadership doesn’t consider present and future competition. But there is no guarantee that there will be no more convenient and cheaper solutions.

Situation 3:

Virgin Group has more than 400 companies and Richard may again form another new company if he gets an opportunity. But the level of emphasis that should be exerted by Richard on all the ventures is questioned because this is not possible to maintain all the ventures.

Evaluation of the leadership style of Richard Branson

In this part the leadership characteristics of Richard will be evaluated in terms of different leadership theories and concepts.

Leadership styles:

Leadership style refers to the ways that the leader directs, motivates and engages the people to reach the goals. There are several leadership styles such as : laissez-Fair, autocratic, participative, transactional and transformational leadership styles.

Delegation is the most important features of Richard’s leadership style and this feature matches with those of transformational leadership style. In this style, the leader develops the vision along with the team that will take the lead to reach the vision.

In this style, Richard make the vision of the organization. He selects those employees who will be able to take the leadership position. This style helps Virgin to develop potential and competent leaders who significantly contributes to the development of the organization.

Another advantage Virgin Group will experience is that as there are many leaders in the company. So most of them can contribute to the decision in case Virgin needs to make a significant decision.

But the disadvantage of this style is that when the employees take the full lead and Richard becomes busy with other activities, the employee-leader might not take the lead as importantly as Richard would do. Thus Virgin may loss sales and thus profits. Some improvement in this process is possible if Richard exerts continuous control on the employee-leaders so that the tasks are emphasized.

Behavioral theory of leadership and Richard’s style:

Behavioral theory of leadership emphasizes on the characters of leaders. This means what leaders do is important job. This theory has emphasized on the leadership rather than the leaders. Four factors are important in this theory: concern for work, concern for people, directive leadership and participative leadership.

If the leadership of Richard is observed, it will be seen that all the factors of behavioural theory are not present in his leadership style. Richard has concern for work because he has his vision for achievement and has capability to manage people to lead. This set of leading and vision setting capability will help him to reach the organizational objectives.

Richard perceives the employees as people not as a means of production and this mentality has positioned in the heart of Virgin’s employees who work harder for the company. Richard’s leadership is delegate type and thus it is opposite to directives. As a result, employees are leaders in the company and they make leading decision to reach the vision.

But disadvantage is that delegate type of leadership style may exert more power to employees and they may abuse the power. Richard’s leadership style matches with participative leadership. Thus multi-dimensional and diversified knowledge come to the decision making process. The leadership style allows participation of employees from varied ranges regardless of position, backgrounds.

Trait leadership theory and Richard’s style

Traits theory of leadership has developed some features of leadership success factors . The core traits are leaders are achievement drive, they have leadership motivation, they have honesty and integrity, self-confidence, business knowledge, emotional maturity etc.

Richard is achievement-driven and he has high level of energy, ambition and initiatives. These features have given him success. But the lacking, with respect to traits theory, is that Richard has less motivation for leadership as he has intentions to delegate the leadership. However, he acquires the leadership first then delegates.

But delegation is not good all the time because employee-leaders are not as experienced as Richard.

Openness and visibility are important features of Richard’s leadership, therefore, the employees can guess what will happen after a certain events and thus they can take preparation for that event. But the risks of visibility is that leadership becomes open to the competitors who may copy the styles.

Richard is self-confident which is very significant for a leader because this quality helps a leader to have faith on himself which in turn assist to reach the vision of the organization. Virgin Group has more than 400 companies and this has become possible because Richard has some experience in all the sectors but the dominance of the Virgin Group companies’ are not much in specific industry.

The logical strategy for Richard would be focus on some specific industry and companies and make tremendous impact on the industry rather than having negligible dominance on industries. Richard does not have emotional maturity because he suffers from dyslexia that prevents him from remembering things from longer time. Thus Richard maintains a notebook everywhere to write things down.

Attitudes of Richard Branson:

Leadership attitudes refer to how a leader perceives the world, the leadership position, events power and authority. Leadership attitudes will largely determine the characteristics of a leader.

Richard’s attitude toward work is that a person should do something which is his passion and Richard does that. As a result he can concentrate on the job because he loves to do that. Attitude of not to give up helps Richard to focus on the work and finally he reaches the destiny. He finds a lot of fun in the workplace and because he believes in his business. Another important views of Richard toward communication is that he talks less but listens more. This has helped him to completely understand what the others says and this is important to focus on the issues.

His views toward the employees is to meet and interact with employees of all levels. This helps him to understand the perspective of the lower level employees, this is important to make them motivated.

Attitude of Richard Branson towards Power

To Richard, leadership does not mean power, rather Richard thinks that leadership is a process and not position. Although Richard takes the position at the beginning of a project, finally he delegates the power to other employees. This is good for Richard because he loves to give times for family and personal time. On the other hand the employees get the power which may be necessary to make instant decision to satisfy a customers or to manage a situation.

My approaches if I were in the position of that of Richard Branson

Approach to situation 1:

As there is a risk if the possible and potential leader will stay with Virgin and if they will effectively take the lead, I will change a little bit in the existing leadership. I will give the employees to take decision and contribute the making decision but I would not delegate the leadership. This will help me to have control on both the organization and the employees who need continuous directions. This will positively make deeper effect on the organization because my interest and my employees’ interest to the company are different. I will make more emphasis and importance in decision making then my employees would make.

Approach to situation 2:

I would do both things: analyse the market gap as well as scrutinize the competitors. Because if I analyse only the market gap and takes initiatives to fill that, there may be some company which may offer more reliable, competent, ease-to-use and cheap solutions in the near future when my position will be losing by the newer one. Thus analysing the competitors will enable me to predict the future by analysing the competitors of the relevant industries. This will ensure long-term success for the company. If I find that there is company that may invent more competent product then investing in that product will be a loss project.

Approach to situation 3

The number of companies under Virgin Group explains the interest of Richard Branson for establishing new companies. I would not establish these much companies because this does not make any sense to me of establishing more and more companies without reason because more companies does not mean potential rather some companies with importance and value create potential. Therefore, I would first select some potential industry and some market gap and invest on some of them and nurture them in such a way that these companies become very much potential in that industry. This strategy will help my company to focus on some specific but detailed issues and thus the operating companies will have significant and meaningful existence.