Sir Richard Branson, Chairman, Virgin Group, Ltd Case Study

Sir Richard Branson, Chairman, Virgin Group, Ltd - Case Study Example In the business circles, the talk is there may be not many business sectors, in which Virgin has not made his mark. â€Å"Conceived in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group has gone on to grow successful businesses in sectors ranging from mobile telephony, travel, financial services, leisure, music, holidays and health & wellness.† (Virgin, n. d.). Among other factors, this optimal growth is primarily due to the leadership of Richard Branson, particularly the combination of transformational as well as authentic style of leadership. Under these style, leaders will provide the employees under them maximum autonomy to plan as well as implement the various organizational processes. (Avolio and Yammarino, 2002). By adopting decentralization structure or even democratic form of management, these authentic as well as transformational leaders will productively involve employees in all stages of organizational management, giving them optimum responsibilities. This form of leade rship was prominently visible in Branson, when he launched those 400 odd companies. When an idea for a business arises in his mind or comes from others, Branson starts that enterprise by maintaining a controlling interest in it, and then will manage it in the initial phase. After the company starts to function in a steady manner, he will delegate leadership roles to the second rung leaders and will move on. This process of delegation and productively involving the employees was pointed out by Branson himself. He stated, â€Å"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 it’s their own,† (Sukhiy, 2007). This combination of authentic and transformational leadership styles can be aptly applied in United States, because with most of the prospective employees coming out of the current effective academic environment exhibiti ng entrepreneurial skills as well as willingness to take responsibilities, this style can be aptly applied business leaders in U.S. In addition, as these leadership styles can elevate the motivation levels of the employees and bring out their best, it can be adopted. Thus, if these leadership styles are followed in U.S., organizations there can diversify or expand their operations optimally, as the leaders can initiate new processes and just oversee them, by giving maximum responsibilities to their employees, who will take it to the logical and positive end. 2. Recommending a different leadership style that would make Branson an even more effective leader. Although from the above discussion of Branson’s leadership traits it is clear that he has maximally exhibited effective traits, there are room for improvement in some of his traits. One of the optimal traits of Branson is having a great vision. Because of such a vision, Branson takes high number of risks, when it comes to l aunching new companies or products or services. That is, without fully analyzing the product’s feasibility and success, Branson has impulsively launched many products or services, and sizable of them have ended in failures. Some of the examples, Virgin Cola, launched as a competitor to Coca-Cola,