Leadership in Business: Richard Branson's Style and Capabilities

Leadership in Business
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
1. Discussion....................................................................................................................................3
1.1 Leadership qualities and capabilities.........................................................................................4
Leadership traits of Richard Branson.....................................................................................4
Capabilities for building relationships and establishing trust.................................................4
Capabilities out of above displayed by Richard Branson.......................................................5
1.2 Leadership Style.........................................................................................................................5
Leadership styles suiting the workplace.................................................................................5
Strength and weakness of chosen style..................................................................................6
1.3 Individual Leadership................................................................................................................7
Reflection on own leadership capabilities and selection of leadership style..........................7
Capability to develop to become a better leader....................................................................7
1.4 Empowerment............................................................................................................................8
Shift of company from a paradigm of Control to an Empowerment paradigm......................8
Implementation of shift along with reaction of employees to change....................................8
Improving leadership ability for change management in effective manner in group &
corporation..............................................................................................................................9
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10
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INTRODUCTION
Leadership can be referred to as the procedure by way of which an executive has the
power or authority to give direction and guidance to subordinates and thereby, impact upon the
behavioural pattern of others. This provides assistance to the leader in ensuring the realisation of
corporate goals within due course of time by emphasizing upon collaborative working of
personnel (Goss and Sadler‐Smith, 2018). Within the confines of any business organisation,
leadership has the primary role of encouraging the employees in an effective manner so that they
can work as per the requirements of corporation.
The purpose of this paper is to gain knowledge of the style, capabilities and skills of the
leader within a company. For this purpose, the entity that has been selected is Virgin Atlantic
which is an airlines company having its headquarters at Crawley, England, United Kingdom. The
leader of this internationally renowned firm is Richard Branson which is a famous entrepreneur
popular for his self motivated nature (Griggs and Howarth, 2018). The paper contains discussion
over leadership qualities and capabilities, leadership style and individual leadership. Lastly, it is
seen that how the entity could shift from a control paradigm to empowerment.
1. Discussion
Leader is the key to effective execution of operations within an entity as per the current
business situation and trends prevailing in market place. In this regard, leadership can be said to
be the potential possessed by an individual within a company to exercise positive or negative
influence of others. Through this, a leader seeks to align the behaviour and performance of
employees with the long term corporate goal (Bassell, Lambert and Friedman, 2019). They are
the ones who create a vision for the entity and thereby induce other by motivating them to
deliver their best performance for timely accomplishment of goal. Leader is the one who can
persuade other individuals to even carry out a task against their will. It is upon a leader whether
they want to use their authority positively or negatively to accomplish the corporate vision. In
this regard, a discussion is given below illustrating the example of Richard Branson as a leader
of Virgin Atlantic.
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