Richard Branson's Leadership Style Helped a Virgin Company Grow From a Startup to 400

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Leadership Style
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February 20, 2022

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Summary
This paper examines the virgin company's case study. The major example is how the
firm grew from a single startup to 400. The company journey demonstrated how Richard
Branson's leadership style helped the firm succeed in the case scenario. A leader's leadership
style refers to the characteristics he or she displays when leading, inspiring, directing, and
managing groups of people in a certain manner. According to Forbes magazine, Sir Richard
Branson is the sixth richest person in the United Kingdom. He has a net worth of $4.6 billion
and owns or manages 400 Virgin-branded businesses. In the case scenario, the failure of Virgin
Cola and the eventual loss of the virgin record are examined. However, Richard Branson's
leadership style is a mix of democratic, participatory, and transformative leadership approaches.
Richard Branson's approach to leadership is reflected in leadership strategies such as democratic
engagement, participatory change, and transformational transformation. The development of
strong leader-member ties is an important part of Richard Branson's democratic leadership style.
He treats all of his employees the same way, and he encourages them to voice their concerns
and criticisms of his management style. Richard Brandson can maintain a continuous process of
development in his leadership style if he takes this approach. He's also recognized for his
captivating leadership style, which has helped him achieve his goal of being a self-made
millionaire.
Introduction
If a company wants to reach its aim of improved performance and productivity, it needs
strong leadership. As a result, strong leadership is rightly viewed as a vital aspect of all
businesses' success. There are several leadership styles, and their efficacy is dependent on the
specific corporate environment as well as the individual leader's characteristics and principles

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(Bartlett & Goshal, 2000). Richard Branson, the CEO of the Virgin Group, is one example of a
successful leader. He has established a reputation as a successful entrepreneur who has launched
several lucrative business groupings. The purpose of this study is to examine Branson's
leadership styles. In particular, the paper will look at his dominating leadership approaches and
how they may aid in the Virgin companies.
Leadership Style and Theory Discussion
Case Study
Sir Richard Branson is the United Kingdom's sixth richest citizen. He is worth $4.6
billion and owns 400 businesses under the Virgin brand. In this case study, we see how Branson
grew from a single firm to almost 400 other businesses (Seedhouse, 2014). By starting a mail-
order record firm with Nik Powell, Branson and his magazine endeavors could be funded. Both
entrepreneurs chose the moniker "Virgin Records" for their new firm because they saw
themselves as "virgins" in the music industry. From a small London commune, Virgin Group
has grown into a multi-billion dollar company (Dua, 2021). This allowed Branson to create his
studio towards the end of the 1970s based on the success of Virgin Records. Virgin Records has
evolved into Virgin Music. This, however, was only the beginning. As of 1984, he added the
Voyager Group travel agency to his roster of businesses. Virgin Atlantic Airlines and a chain of
Virgin Megastores were launched in 1984 by the company's founder (Grant, 2005). Within a
decade, Virgin was battling to maintain its financial viability. So the firm was struggling to stay
afloat. Branson added two travel firms under his name to stay in the entrepreneur game (Dua,
2021). Branson struggled to sell Virgin Records.
During establishing Virgin Group Ltd., he has faced several obstacles. The losses did not
deter Branson from continuing to put in further effort in building his enterprise. Branson has

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made several poor business decisions, such as ignoring top management advice when selling the
Virgin MegaStore retail chain, which resulted in the company losing a significant amount of
money, and finally attempting to compete with Coca-Cola with Virgin Cola, which resulted in
the company losing a significant amount of money. With just 0.5 percent of the US market,
Virgin Cola is the most popular failure (Mouncey, 2005). Despite the setbacks that Branson has
experienced, Virgin is presently a massive corporation on the international stage, according to
Forbes. These meetings instill the desire to not waste time and energy on the setbacks, but rather
to apply that time and energy to another goal. His loss hurt him mentally. But he never let
negativity rule his life. In the same year, he founded Virgin Radio. At every turn, Richard
Branson has been setting new goals for himself, pushing the boundaries, and motivating others
to do the same (Bower, 2014). This section focuses on Richard's leadership style, which helped
him achieve the 400-company mark after losses which we explained in the case study.
Leadership Theory & Critical Analysis
Leader Discission
His errors with Virgin Cola have taught him that he needs to delegate authority to a team
of experts and let them run the firm as they see appropriate; this means allowing them to fail
from time to time (Grant, 2005). Richard Branson's risk-taking adventures have made him a
legend in the business world. Not unexpectedly, he always advised people to take chances and
not to be afraid of doing them. Fear of failure is already a hindrance to your progress if you let it
get in the way. As a result of Virgin's loss, Richard Branson decided to launch a new firm,
Virgin Atlantic, which allowed Virgin to re-enter the 400-company journey once more
(Dickinson, 2009).