Introduction
After the COVID-19 pandemic, the world will inevitably come back to its path, including boosting businesses. The rules of business will not change, and leadership will stay the essential factor of any enterprise’s success. Despite this understanding, people still argue which leadership strategies are the most effective to apply. However, there are role models to learn from. Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, is an excellent example of that. He never received a degree in management and, yet, is globally known as one of the most influential leaders for his unique style and strategies.
Main body
To begin with, if one tries to classify his management style, it would undoubtedly be a democratic manner. One reason for it is that Branson emphasizes the importance of feedback from his employees. He believes that every individual is unique and, hence, can offer an alternative vision that would expand his own (Schawbel, 2017). In a way, it is an illustration of the critical point in Harrison and Muhlberg’s book (2014) that insists on the essential nature of communication in business. Interestingly enough, nowadays, scholars and analysts like Anderson, Buchko, and Buchko (2016) mostly draw their attention to the problem of comments coming from a manager, not staff. It demonstrates that the democratic approach implemented by Branson is indeed a substantially innovative practice as it ignores the hierarchy limitations for the main objective: increasing efficiency of the work done.
Another trait to point out is his ability to delegate functions. As he claims himself, getting the right employees to do tasks one needs to be done is leadership itself (Schawbel, 2017). Branson believes “in the art of delegation finding the best possible people for Virgin and giving them the freedom and encouragement to flourish.” (Half, 2016) It would be fair to say that this is another democratic tendency in his management style. Meanwhile, studies (Jokisaari & Vuori, 2018) show that delegation increases newcomers’ understanding of their roles, organizational knowledge, and job satisfaction. Therefore, Branson managed to define himself as another vital technique that favorably affects many aspects of managing a team.
The humane style of Branson’s also has a lot to do with the positive environment he has always aimed to create in his company. He empathically feels the responsibility to care about his employees (WOBI, 2016). The atmosphere of respect and even love for the ones contributing to his success has been established in Branson’s enterprise. He sees people behind their occupation and follows the rule of personality before CV. Moreover, as he puts it himself, “some 80% of your life is spent working – you want to have fun at home; why shouldn’t you have fun at work?” (Half, 2016) Meanwhile, as studies show, there is a favorable influence of the positive environment at work on productivity and job satisfaction among the employees, no matter if the company is located in the United States or, for instance, in Kurdistan (Massoudi & Hamdi, 2017).
Furthermore, Branson is well known for being a leader who values failures. An effective leader, in his understanding, is one capable of learning from mistakes that inevitably occur in business and life. Branson tried to become the first man who flies a balloon, and he failed eight times before he managed to be the first to cross the Atlantic in a hot air balloon in 1987 (Eschner, 2017). His company made efforts to launch Virgin Cola, Virgin Vodka, Virgin Brides, its own cosmetics business, clothing collection, cars, and even airlines – all these are named among Branson’s most significant failures by Business Insider (2016). In other words, the lesson Branson teaches entrepreneurs is that recognizing mistakes and an ability to recover after them appears to be an essential skill for a leader.
Finally, one shall address the question of the democratic style efficiency as such, knowing that Branson mostly applied this kind of technique in his management. The idea of the democratic style of leadership lies in the participation of the staff or any other group members in the decision-making process, like in a democratic country. Hence, discussion and ideas exchange is encouraged, and employees with non-standard solutions get the opportunity to shine (Woods, 2020). The leader is the one to decide who stays within the group and who may contribute to the decisions (Woods, 2020). The recent study on leadership in Pakistani enterprises (Fiaz et al., 2017) once again proves that shared leadership increases employee motivation. The latter is a critical factor in staff performance. Noteworthy, via communication in a democratically managed group, the leader can build trust and, then, rely on the teamwork and delegate more (Ego & Madubueze, 2017). In other words, among the democratic leadership style advantages, there are group member commitment and effective teamwork, high motivation and productivity, openness to creative ideas, and solutions.
However, there are several disadvantages of the style typical of Branson. To begin with, communication failures are, on the one hand, more likely to happen due to the intensity of ideas exchange, on the other, appear to be more harmful to the process. More importantly, the democratic leadership style is sometimes called time-consuming and ineffective as employees, while being highly competent in their jobs, not always can think strategically (Lockwood, 2019). However, there is another aspect to mention: as the leader decides who participated in the decision-making process, the minority represents’ voices may not be heard. In that case, if the style of leadership establishes the system where an employee’s effectiveness is measured based on their contribution to the process, underprivileged individuals may face the so-called glass ceiling. The recent study on the Middle Eastern impact of leadership on female careers (Mohamed et al., 2017) demonstrates a strong relationship between the professional paths of women in the UAE and the management style applied. Despite the widespread glorification of democratic leadership, it is vital to remember some of its evident drawbacks.
Conclusion
To conclude, Branson appears to be a prompt representor of the democratic management style. He has managed to reach his success through effective communication with his employees, whose feedback is used to brush up on the work of the company. Furthermore, his ability to delegate functions has allowed him to build a trustworthy structure and, broadly speaking, the right to be called a great business leader. Another point to be made is that Branson is a people-oriented leader: not only does he seek effectiveness and productivity, but he also cares about his staff and the positive environment in the firm. Finally, he sees mistakes as an indicator of the right direction, not as failures that are to stop him on his way, which Branson has proved many times. His democratic management style has numerous advantages and disadvantages. Nevertheless, Branson seems to cope with the latter quite successfully.
References
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