Richard Branson
For the purposes of our assignment I will attempt to put Richard Branson in a sort of box that he would surely object to and would certainly pop out of like a jack-in-the- box.
The difficulty with attempting to analyze the leadership style of Branson is that everything that has been written about him prefaces his achievement with his larger than life personality. There's no denying that Branson is fun and passionate, but he's also very bright and very hardworking. I think that if Branson took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Profile he would discover that he is ENTP: an extroverted, intuitive, thinking, perceiving human being. From his autobiography, Losing My Virginity it's clear that Branson is action oriented, enthusiastic and seems to work well in an every changing environment. When he was 15 years old he founded a magazine called Student with another classmate. They worked non-stop for years to make the magazine successful. His intuition was clear even at that young age. He talks about the work they put in, not to make money in the short run, but just to keep the magazine afloat until the next issue. For Branson it was more about the creative process. He says, "I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts." He realized that at some point there would be breakthrough and he could attract the advertisers he needed to really gain monetary success. At that moment he was having a great time just doing it.
His intuition for great ideas has also been well documented throughout his career. In an interview with an online magazine Branson admits that he carries a notebook with him at all times. He confesses, ""I keep a notebook in my pocket all the time and I really do listen to what people say, even when we're out in a club at 3 a.m. and someone's passing on an idea in a drunken slur. Good ideas come from people
The difficulty with attempting to analyze the leadership style of Branson is that everything that has been written about him prefaces his achievement with his larger than life personality. There's no denying that Branson is fun and passionate, but he's also very bright and very hardworking. I think that if Branson took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Profile he would discover that he is ENTP: an extroverted, intuitive, thinking, perceiving human being. From his autobiography, Losing My Virginity it's clear that Branson is action oriented, enthusiastic and seems to work well in an every changing environment. When he was 15 years old he founded a magazine called Student with another classmate. They worked non-stop for years to make the magazine successful. His intuition was clear even at that young age. He talks about the work they put in, not to make money in the short run, but just to keep the magazine afloat until the next issue. For Branson it was more about the creative process. He says, "I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts." He realized that at some point there would be breakthrough and he could attract the advertisers he needed to really gain monetary success. At that moment he was having a great time just doing it.
His intuition for great ideas has also been well documented throughout his career. In an interview with an online magazine Branson admits that he carries a notebook with him at all times. He confesses, ""I keep a notebook in my pocket all the time and I really do listen to what people say, even when we're out in a club at 3 a.m. and someone's passing on an idea in a drunken slur. Good ideas come from people
Cited: Branson, Richard. Losing My Virginity. London, Virgin Publishing Ltd. 1998 Collins, Jim. Good to Great. New York, Harper Collins Publishers. 2001 "Branson Bets Billions to Curb Global Warming" msnbc.com 21 Sept 2006. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14936341 "26 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs" inc.com 1 April 2005. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050401/26-branson.html