The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership

by Richard Branson

The simple fact is that if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing and the people with whom you’re doing it, then there is no possible way that you are ever going to do it as well as something that you do enjoy.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.’

‘If you live every day like it’s your last, someday you’ll almost certainly be right.’

Although it seems to be somewhat of a dying art, I believe that listening is one of the most important skills for any teacher, parent, leader, entrepreneur or, well, just about anyone who has a pulse.

I’d just urge you to do a lot more listening than talking, don’t be afraid to wear your passion on your sleeve for all to see, and when in doubt trust your instincts.

What I do believe to be an essential, however, particularly for anyone with entrepreneurial aspirations, is an unfettered willingness to trust their instincts and to follow their own star, even if at times it might appear to be leading them towards the edge of the precipice.

‘Having a great time while building a highly diversified global business with an extended family of simply wonderful people’,

if more of us could ‘enlist’ the art of remaining ‘silent’ in order to ‘listen’ we would, in one fell swoop, dramatically improve our ability to learn and get a lot more out of our time at school.

Acquiring the habit of note-taking is therefore a wonderfully complementary skill to that of listening. Please write this down right now so you don’t forget it!

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.’

Call me old-fashioned if you will, but the all-too-common practice of texting or emailing under the boardroom table in the middle of a meeting is something that I find extremely irritating and downright disrespectful to everyone else in the room.

paying close attention to not just what someone says but the way in which they say it can help you to read between the lines – a place where the real story is often dramatically different to what the casual listener might understand is being said ‘on the lines’. While what a speaker says can have several layers of meaning, how it is said can also be a giveaway to various subtexts. I have always found it hugely interesting to closely observe a speaker’s body language, facial expressions, the enunciation of certain words and all sorts of subtle innuendo, which can put a very different spin on what the words alone might convey.

they should embrace individuality • have an entrepreneurial spirit • empower their people • inspire trust • be ‘in it together’ • be genuinely caring • be energisingly passionate • be accessibly informal

It was also a great way to say thank you to our most frequent fliers. I liked to be tipped off when a passenger was going through milestones, like say 100,000 miles, and would call to congratulate them and say how much we appreciate their loyalty. A little ‘thank you’ goes a long way.

Call customers directly during milestones

‘First to know, first to handle.’ If someone can fix a problem on the spot it saves all kinds of angst for the customer plus time and expense for the company – just as importantly, an on-the-spot resolution more often than not will also keep a customer in the fold.

So rather than sitting in a gilded cage believing what the financials and customer surveys seem to indicate, effective leaders have got to set an example and get out there kicking the tyres on a regular basis.

I have always found that having senior people who demonstrably care enough to pay attention to customer-focused nitty-gritty details – as opposed to just the stock price – serves to encourage everyone in the organisation to get into the habit of seeing what you look like from the outside in.

If you want to fully grasp what you are selling then you have got to see it from the customer’s perspective – or in this case when you’ve made the bed then you’ve got to sleep in it too!

The manager there had put his picture, name and phone numbers – office, cell phone and home – inside every elevator. The note with it read something along the lines of, ‘If there is any problem during your stay that is not resolved to your satisfaction by our staff, please feel free to give me a call.’ When I asked him if this hadn’t been a problem, his response was, ‘For me – not at all: for my staff maybe. I made sure they know how much I dislike getting disturbed when I’m at home with the family.’ He then added that in the year the signs had been in place he’d maybe received a couple of calls a month – a great example of the senior person putting themselves on the front line 24/7!

I’d write them a letter every month with an update on how things were going

Clearly when considering candidates for leadership positions their resumes/CVs have to come into play, but they really should be judged equally on their vision for the future as on what they’ve achieved in the past.

If a company is to move forward, hiring clones of the previous incumbent will rarely generate much in the way of positive change. No matter how good the previous person in the job might have been there is always room for improvement so my favourite question with internal applicants has always been, ‘So if you get the job, what are the first things you are going to change around here and why?’ Much as we like to hire from inside at Virgin I have no aversion to bringing in new blood from the outside – a pair of fresh eyes (and ears) can often see latent opportunities that long-term employees have simply come to accept as the norm.

Close out your mind to the fact that you’re on a stage with hundreds of people staring at you and instead imagine yourself in any personal comfort-zone like your dining room at home where you’re telling a story to a group of friends over dinner. I know it sounds a little corny but try it – it has certainly worked for me.

he claimed that he averaged an hour’s preparation for every minute of a speech.