Delegate Effectively

Delegate Effectively, with Richard Branson, Virgin Group Founder and Chairman

The Art of Praise

I think the most important thing about running a company is to remember all the time what a company is. A company is simply a group of people. And as a leader of people you have to be a great listener and you have to be a great motivator. You have to be very good at praising and looking for the best in people. People are no different from flowers. If you water flowers they flourish, if you praise people they flourish. And that is a critical attribute of a leader.

The Gift of Trust

Virgin does work very well without me. I mean I use myself to build the brand, to build the sort of three or four hundred companies around the world, but I also learned the art of delegation. I have a fantastic team of people who run the Virgin companies, give them a lot of freedom to run the companies as if they were their own companies. I give them the freedom to make mistakes and the Virgin brand is now maybe one of the top 20 brands in the world, well respected. And when my balloon bursts Virgin will continue to flourish. And maybe I add the icing on the cake on occasions, maybe they’ll have to spend a bit more money on marketing, but fortunately Virgin is in a state where it can live on healthily without me.