Richard Branson Gives Feedback

Richard is speaking of himself as a entrepreneur.  He is an interactive leader and listens. He is an example of functional leadership that is healthy not toxic. This style of management comes from basic respect. He states he believes in praising more than discouraging.  I am guessing this does not come from some training program that managers take to give awards but actually a personal approach based on positivity rather than manipulation.  Many manipulate from management text books. I’ve seen managemen in action without understanding why the techniques such as ‘walking around’ are instructed, why ‘delegation’ is important, why ‘questions’ open up possibilities and so on.  In Australia, we have a long way to go towards management that see themselves as equal.  I regard Richard akin to my poem on the knights of the round table.  I feel intuitively he is indeed of that calibre.  I wish there were more like him.  Sadly, he is rare.

This is from his website. https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/getting-feedback-giving-feedback

Feedback is one of the most important tools we all have to improve ourselves. Learning how your performance has impacted upon others can be crucial in deciding how to adapt what you do, how you do it, and why.

Image from Virgin Pulse

I’m often asked to give advice to people on how to start businesses and grow companies. But for our Virgin teams, I regularly give lots of feedback too. I’m a strong believer in praising more than discouraging, but I always give very honest feedback as it’s the best way to help people to improve.

Image ©Chris Rank/ Rank Studios

I also give lots of tips to our teams, and when I visited the Virgin Atlantic and Delta teams in Atlanta recently, I enjoyed a cuppa and a chat with many of them. I was very interested to receive some feedback from the team after, in the form of which lessons they found most useful. Here are their top five:

  1. Be the best you can be and have fun doing it.
  2. Create something you are proud of.
  3. Make sure all the small details are right.
  4. We might fly planes but we are all in the entertainment business. People want to be entertained in flight and in life.
  5. Hire people who care about people. A company is just a collection of people, talk to them, and take care of them and each other.

Image from Chase Jarvis

I share lots of different messages and it’s interesting to see which ones stick in people’s minds – they are probably the most important and effective.

It’s so vital to get useful feedback as well as give it, to create a healthy company culture. What’s the most useful feedback you’ve received?

Mohandas Gandhi

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

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