Describe Branson’s leadership style in terms of the leadership models addressed in Chapters 10 and 11 and evaluate the likely effectiveness of that style in the U.S. today.

To be an effective leader in any business, one must be able to balance various roles within the workplace and keep the vision of the company prime focus. A leader must be able to convey information and instruction to his or her staff to ensure that daily function of the company or organization runs smooth in the present and future.
After reading about Branson, I feel his style of leadership is most represented by the transformational style. Hellriegel and Slocum describe this style as, “a transformational leader involves anticipating future trends, inspiring followers to understand and embrace a new vision of possibilities, developing others to be leaders or better leaders, and building the organization or group into a community of challenged and rewarded learners” ( pg. 329). A leader with this type of style has to constantly be thinking of the present and future ideas, have strong critical thinking skills and be able to interact with those of various cultures. A transformational leader also has to be willing to take risks within the company. Branson is an example of this style. He describes his logical of his “pecking order” in his organization, “If your employees are happy then they will do a better job. If they do a better job, the customers will be happy, and thus business will be good and the shareholders will be rewarded” (p. 344). Overall, this style is leadership would be very effective in the U.S. today. Every leader has to be able to think about what is going on to today and prepare for tomorrow at the same time. The problem with many current leaders is that the short distant future is only viewed. There are also leaders who have narrow views when it comes to looking at certain