Performance Coaching, 3rd Edition

Foreword by Sir Richard Branson

When I started Virgin, none of us had worked anywhere else so we didn’t know how managers were ‘supposed’ to behave. We approached it like everything in our lives at the time; it had to be lots of fun and we chose our staff the way we chose our friends – on gut instinct. It was like a family and we partied and went on holiday together all the time.

Not much has changed in that respect – it has just got bigger, and the great thing about owning an airline is that you can ship 300 people across the world to a party. In Carol’s day, it was more like eight of us in a ski chalet where the hot water ran out before everyone had showered. But the main thing was that work had to be fun.

Carol fitted in because her approach ...