Episode 664: Life Lessons from Richard Branson

Synopsis

Whenever Dr. Misner returns from a trip to Necker Island, people ask him what Richard Branson (creator of the Virgin brand) is like. Here are five traits that Dr. Misner has observed that we can emulate.

Go out of your way to connect with people. Richard Branson can connect to anyone at any level of an organization and make them feel empowered and good about themselves. Be gracious. Be kind, courteous, and patient with people. How we treat wait staff is often an indication of how we treat other people.Be a good host. Can you be as good a host to new members and visitors to your chapter as Richard Branson is to guests on Necker Island?Be tolerant. How do we behave with our fellow members...especially when they annoy us? Patience and tolerance are incredibly important to building relationships.Relax and have fun. If there's one thing Richard Branson knows how to do, it's relax. Are you having fun in business and in BNI? Keep the fun in the fundamentals.

Richard Branson (left) and Ivan Misner (right) after catching some sun on Necker Island

Share your thoughts on this topic in the comments!

Complete Transcript of Episode 664

Priscilla RiceHello, everybody and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast. I'm Priscilla Rice, and I'm coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. And I'm joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan, how are you today?

Ivan MisnerI'm doing fantastic, Priscilla. Thank you. I've got an interesting topic today, I think. I've been blessed to be able to spend some time on Necker Island and was able to do so again this year. I think I mentioned in a previous podcast, I spent some time there--before the Great Pause, you know, as a matter of fact it was one of my last trips--and every time I come back, people usually will ask me what's he like?

And so what I thought I might do here is talk about some of the things that I observed from him that I think we can all use in our interactions with other people because he has immense emotional intelligence. He is incredibly good at working with people and dealing with people. And I spent some time thinking about what in particular was it that he did, that made me think he had such high emotional intelligence. In all my interactions with him, I found him to be personable, intelligent, surprisingly humble, and very direct.

I think there are lessons that we can all learn from this. And so I've actually come up with five specific things that I've observed, that I think make him really great at interacting with people. Now, I'm sure he's not like this all the time with people, you know, we all have bad days. But this is what I've seen from him on the number of times I've spent with him. Here the five takeaways.

One, he's able to connect with everyone in any level of an organization. He's remarkable at this. He can connect with the staff and make the staff feel empowered and good about themselves. And he's great with incredibly successful business professionals. I've never seen him personally interact with a politician, but I've seen him on--no, I take that back. I was there when he met with the governor of New Mexico in Mojave, and I watched him interact with the governor of New Mexico and he treated the governor of New Mexico just like he would one of his employees or one of the other people in his organization. He seems to treat people very consistently. And I've talked about that in some of the other podcasts that I've done.

I wrote years ago in an article that I think that a great leader leads from within and not from above. And there's no question in my mind, he leads from within. And the question then for us is, do we do this? No one's perfect. But do we go out of our way to connect with people in some small way when we meet them? I think that's the lesson here for us: to improve the way we connect with people.