How Future "The Apprentice" Candidates Can Win!
Leadership Lessons Learned From "The Apprentice"
By Maureen Moriarty
MA, ABS Professional Certified Business and Executive Coach
As an Executive Leadership Coach, I watched the new NBC hit show "The Apprentice" with disappointment at the lack of effective leadership shown by the candidates. There are many leadership lessons to be learned by watching "The Apprentice", mostly by what didn't work for the candidates. I have pointed out ten in this article.
Each episode of the first season of "The Apprentice" could service as a mini case study in any Business College or University on business and leadership, but mostly as the non example. The show resulted in high television ratings showcasing hot women, deceptive and misleading sales tactics, sexual baiting for sales and some great cat fights (and more money for Donald Trump), but it hardly should be used as the model for good leadership in business.
Future "The Apprentice" candidates could win in next season's leadership ring by learning the following ten lessons from the show if they want to succeed in business - in Trump's organization or any other.
1. EMOTIONAL SELF CONTROL.
The old axiom "business is business", like it or not, is still a major rule in the professional business world. Several female Apprentice candidates (who shall remain nameless at this point, but we all know who you are!) displayed everything from tears, catfights, lies, feeling sorry for themselves to blaming everyone else for their lack of leadership skills. One example of this was when Donald gave Ereka a pink slip identifying her "inability to control her emotions."
Women (and men) do themselves a disservice when they have tantrums in the workplace. I am not advocating leaders stuff their truest feelings. Leaders should find other outlets other than the workplace to express their strongest emotions -the gym, confiding in friends, partners or spouses, a walk around the block, hitting a pillow at night, coaching or if needed, therapy. The workplace is not the place to "let it all hang out."
Personal authority, which is at the heart of leadership, is lost in the workplace when leaders lose control of their emotions. According to Daniel Goleman in his book, "Primal Leadership", the best leaders are those who are comfortable with emotion. He defines emotional intelligence is one's capacity to deal effectively with your own and others' emotions. The best strategy to improve one's emotional intelligence is to get honest feedback from coworkers and work with a coach or mentor to improve.
2. TOO MUCH TASK, NOT ENOUGH MAINTENANCE.
"The Apprentice" hopefuls were all about the task(s) at hand and little about designing a process and coaching a team that would address how the team was going to execute the work they had to do. Each week, the project managers of "The Apprentice" hit the ground running, quickly delegating tasks and rarely leading a process to ensure the team's highest potential, collaboration, and creativity. They continually failed to pay attention to this "maintenance" work of their team. For leaders, this means designing effective brainstorming sessions, clearly communicating goals and objectives, decision making styles and creating group norms which allow team members to contribute and stimulate creativity while giving clear feedback and managing conflict effectively.
3. CLARIFICATION OF ROLES, GOALS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Few project leaders on "The Apprentice" began by allocating specific roles, goals and responsibilities with team members. Most ran headlong into tasks and then ran helter skelter throughout the rest of the project. Watching the project managers trying to herd cats (oops, I meant project team members) through the streets of New York made for entertaining TV, yet, was hardly an effective way to lead a team.
"The Apprentice" project managers should have begun meetings with clearly defined objectives for each team member. Team members should have had clarity and confidence about their specific responsibility for project. The great non- example was in the final episode when Heidi was unclear about her role as the one in charge of the celebrity "meet and greet" for Jessica Simpson. But instead of helping Heidi gain clarity about her role, Kwami simply told her he had faith she would know what to do. The "meet and greet" was at best unorganized and chaotic. Kwami did not end up being Trump's new Apprentice. His team members lacked necessary clarity about their roles, goals and responsibilities. The more clearly defined these parameters and expectations from the project manager, the better the results for the team.
4. DECISION MAKING STYLES - CLAIM ONE!
"The Apprentice" project managers overlooked this. They failed to clarify to their teams how decisions would be made. Was the project manager using an authoritarian style with decision-making authority (great in a crisis but not for building commitment)? Were they using consensus (great for building commitment but time consuming)? Were they using majority vote? Who knew? Time after time, project managers met Donald in the boardroom and looked blankly at each other when he asked the question, "who made the decision…?" No one even knew when, if and how a major strategy decision was made.
Good leaders make their decision-making styles clear so that team members understand if they have any influence, authority or a vote. Leaders who don't get exactly what viewers saw on "The Apprentice". Grumbling team members who were continually complaining about how their voices either weren't recognized or they didn't know who had made what decision regarding the team and tasks.
5. CONFLICT AVOIDANCE, CATFIGHTS OR RESOLUTION?
How did the leaders in the project manager's weekly chair manage conflict in their teams? Poorly is the answer. When Kwami was a leader and Omarosa created conflict and even lied, he pretended it didn't happen. Ultimately this cost Kwami the job. Trump was not impressed by Kwami's failure to deal with Omarosa and the conflict she created.
Others displayed childlike tantrums about the "problem child" on their teams. None modeled effective conflict resolution leadership skills to solve the issues. There are dozens of good, simple conflict resolution models for managers to choose from. Effective leaders have conflict resolution tools in their leadership tool bag to draw out when leading dealing with conflict in the teams.
Effective leaders confront when necessary but with a clear intent to foster growth and development in the other. Conflict is not something that can be avoided. It is a normal and healthy part of group development. It is how the conflict is addressed that matters. During team conflict, teams learn to work out how they are going to operate together.
6. SEX SELLS…BUT IS IT A WINNING LEADERSHIP STRATEGY?
Granted, sex sells high ratings for shows like "The Apprentice". The female candidates were all highly attractive and sexy. It was not surprising (after all it is produced by Donald Trump) to see the women from "The Apprentice" use their feminine wiles to increase sales.
The women dominated the men in the beginning competitions using sexual selling tactics and capitalizing on their feminine assets. But should highly intelligent, competent women use their sexuality, wear short skirts, tight shirts and high heels for top management interviews? Note what happened to Amy in "The Apprentice".
Amy was clearly the woman identified and easily bet on to be the last woman standing in the competition. But she could have been the winner. She had already proven her skills and talent as a winning project manager to Trump. Her continued flirtation with Nick was a distraction that left her vulnerable and exposed as a candidate who didn't have relationship boundaries in the workplace. Amy overplayed her attractive feminine role which may have won her many sales battles but ultimately lost her the war.
When Amy had to confront hard driving senior Trump management advisors in interviews, she failed miserably. Her interview answers were unprepared and weak. She didn't bargain on their more serious, strictly business approach. Did her feminine wiles work at this critical juncture? One of Trump's trusted female advisors remarked that "she would get on my nerves after a while" and "her white teeth and smile" did not impress her. Amy was described by one of Trump's senior male advisor as a "Stepford Wife who irritated the hell out of me." Ouch. Amy's attempt to be the candidate turning the most men's heads got her the boot. Using sex may win a few battles in the workplace but never the war.
Female leaders should capitalize on their positive feminine qualities like female instincts, communication skills, compassion, empathy and intuition to win the war. The workplace and the boardroom benefit from these qualities. To get promoted into leadership…leave the high heels, short skirts and boyfriends at home.
7. FEEDBACK-INTENTION, ASSUMPTIONS AND BEHAVIORALLY SPECIFIC
Few of "The Apprentice" project managers gave clear, effective feedback to their team members. Effective feedback is given cleanly rather than with anger, high emotion or resentment. Business leaders need to get clear about their intent before giving feedback. If the intent is not focused on enhancing the team or helping the person do their work more effectively, a leader should reconsider giving the feedback. Worse yet is avoiding giving feedback altogether (yes Kwami, this means you with Omarosa).
Effective leaders give behaviorally specific feedback instead of making inferences. Behaviorally specific feedback offers an accurate observation of what happened. An example: would be, "Omarosa, you cut Ereka off when you interrupted her." (behaviorally specific feedback) vs. "Omarosa is rude"(non behaviorally specific feedback).
8. IF YOU WANT IT, MODEL IT!
One of the most basic tenets of leadership: your actions, as a leader, clearly model your expectations of the team. What kind of message was Sam sending while taking naps, being disruptive and disorganized? How about when Kwami and Troy spent the night out at the casino show instead of helping the team? Actions speak louder than words.
9. FACILITATION SKILLS TO MAXIMIZE POTENTIAL
"The Apprentice" project managers put little time or attention towards facilitating a process at the beginning of each project that would allow the best ideas to emerge from the team. If this step is skipped, leaders give up what is so powerful about a team; it's extraordinary synergistic creative and strategy potential! Effective leaders create space and room for team members to think, collaborate and find the best, creative answers and solutions.
An effective leader facilitates a brainstorming and prioritizing strategy session where the best of the team member's ideas are put forward and then strategically evaluated for pros/cons. This process could have been done effectively in an hour or less and likely was the missing link for most of the losing project teams.
Project managers on "The Apprentice" either quickly decided themselves what strategy to take or held an all too brief brain storming session without a method for the team to collectively agree on which idea to pursue. This resulted in little buy in or commitment by other team members (proven by interviews with team members disagreeing with their leader's strategy and complaining that the project manager had ignored their idea). Leaders make a mistake when they skip this step caving in to time pressures in the workplace. A focused, collaborative bought in approach by team members will most often succeed over a "stop, drop and go directly to task" approach.
10. MORE COACHING, LESS MANAGING
Future "The Apprentice" candidates should do more coaching of the their teams and less micro managing. Leaders, who coach employees inspire, encourage, appreciate, support, and facilitate in ways that empower them. Most of "The Apprentice" project managers used a management style of delegation, directing, telling and pointing out errors.
Donald wannabes can win by putting more emphasis on facilitating team members to solve problems, explore strategic action plans, challenge mental models, make decisions, model accountability and fosters their team's imagination, and creativity.
The bottom line: all this season's "The Apprentice" candidates need good leadership development coaching. Good leadership requires good coaching. By the way, Donald, or Donald wannabes, I'm available!
Copyright © 2007 Pathways to Change. All rights reserved.
|
