Lead positively. You don't have to like everyone on your team; you only have to work with them. Because he was still furious about last week, Clay launched a plot worthy of Darth Vader. He planned to make his teammates design the display, then to plant all the blame on them if they lost. Because they won, he couldn't execute his plot. Still, his machinations, such as disappearing so that Alla would have to create the design on her own, represented Machiavellian leadership at its worst.
 

Stick your ear in the horse's mouth. Ask the people in charge to explain what they want. Then, deliver it. You can't win otherwise, no matter how smart you are. In their meeting with Jim Ward of LucasArts and Gary Arnold of Best Buy, Capital Edge listened carefully and determined that if they highlighted Darth Vader prominently in their display, they would win. Because Excel missed the meeting, they were clueless about what the judges wanted. No wonder they lost.
 

Look like a team, even if you aren't. A public grab for power makes you look a lot worse than the people you are trying to discredit. When Clay hijacked his team's presentation and cut off Alla every time she opened her mouth, he was putting his power grab out in the open. It was such a bad move, it's a wonder he survived.
 

Follow through. Honoring commitments is the first law of leadership. When Marshawn decided not to present at the last minute, she hamstrung her teammates. Luckily, Rebecca jumped in and made a beautiful presentation, despite the intense pressure. Later, in the boardroom, Marshawn couldn't explain why she had bailed out of presenting. That earned her a seat alongside Brian for that taxi ride to the airport.
 

Get to key meetings early: Lateness is business suicide. There was no excuse for Brian's failure to get his team to the planning meeting on time. Brian stupidly made his team arrive 30 minutes late for their critical meeting with executives from Best Buy and LucasArts. That was a firing offense. When the executives wouldn't even meet with them after they finally arrived, Brian said, "We're screwed." For once, he was right. After blowing the very first step, they were dead. For a meeting as crucial as this one was, he should have allowed more time.

The bottom line: In a big city with lots of traffic, estimate how long it will take to get to the meeting location and multiply by pi (3.14). Then use the result as the real estimate of the time needed to get to the meeting. There's nothing wrong with getting to meetings early. If there are extra minutes before the start of the meeting, there is always voice mail or e-mail that can be checked, freshening up that can be done, or meeting notes that can be reviewed before getting underway.
 

Give credit where credit is due: Although Clay had little to do with the design of his team's display, he stepped to the forefront to do his team's presentation, which gave a couple of his teammates the feeling that he was hogging the credit for their work.

The bottom line: In fairness to Clay, he may have felt that it was his responsibility to tell his team's story simply because he was project manager. There's nothing wrong with a team leader doing that, as long as the leader makes sure to publicly acknowledge the contributions made by the other people who worked on the project. That type of public praise doesn't just elevate the employees, it shows that the leader is secure enough in his/her own skin to give the employees a chance to be in the spotlight.