Lessons Learned

• The Good:

  • Leadership: Project managers Charmaine and Tammy both displayed impressive leadership behaviors. Despite being saddled with angry team members and type A personalities, they were able to keep their teams focused and organized. Charmaine kept her team on task by leading with good questions and made decisions to keep her team moving ahead. Tammy tactfully dealt with Brent and did not allow herself or her team to get sucked into his negative vortex despite his frequent disruptions. She wisely understood his limitations and gave him only non-critical tasks. Both women led in a calm, controlled manner while giving clear direction. Leaders need to remember that their emotions and how they handle the emotions of others is what matters. Nothing spreads anxiety and chaos faster than a leader who loses control of his or her emotions.

  • Initiative: Kudos go to Charmaine for stepping up to the leadership plate this week. Despite having her confidence shaken (after hearing that Trump wanted to fire her last week), she responded by taking the leadership reins knowing she had "something to prove." Trump is looking for leaders who can recover and respond to adversity well.

  • Executive presentations: Carefully choose who makes a presentation to any executive and be prepared. Presenters should be articulate, poised under fire, confident and highly professional. Although stammering Sean wasn't the best choice, the smart thing Tammy did was to keep Brent from speaking to the executives.
     

• The Bad:

  • Second-guessing: Bryce had the great idea on team Gold Rush for "cereal chugging" from a box. But instead of standing behind his idea, he backpedaled in a last-minute attempt to potentially save his own behind should they fail. Not taking responsibility and being wishy-washy is a lousy strategy and typically results in a loss of team confidence, energy and synergy.

  • Billboard advertising: You have about two seconds to make an impression. Keep it simple. Avoid any complex images, messages or graphics.

  • Flustered under fire: Sean did not do himself any favors by botching the presentation and flinching in front of Trump, stating that he was "flustered." Getting flustered and blowing your task is what gets you back in the boardroom -- with predictable results.
     

• The Ugly:  The interpersonal time bomb. Brent clearly crossed a line this week -- using profanity and vile, tactless adjectives to describe his teammates. He went beyond obnoxious to offensive and unacceptable. You know self-awareness and interpersonal relations are an issue when teammates say this about you:

  "He sucks the life out of whomever he is working with."

  "Don't trust him with anything."

  "He doesn't listen." And lastly from Trump, "Your team can't stand you; they think you are a loser and a loose cannon."

  These comments were made about Brent. He offers us a prime example of an individual who leaves a huge wake. Either he doesn't care or isn't aware of his effect on others. He didn't exhibit any interest in learning from his mistakes or paying attention to feedback from his peers. That strategy is almost guaranteed to end in failure. There is no place for this kind of behavior in the workplace. Period.  To be successful in business and leadership, you must work on becoming self-aware and understanding what your effect is on others.

  Trump milked every bit of entertainment value out of Brent, and it was high time he was sent packing. Who would ever hire this venomous, unpredictable man?
   

• Match the message to the medium: The Gold Rush billboard had a strong visual theme — a woman, clearly in exercise garb, downing a box of cereal by simply holding the box upside down over her open mouth — no bowl, no milk, no spoon. Accompanying the picture were the simple words, "It's that good." Synergy's billboard had a weak visual image, and text that was hard to read. Synergy's generational theme was too vague.
  
  The bottom line: Billboard advertising can be effective, but it has to convey a concise message very quickly. The typical consumer looks at a billboard for only an instant. The advertiser has to get to the point and leave an impression that doesn't require much information processing effort on the part of the consumer. Thus, dramatic visual themes tend to work better than complicated text messages.
   

• Give people a chance to succeed — or to fail: After the judging of the billboards was finished, and the members of Synergy prepared to face Donald Trump in the boardroom, Sean, Roxanne and Allie discussed the problems the team was having with Brent. As early as the very first task, his team had made a decision very quickly that he was not very useful as a teammate. Thus, his team isolated him and gave him trivial tasks to perform so he would not get in the way.
  
  Brent continually tried to inject himself into a more active decision-making role and was ignored by the rest of the team. As Sean pointed out, however, because the team never gave Brent any responsibility, there was no way they could really blame him if the team failed. They could say that he hadn't done anything, but that would have been their choice, not Brent's. Thus, in trying to pinpoint a reason why Synergy might have lost, Mr. Trump would never have a reason to fire Brent and liberate the team. As Sean realized, Brent could have conceivably skated through to the very end of the competition, simply because the rest of his team wouldn't give him anything to do. Fortunately for Synergy, Brent did himself in by not keeping his mouth shut in the boardroom when it was in his best interest to do so.
  
  The bottom line: People in an organization need to be given a chance to show what they can do, even if that may involve some risk. Then they need to be evaluated based on that performance. They should gain rewards if they succeed, and should have to deal with the consequences if they fail. Sheltering team members and keeping them from having any substantive contribution to an effort just creates more problems in the long run. Flowers don't bloom if they are kept in the dark. If people are not given jobs to do, there's no opportunity for them to grow.

Endangered species list

Charmaine (Gold Rush) comes off the list, because she led the team to a clear-cut victory after having a terrible time in the previous task. Also, Lenny comes off the list, at least for now, though with his personality, he could return at any time. Brent is now gone. If he had simply kept quiet in the boardroom, he could have survived at least one more task. He couldn't resist the chance to stick it to Tammy, and it backfired on him. So right now, there are three new entries on this week's endangered species list, based upon the likelihood that they will incur Mr. Trump's wrath in the near future:

Bryce (Gold Rush): Yes, he came up with the idea for Gold Rush's billboard, which turned out to be a smashing success. However, Bryce has shown a tendency to turn on his teammates very quickly. He even turned on himself this week and started to get cold feet about his idea after it was already in production. He seemed to be laying the foundation to escape blame in the event that things didn't work out well. It will be interesting to see how he fares as a project manager.

Sean (Synergy): He's handsome, has a cool accent, and seems pretty creative, but his presentation to the Post executives was a disaster. He had no focus, was poorly prepared, and for the most part, read his presentation aloud. Sean was so dreadful that Mr. Trump finally made him cut the presentation short. With Sean, one has to wonder if he is more style than substance.

Tammy (Synergy): For someone who has a marketing background, she really didn't do a very good job in leading a marketing-related task this week.

Commentary

Charmaine gets a gold star this week for recognizing that she needed to make a strong comeback after a poor showing in the third task. Moreover, she kept her team focused, even when things were not going well, and pushed them to complete the task.

One month into this season of "The Apprentice," no one has emerged yet as a really strong candidate. In Season 2, it didn't take Kelly long to establish himself as a front-runner. The same was true of Randal last season. So far, this season has been defined more by Brent's antics from week to week, and not by any truly outstanding performances by project managers. But the remaining candidates don't have Brent to kick around any more. Hopefully, someone will emerge from the pack in the next couple of episodes.