Lessons Learned

• The Good:

  • Integrity: Sean refused to go along with Allie's plan to throw Andrea under the bus in Trump's boardroom. He was not convinced she was the reason the team lost and he admired her leadership on previous tasks. I admire his courage and confidence to stand up against the tide and mob mentality.

  • Location, location, location (and the early bird gets the worm): Gold Rush nailed this. They woke up at 5 a.m. and beat their competition to the best place to sell the programs -- to the people waiting in line for the ferry to Ellis Island. By the time Synergy got there, most of the people had already bought their programs. When sales count, nothing is more important than location.
     

• The Bad:

  • Weak leadership: Allie did a poor job of providing her team with clear roles, strategy and a plan for success. Worse, when conflict emerged with Andrea, Allie didn't attempt to resolve it for the good of team cohesiveness. Instead, she became part of the conflict.

  • No sales strategy: Synergy lacked a clear sales and/or marketing plan other than to show up and start hawking programs. They didn't have a big idea or an out-of-the-box strategy to sell the programs. Once they realized Gold Rush had the best spot, the best they could come up with was to sell on the island. Not very impressive.

  • Tell your leader you have the skills: Andrea waited until the task was almost complete to boast to her project manager that she had bulk sales expertise (which this team could have used!). Andrea should have alerted her leader to this strength at the beginning. If you want to get noticed in a company, stand up and own your skills, experience and/or talents when a team leader is delegating tasks. This is your chance to shine and get noticed; take your shot! Don't bring up your skills after the fact, as if you could have done something better had they only asked you.
     

• The Ugly:  The leader should stay on the boat! Will someone please explain why a team leader (Allie) felt it necessary to escort a teammate to retrieve a notebook that was left behind? The management of time and resources is critical. Missing the boat and separating the team was a minor-league move.
   

• Win One for the Team: Andrea is a self-made multimillionaire, who at age 31 has already started multiple successful ventures. With that background, how can one explain her downfall on the show? A lot of it has to do with the ability to get along with and work in harmony with other people. From the beginning, Andrea has been someone who is most comfortable when she is in a position of control, telling other people what to do. Unfortunately, being successful on the show also requires an ability to collaborate, which often means having to yield control. When things don't go well, or don't go her way, Andrea has a tendency to engage in personal attacks aimed at people who do not share her views.

  The bottom line: A lot of entrepreneurs think they can do everything, and sometimes, they can, when their companies are small. As an organization grows, however, teamwork becomes as important, if not more important, than individual productivity. Teamwork, by definition, requires the members to subordinate their own individual goals for the good of the team. Andrea could use some more experience in being a team player.
   

• Play Well with Others: Another issue that contributed to Andrea's firing was the fact that she didn't come across as being a very nice person. Of course, there's a lot more that happens in the development of an "Apprentice" episode than viewers ever see in the finished product. A lot of the interactions among the candidates end up being edited out in order to come up with a one-hour show. Nonetheless, there's a difference between being assertive and being aggressive in relationships with other people - both on and off the job. Unfortunately for Andrea, she appeared to be too aggressive and not sensitive enough to the other people on her team.

  The bottom line: Hopefully, Andrea will benefit from watching this season's episodes and reflecting on how she is perceived by other people. It wouldn't hurt if she could soften her extremely hard edge in interpersonal relations.
   

• Too Much Puffery Can Lead to a Big Crash: Another mistake Andrea made repeatedly during her time on the show was in touting her alleged experience as a graphic designer. However, in this task, and in at least one other task, her design skills were suspect. As it turned out, she wasn't really a graphic designer. She had experience in hiring graphic designers, and that's much different. Just because you have a lot of experience hiring electricians for home improvements doesn't mean you are an electrician.

  The bottom line: It's easy to embellish one's qualifications by stretching the truth, but it's a dangerous practice. If one is actually called upon to deliver on the exaggerated qualifications, the consequences may be disastrous. The best advice is to describe one's credentials honestly, in order to avoid creating false expectations in the minds of other people.
   

• Wake Up and Smell the Coffee: Synergy seemed to be a step slow on virtually every aspect of this week's task. First, when the tour boat was leaving Ellis Island after Synergy's initial scouting of the location, Tammy left her portfolio full of notes behind. When she and Allie went to retrieve it, they missed the boat. By the time they got back to Manhattan, Andrea's design work was already well underway. Second, Synergy was beaten to the prime sales location, because the Gold Rush team awoke very early and staked out the site where sightseers waited for the tour boat. Finally, Gold Rush had a bulk sales effort underway from the very start, and it eventually bore fruit. For Synergy, bulk sales were an afterthought.

  The bottom line: As a great basketball coach used to say, "If you do nothing else, get out there and hustle." Lee had his team hustling; Andrea did not.

Rankings

Andrea is now gone, and the positions of the eight remaining candidates have shifted. Here is the new ranking of the candidates, based on the likelihood that they will eventually be hired by Trump.

1. Lee (Gold Rush): He now has two victories as a project manager, but as he said, there's a seat in the Trump boardroom with his name on it because he has been to so many firing sessions. So, he's not safe - Andrea had two wins to her credit, and she got the ax this week.

Lee also gets a gold star this week for getting his team up and moving on the day of the brochure sales and for capturing the best sales venue.

2. Sean (Synergy): His star shone a little less brightly this week. He wasn't much of a factor in the task and he was the only person on his team to recommend that Allie be fired. Previews of next week's episode implied that a romance might be in the works involving him and Tammy. He has one victory as a project manager.

3. Michael (Gold Rush): He moves up to the number three position, which had been occupied by Andrea. He led his team to one victory earlier in the season.

4. Charmaine (Gold Rush): She moves up in the rankings because she engineered a successful bulk sale of brochures that helped secure victory for her team this week.

5. Roxanne (Synergy): She still has one victory as a project manager, but she was leapfrogged by Charmaine in the rankings.

6. Allie (Synergy): She now has one win and one loss as a project manager, and could have very easily been fired this week. Her prospects are fading.

7. Tarek (Gold Rush): He finally did something that had a positive outcome, as he played an important role in the design of the Gold Rush brochure. He lost in his only turn as project manager.

8. Tammy (Synergy): She's now in last place, mainly because her error caused her and Allie to be delayed on Ellis Island at a crucial point in time.

Commentary

To be a strong leader you must also be a team player: Though Andrea exhibited strong leadership in previous tasks, she failed to exhibit equally strong team player traits. She admitted once (in a previous episode) that if it were up to her, she would be the project manager every time. She didn't want to be a team player and her continued efforts to differentiate herself from her team backfired. Her command and control style (and rigid stance against other people's opinions) was not effective with a high-performing collaborative team. True leaders unite vs. divide their teams. Being a team player and having necessary people skills is how leaders gain trust -- which is critical for leaders to be successful. The best leaders get buy-in and commitment from their teams by helping teams unite over common purpose and goals. Leaders who are divisive and difficult to get along with are not leaders most people want to follow.