Apprentice 101: Street-smart Tana apparently never learned people skills

Last week's episode of "The Apprentice" featured the final two candidates -- street-smart Tana and book-smart Kendra -- leading their teams in the final tasks. Kendra's challenge was to soothe her corporate sponsors running the Best Buy Video Game World Championship. Tana's challenge was running the New York City 2012 Athlete Challenge with a team she dubbed "The Three Stooges."

Kendra demonstrated her leadership ability by inspiring her team through the fast-paced challenges of event management. She understood her priority was to make her sponsors happy and did so effectively. She led a high-performing team to victory with an event that largely went off without a hitch. At the end of the day, all shared hugs and tears.


		NBC PHOTO
	Tana showed ineffective leadership by demeaning teammates.

In sharp contrast, Tana's leadership performance at the Olympic event surely wouldn't have won any medals. She inspired rebellion, not teamwork, by continually demeaning her teammates, calling them "idiots" and shaming them in front of others -- including sponsors. Tana may have proclaimed herself victorious, but what she demonstrated in this task was truly ineffective leadership.

I am confident Donald Trump will hire Kendra. She has proved she is bright, has tremendous marketing savvy, and that she is a capable leader in a tough environment.

Lessons learned

Pass

Inspire your team. Kendra demonstrated the true mark of a leader: being able to inspire with structure under stress. Despite tight deadlines and the complexities associated with managing the event, Kendra's team performed well because of clear guidance and direction. She inspired her team by caring about them. Her genuine appreciation at the end of the task was charming and sincere. (It would make me want to work for her).
Clarity in roles, goals and expectations. Effective leadership demands clarity. Kendra rose to the challenge by clearly communicating specific roles and task expectations to her team. They responded with little or no apparent infighting about who was supposed to do what by when.

In contrast, Tana's team suffered in chaos because she wasn't clear about their roles or her expectations.

Kendra, left, widely made Trump the center of attention.
Treat the sponsors (and Trump) like gold. Kendra wisely understood that her primary objective in this task was to make her sponsors happy. Despite initial challenges with the venue, she was able to inspire confidence and make the sponsor happy by rising to the challenge with great team performance. She also was wise enough to keep the spotlight on Trump during the event.
Emotional intelligence. When faced with challenging situations during a high-paced task, Kendra responded calmly and did not lose sight of the importance of presenting a professional front to her sponsors and team. She didn't lose control of her emotions and therefore maintained her personal authority with her team.

Fail

Failure to inspire and motivate. Effective leaders motivate their teams by drawing on their strengths, respecting them and communicating a clear vision with passion. Tana chose instead to patronize and demean her team. She continually put down her team to anyone who would listen -- Trump adviser Carolyn Kepcher and the sponsors included -- referring to them as "stooges" and "dumb and dumber."

People will rise to your positive beliefs about their abilities and will give you what you expect of them. Leaders have the ability to create their own reality with teams. Expect the worst and, guess what, that is typically what you will get.
Delegate to those with commitment and competence. Tana overrelied on a leadership style of delegation. Delegation can be effective in certain situations (with proper structure and boundaries) with employees who have proved they are committed and competent. Tana didn't believe in Kristen, yet she delegated the major responsibility of the printed brochure to her. Tana should have insisted on seeing the final copy (to proof it) before it was sent to the printers. Because she didn't, she faced a potential disaster with a printed brochure that included embarrassing details about some of the athletes.
Event planning requires attention to detail. Successful management requires everyone knowing what they must accomplish by when. Many things can go wrong -- details, priorities and clear role assignments need to be tracked via a checklist and schedule. For example, Tana allowed an Olympic flag processional with U.S. athletes and the governor of New York to take place without a U.S. flag. The purpose of the event was to promote New York as the site for the 2012 Olympic games. It's all about the American flag.
Unprofessional behavior with sponsors. Tana continually was unprofessional with her sponsors -- the most critical people to be impressing at the event. She blew off the governor's aide when he asked her for his schedule. Unbelievably, she told him he would get it when she got it. When he later voiced concern about the governor not knowing what he was supposed to be doing, she actually said, "that's fine" and left the man standing there!

She also made several derogatory remarks about her team to the sponsors. She forgot the old adage "praise in public and criticize in private." She told one man in a fit of anger that she wanted to "punch somebody." Now honestly, is this an emotional profile of someone who Trump is going to send off to deal with his high-level corporate colleagues and customers? I don't think so.
Blaming everyone else. Tana failed to take ownership or accountability for her part in anything that went wrong. At every turn, when something went wrong, she blamed her team.

Great leaders look at their teams as a "we" effort and do not cast dispersions on the team when things go awry because of their poor leadership.

ABOUT THE SERIES

What can real-world business leaders learn from the NBC series "The Apprentice"? That's the question the Seattle Post-Intelligencer posed to Maureen Moriarty, who uses the show as a teaching tool in her Bellevue Community College leadership course. She'll try to answer the question each week on Mondays throughout the show's season.

See her previous columns.

The Report Card

Kendra

Performance -- A

Leadership -- A

Tana

Performance -- D

Leadership -- D

Maureen Moriarty is a professional accredited executive coach, corporate leadership trainer, team facilitator and founder of Pathways to Change. She teaches leadership courses based on "The Apprentice" and gives speeches and offers corporate training based on the popular TV show. Her Web site is www.pathtochange.com, and she can be reached at 425-837-9297.

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