Apprentice 101

What can real-world business leaders learn from the popular NBC series "The Apprentice"? That's the question we posed to Maureen Moriarty, a professionally accredited executive coach and corporate leadership trainer who uses the show as a teaching tool in her Bellevue Community College course. She tried to answer that for each episode of Season 2.

Episode 1: Leadership lessons seen in a popular TV show
Maureen Moriarty's take on the second-season opener? "The Apprentice" is highly entertaining but the candidates demonstrate a disappointing lack of effective leadership.

Episode 2: Plenty of fumbles, few touchdowns
What happened? How did one of the strongest candidates get axed and two obviously weaker candidates survive? Bradford miscalculated the biggest decision influencer in the boardroom, Trump's ego.

Episode 3: Own up to your mistakes instead of scapegoating
Team consensus is a powerful thing but can also happen for the wrong reasons. When team members do not want to be held responsible, they can, instead scapegoat someone else.

Episode 4: Take pointers from Apex on what not to do as part of team
No surprise, the women's team lost for the third week in a row because of their team norm of catfights, whining, crying, sniveling and scapegoating.

Episode 5: Pamela crosses leadership line
Pamela was directed to lead a chaotic team that was on a losing streak. There is a fine line between providing direction and being perceived as a dictator. This fine line, in her case, was the difference between success and failure.

Episode 6: Understanding product is a winning strategy
When the men of Mosaic were ogling the models, they had their eye off the ball and the goal.

Episode 7: Team makeovers highlight importance of temperaments
Stacy's attitude had truly gone to the dogs. In this episode, she barked that she "wasn't a dog person." She doesn't appear to be a people person either. Perhaps most important, she lacked the most crucial component of business and leadership success: a positive attitude.

Episode 8: Learn a thing or two on passion, vision
A leadership proverb: "He who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk." This sums up Elizabeth. She failed to influence her team to the point that they were inspired to mutiny.

Episode 9: To come out ahead, know the fundamentals
Raj should have trusted his instincts and intuition about the contractor. Leaders need to pay attention to their own internal cues. Self-awareness and trusting one's intuition are business basics.

Episode 10: Mosaic dazzles the brides-to-be, Chris gets the boot
As project manager, Chris performed as though he had never led a team before. Chris led with no energy, no focus, no plan and a complete lack of confidence in his team's ability to accomplish its task.

Episode 11: Leaders lose respect if they wimp out
Wes made a critical mistake by allowing Maria to take over the project given that she had blown three mission-critical tasks on previous episodes. Plus, Andy gets kudos for presenting the most intelligent leadership lesson of the episode.

Episode 12: Rookie quarterback pulled from game
Team Mosaic got so wrapped up in its perception that they had a clever winning idea that they completely lost sight of the customer. Their entire marketing campaign was based on geography. Sorry Mosaic, but geography isn't hip.

Episode 13: Ivana's tactics failed to 'M-AZE' Trump
Trump fired Ivana, citing her dismal 2-and-0 loss record and her sales gimmick of -- get this -- flashing her underwear for money. You have to earn respect from a team. How can you possibly earn respect when you are dropping your clothes to make money?

Episode 14: Two down, one more to go before someone gets hired
Many leaders and teams in organizations make the mistake of overreliance on task. They disregard the important work of a leader and the team in determining how they will work more effectively together.

Episode 15: Kelly demonstrates that he has what it takes
The good news for Kelly is that he has won and will now be the Trump Apprentice. The bad news for Kelly is that he has won and will now be the Trump Apprentice. In the end, Jennifer may, in fact, be the true winner -- she doesn't have to report to Trump for work this week.

See Maureen Moriarty's columns about the current season.