The Project Coach

This week’s episode of Celebrity Apprentice offered a lesson for project managers the world over about recognizing the power of mixing up stagnant teams. 

The guys had been doing pretty well as a team and had learned to play to each other’s strengths after the first six episodes.  The women, not so much.  Cyndi’s initial flakiness has progressed to outright boorishness.  Holly continues to grate with her sledgehammer finesse.  Maria takes things too personally and Summer is the classic peacekeeper.  Sharon has been absent for the last few shows (tolerated because she is The Donald’s pet this season) so her brusqueness has been in short supply but still evident enough to ruffle a few feathers.   › Continue reading…

Is winning at all cost, despite the consequences of team trust and relationships worth the price?  That is the question we contemplate after this week’s episode of celebrity apprentice.  This week the teams were each assigned a rising country music artist, and the task was to perform an image makeover, including a press kit and media coaching to prepare the artist for an interview with “PEOPLE Country Magazine” and a live concert.  › Continue reading…

After five episodes, the stress of the show is taking its toll on both teams.  The ladies are not nearly as courteous as they were when they started, and are eager to comply when The Donald  sets them up to throw each other under the bus in the Board Room.  The guy’s team, no longer forming or storming, has moved on to norming, the stage where team members adjust their behaviors to the team dynamics. In this week’s episode, Curtis provided strong leadership for Rocksolid.  After weeks of watching Bret dither, Curtis managed him well and led the men’s team to their first win after a string of losses to Tenacity.  › Continue reading…

In week 4 of The Celebrity Apprentice, there were a couple of dominant themes.  More important even than in past weeks, communication emerged early in the task as a vital discipline that set the stage as a differentiator.  Also, I think we saw a poor execution of delegation which contributed to the downfall of the losing team. 

As this week’s task assignment began, Donald called both teams to the boardroom, and asked each team to select a project manager without disclosing what the task was.  › Continue reading…