The 2010 edition of The Apprentice, NBC’s business reality show starring and executive produced by real estate mogul Donald Trump, features entrepreneurs and professionals competing for a $250,000 job contract with the Trump organization. By now, the format is familiar: Each week the contestants, divided into two teams, must complete a business task. The winning team is rewarded; the losing team must report to the infamous boardroom, where one member will be fired by Trump. This edition of The Apprentice features three African American job candidates:
Kelly Beaty, 30, holds a bachelor of arts degree in political science from Spelman College and a master’s in public communication from American University. A former intern at Black Enterprise, she established a career as a rising star in the high-profile public relations industry before losing her job.
Get exclusive behind-the-scenes insights on Task 3 of The Apprentice via our Live Chat with Beatty
Gene Folkes, 46, earned a bachelor of science degree in business from Morris Brown College and served in the U.S. Air Force before launching a career as a financial advisor. The Jamaican-born Folkes has been living off of his savings and trying to launch an assisted living facility since being laid off.
Liza Mucheru-Wisner, 30, founder of an educational technology company who was born in Kenya and, as part of the Kenyan National Golf Team, was recruited to play golf at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
With each task of The Apprentice 2010, I will post performance reviews of the candidates, their teams and their project managers. In addition, I will assess the performances of Kelly, Gene and Liza for as long as they remain in The Apprentice talent pool. You can also follow and discuss my commentary on Twitter and Facebook.
Read and comment on other performance reviews of The Apprentice 2010 Tasks.
Leadership Lesson: If you consistently show respect via your actions, you don’t have to constantly tell people how much you respect them. And the more compelled you feel to keep telling them, the less they’ll believe you. If you have to tell people that you are in charge, you’re not–or you won’t be for long. In other words, the best leaders walk the walk.
TASK 3: Run a hotel & spa for dogs, while creating and offering a “value-add” for clients. Teams are judged on execution, creativity and sustainability of value add, and overall customer experience.
Attorney James Weir steps up as project manager for the all-male Octane team, while real estate agent Tyana Alvarado takes on the leadership role for the ladies of Fortitude on this task.
When realtor Wade Hanson, citing his experience as a long-time dog owner, suggests installing web cams at the pet hotel to allow pet owners to see how their dogs are being cared for remotely, James embraces the idea as the value-add idea for Octane. It’s the last good decision he’ll make on the task. At the beginning of the task, James pays lip service to his team members, apologizing for disrespecting them on past tasks and promising to be a respectful leader as their new project manager. The response from team members range from doubt and distrust to ridicule (sales veteran David Johnson barely stifles his snickers) and outright disgust. “Nobody respects James,” says real estate investment manager Anand Vasudev. “Begging everyone for forgiveness is not going to get him any respect now.”
James goes on to prove that his team was right to doubt him. He also repeatedly disrespects the owner of the pet store. When the owner walks away clearly annoyed by how he is treated by James, real estate attorney Clint Robertson urges James to bring him back and make amends, reminding him that the owner will be among those judging Octane on this task. James blows Clint off and angers and alienates Wade by assigning him the task of decorating the spa entrance despite his experience with and obvious love for dogs. All through the task, David remains as disruptive and insubordinate as ever. While David is totally out of line, James further diminishes his stature as project manager by quarreling with David in
the presence, and later within earshot, of the pet store owner. James eventually dismisses David from the task, but by then it’s too little, too late. He has lost any chance of gaining respect from the remaining members of the team. And even the squabble which led to David being dismissed was over something inconsequential to the task–the decor of the pet spa entrance. That James even let that become a priority is just more evidence of how little he understood the objective of the task.By contrast, Fortitude pulls off their management of the pet hotel/spa pretty much without a hitch. Discovering that Tuesday is a slow sales day at the spa, the team creates a “Tailwag Tuesdays” value-add package, consisting of a “doggy bag” of promotional treats and a photo and report card of each pet’s activities for their owners on that day. The idea is embraced by the pet store owner. Project Manager Tyana assigns herself to the front desk to greet customers, over the strong objection of assistant district attorney Mahsa Saeidi-Azcuy, who sites a strong fear of dogs and her 15 years of experience at the front desk of her mother’s beauty salon. While Tyana clearly intends to put Mahsa into a position of vulnerability by assigning her to work with the largest dogs at the spa (tasking Kelly to handle the small dogs), she was right to not put Mahsa at the front desk. Mahsa, despite her insistence that she is “incredible with clients,” is a pit bull; she’s the last person I’d want to have making first contact with customers. Tyana, on the other hand, is clearly good at charming customers, a skill required of all successful real estate agents. The closest Fortitude ever comes to a “crisis” (more a minor glitch, despite the accompanying dramatics), is the corruption of graphic files for the doggie report cards and signage for the pet store, discovered about 15 minutes before the end of business. Liza, who was assigned responsibility for designing the graphics, quickly sends corrected files to the printer.
The Result: Another crushing defeat for Octane, which looks as unfocused and disjointed as James’ amazingly inarticulate explanation of his team’s concept to dog whisperer Cesar Millan, a guest judge on this task. James even fails to mention his team’s value-add, the doggie cams (Clint finally brings it to Millan’s attention)–the only thing he likes about Octane’s effort. Fortitude on the other hand, wows Trump, the pet spa
owners, and the other judges, including Millan. In fact, during her live chat with BlackEnterprise.com after the show aired last night, Kelly shared that Fortitude’s Tailwag Tuesday promotion would continue to be used by the spa. As the winning project manager for Fortitude, Tyana is rewarded with a meeting with Black Enterprise Titan and hip-hop industry pioneer Russell Simmons.Who I Would Have Fired: I would have fired both James and David. David’s out-of-control, unprofessional and insubordinate behavior is inexcusable. Worse is his total willingness to see his entire team fail if he doesn’t get his way. David got away with this behavior thanks to Gene leading Octane to victory on Task 1. Since then, the only explanation for his multiple stays of execution is that he probably now has people tuning in to see just what it will take for him to get fired.
Of course, James was a terrible project manager on this task. He failed to understand the business and was clueless about how to establish good team dynamics. But that’s not why I fired him. My reason is that he’s actually just like David–undermining and negative–only he doesn’t have the balls to say it to your face. James prefers to sow seeds of doubt and discontent with questions and side comments delivered in a calm, seemingly innocuous way. David is the time-bomb that can go off at any time. James is the slow, insidious, malignant cancer. Both are dangerous threats to an organization. And when confronted, both plead innocent and even claim to be oblivious of the destruction they cause, feeling themselves betrayed and victimized.
The good news for Octane is that, with the exception of David, they are all out of obvious weak links. This should give them an edge over Fortitude on the next few tasks.
Interim Evaluations of the Black Candidates: Again, Gene did not distinguish himself positively or negatively during his team’s failed execution of this task, unless you blame him for losing the nails for Octane’s decor project for the entrance to the pet spa. I don’t; the entrance decor was meaningless to this task. And again, we didn’t get to see much of Kelly. (She shares some of what was
not shown during a live chat at BlackEnterprise.com immediately after last night’s show aired.)Liza calling Poppy Carlig the “b-word” after Task 2 was raised in the boardroom this week, with Stephanie continuing to insist that she is the weak link among the women and that her use of profanity is proof of Liza being too emotional and deserving of termination. I agree that Liza needs to better manage her emotions (she almost came to tears as she defended herself in the boardroom). However, I don’t believe her use of the b-word automatically means she is out-of-control and unfit to be the next apprentice. Let’s compare Liza to David, who is emotionally volatile and unprofessional. His use of profanity was public (in the presence of a client, the pet store owner), directed at a superior (James his project manager) and in the middle of the task, on the job. Liza’s was private (by reality show terms), peer-to-peer (with the task complete, Poppy was no longer her project manager) and after the work was complete, in a social setting.
While you’ll never hear me call anyone the b-word (or the n-word), Liza’s use of the word, in and of itself, does not make the case that she is unprofessional or emotional. If that were the case, she would have flipped out when she found out about the file errors for the graphics she designed with minutes to spare. Instead, she focused on solving the problem, venting her emotions (without attacking anyone) only after the issue was resolved. Moreover, Liza has contributed to both of Fortitude’s victories, and was not a factor in her team’s loss on Task 1.
Dead Men Walking: For obvious reasons, David stays on this list of job candidates who have no chance of becoming Trump’s next apprentice. I’ve also decided to add Mahsa to this list. Again, Mahsa is a pit-bull, meaning her natural, instinctive response to most problems, threats and challenges is to intimidate and go on the attack. That instinct makes all kinds of sense when operating in adversarial situations and environments, such as the criminal court system that Mahsa participated in as district attorney, but it’s just not what you want in a leader.