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The Apprentice – would you make the grade?

There are many fans of The Apprentice, including myself and some of the trainees on one of our recent Leadership Development Programmes. Whilst covering the subject of Project Management, I asked the trainees to watch that night’s Apprentice repeat (thank you BBC!!) as homework.

Each trainee drew the name of an Apprentice out of the hat in readiness, and was asked to analyse the performance of that individual, both as part of The Apprentice project team, and against their own organisation’s leadership competencies. They were asked to consider what their Apprentice did particularly well, and where they thought they could use some development.

The resulting discussion was fascinating – allowing us to uncover different understandings of what a project leader’s responsibilities were, and the differing interpretations of what were accepted as ‘standard’ competencies within their own business. The real value in terms of leadership reflection came when we started to uncover how different trainees valued (or not) different skill sets or behaviours.

This led us to ponder the question of ‘would we make the grade?’ and the answer was “we’re not really sure what the grade is!”

Whether you agree with Sir Alan Sugar’s methods, or consider it all to be a performance for the cameras, if you are interested in developing in your career as a manager, it is worth considering the key questions:-

  do you know what ‘the grade’ is in the eyes of your organisation?

  and

  do you make the grade?

Deborah Wilis