Apprentices lose focus and axe falls on first woman candidate

Despite all the candidates having a clear focus on winning the competition and the plaudits that go with such an accolade, many this week were guilty of losing sight of how they were going to win.

It’s interesting, because this week we saw a determined focus on winning (as always), but when it came to acting out on that ‘vision’ of winning, the vast majority fell horribly short.

We talk about Focussed Thinking here at Muika Leadership HQ, and this is a combination of vision, belief, then action. It works, but you need all three in place.

When Lord Sugar addressed the losing team, he said they had “lost the plot”. I beg to differ, because they never actually had a plot to lose in the first place.

Call Sugar what you like, but one thing you can’t accuse him of is being clear – he borders on condescending most of the time, but time, but his message is always received loud and clear.

He clarified at the beginning that the task was to be about beauty treatments, both teams seemed to forget this, focussing on products.

They were easily distracted, and neither group worked as a team. Big mistake.

Tom in particular had worked out that the treatments would end up giving by far the highest return on investment.

But on the day, even when dispatched with the sole purpose of demonstrating the treatments, and escorting the clients to the salons, he was distracted by the products, far more indeed than potential customers were, and totally failed in the task he was given.

Perhaps the rest of them were waiting for some direction from Felicity the ‘team leader’? They were not a team, she was not a leader. And, ultimately it may have been that lack of ability to lead that ultimately caused her time on the programme to be up.

Prediction for next week: Zoe Beresford

Karen Murphy
Muika Leadership – Our next Developing Leadership programme