March 21, 2006

Entrepreneurs Must Be Good Leaders

Did you watch The Apprentice last night?

There was so much to learn by watching both teams and watching Donald Trump and the Apprentice.

I am only going to cover one aspect here…

Last nights show really shows what you must do to be a true leader. As an entrepreneur you are the leader whether you recognize this fact or not. People are looking to you to lead them.

Brent, the lawyer who is usually obnoxious and no one on his team respected was fairly well behaved during most of the task. The leadership of the team was good for the most part except for the way Brent was handled.

Brent was given very little responsibility. It fact it was so little that even Donald’s assistants were wondering what was going on. Everyone in the team should have responsibility to help further the team. Brent’s strength is presenting. Since he is a lawyer he would most likely be good at presenting.

The project manager instead chose to give Brent responsibility for clothing instead. Yes you saw this correctly…

This is not responsibility at all. This is attempting to hide the problem the team has been plagued with all along. Hiding the problem as an entrepreneur will never solve the problem. To get a better understanding of this read chapter 4 in my book Wealth Without a Job on pages 31 through 33.

It would have been far better for the project manager to assign Brent a more meaningful role and if they lost the task, they could always go back to him to take responsibility if he was the person who caused the loss.

Instead they had Sean do the presentation and he really blew it. He was terrible. But the interesting part here is the entire team believed that Brent would only be a liability for the team and that is why the project manager picked Sean to do the presentation.

Remember, as an entrepreneur you must keep your entire team involved. If you have a weak player you will find out fairly quickly. Even if you have a weak player, look for their strengths instead of their weaknesses. Maybe you didn’t know what their strengths are and have them do something that isn’t appropriate for their skill set.

I agree with the project manager Brent was a disaster. However the way he was handled was poor. There are much better ways to handle people.

As entrepreneurs we must use our leadership to use our resources as wisely as possible and grow our business. Sometimes it is necessary to fire someone because they do not fit well with your team. But until you do, you must work with them in such manner to give them a fair chance. You hired them for a reason to begin with didn’t you?

To Your Success,
Andy