Donald, You’re Fired!

I like many others, got hooked into the Apprentice series.  This series dealt with a group of 10 people selected out of 200,000, to perform tasks set up by Mr. Donald Trump to determine who is best fit to run one of his divisions.  A division that has an annual budget of at least 500 million dollars, mind you. These so called tests ranged from selling lemonade on the streets of New York City, to convincing celebrities to be a part of a charity auction.  One could argue how performance in these tasks translates to running a half billion dollar corporation.  But that really wasn’t the point of the series, was it?

In the very first Survivor! series, I was able to correctly predict the winner based on the group dynamics I observed.  Not so with the apprentice, however.  I found my self flip-flopping between the contests to predict who would get fired.  Invariably I was wrong.  It was only until the contest was down to Kuami and Bill, that I correctly predicted who would be hired. 

There are two key theories that allowed me to predict the best leader.  The first theory, Contingency Leadership, developed by Dr. Fred Fielder, is based on the premise that leadership is a very dynamic process, and highly interdependent upon the task at hand and the expectations (and needs) of followers of how to be led.  In essence, a leader must be able to determine what the followers need to perform the task correctly and determine what needs to happen for the task to be performed successfully.  In a series of carefully controlled and elegantly designed experiments, Fiedler discovered it wasn’t the style of leadership(ranging from authoritarian to participative) that determined success, it was the prerequisites of the task combined with the expectations of the followers that led to success.  In some cases, the authoritarian approach was best, in other’s the participative approach was best, even with the same task!  What was going on here, and how could science ever begin to prescribe a standard leadership model that would help business organizations increase their effectiveness?

This conundrum was unraveled with research by Drs. Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey, with their theory of Situational Leadership.  Blanchard and Hersey designed experiments which led them to discover a four factor theory of leadership, based upon the needs and expectations of the followers.  For example, in situations where the followers have a high degree of maturation, i.e., experience in performing the task, the leader must use a participative approach. Likewise, in situations where the followers have a low degree of maturation, the leader must take a more directive or “hands on” approach.  If the leader’s style does not match the maturation needs of the followers, the task performed suffers.

So, let’s look at what occurred.  First, neither of the groups had experience with the task being performed.  Running a golf tournament and coordinating a rock concert were far from the participants’ job experience.  Indeed, many couldn’t play golf (including yours truly, another story).  Kuami took the leadership style of “hands-off” management.  He believed if you paint the broad picture and set broad goals, that people will do what needs to be done to ensure successful performance.  In some cases, that is true. Those cases being where the task is ambiguous and the followers high in maturation.  This was not the case for Kuami’s challenge.  And I saw the results.  Indeed, followers interviewed throughout noted they wanted a greater sense of structure from Kuami.  They were overwhelmed with the task and unsure of themselves.  It was Kuami’s role to step in and offer more structure.  Sometimes the directive approach  is necessary to get the job done.

Bill’s scenario was different.  He correctly assessed the situation for what it was.  A highly structured event, with a team that hadn’t a clue of how to proceed.  He did step in and become very directive.  Even though there was a bit of consternation on the degree of Bill’s directiveness bordering on heavy handed, the job got done.  Successfully.  Bill’s team did not have any doubts about what needed to be done and when, nor did they have any doubts about his passion for success.  His leadership style made it quite clear what needed to be done.  And it did get done.  On the other hand, if Bill’s team were old hands at coordinating golf tournaments, and Bill used the directive leadership approach, he would’ve had a revolt on his hands and an abysmal failure.

So why should “The Donald” be fired?  He made two major errors in the test design. The first error rests on an assumption that the person who excels at all the tasks ranging from selling water to increasing sales in a restaurant is the best person for the job.  This assumption is based on the simulation experience design.  A good way to determine the best candidate for a job is to observe how they perform in a simulated experience that approximates the skills needed for the job.  However, if the simulations are not similar in design to the job being interviewed for, then the ability to translate that simulation experience to the actual job is in question.  The simulations offered in the apprentice approximated entrepreneurial experiences, except for the final two, i.e., the golf tournament and the rock concert. However, the Trump Enterprises organization is a 12 billion dollar corporation.  It is not entrepreneurial.  It is a corporation with its requisite bureaucracy and norms.  Thus, while the simulation tests for entrepreneurial ability, the running of a Trump Enterprises probably requires a different set of skills.

Even if Bill, who passed the entrepreneurial simulation, actually possess skills for success in a corporation, there is no way I can know he will be successful. This is because I don’t know if Bill will be a good fit with the organization.  And while there are assessments that can measure “goodness of fit” based upon statistically derived benchmarks, thus increasing the odds of choosing the best candidate, it wasn’t clear to me that Trump made use of those scientific tools.  Instead, he pontificated about how it was a difficult decision it was to make, and the over-reliance upon his gut instinct.  And we all know how useful it is to make hiring decisions on our gut instinct.

Therefore, I gotta say this: Donald, you’re fired!