Rachel Woolf, senior client partner at CHPD, gives her view of The Apprentice
Looks can be deceptive
On the face of it, it may look as if Sir Alan has selected a very diverse group of winners over the years, but the reality is very different. While race and gender have been different the actual leadership styles of all the finalists has been very similar.
Sir Alan tends to recruit in his own image. This isn’t unusual and is a natural tendency, but it can be a recipe for disaster. People who share the same leadership traits tend to think and act alike. This means they tend to come up with the same solutions to problems and businesses can miss out on the innovative, creative and 'left field’ ideas that come from true diversity of thought and leadership style. Ideas which could help them stand out from the crowd.
Women being 'more of a man’
We know there are male and female characteristics of leadership, however men can have female traits and women can have male traits. What I found interesting to observe was although four out of the five finalists were women, they all demonstrated predominantly male leadership traits especially Deborah and Yasmina. Interestingly perhaps some of the most female behaviour came from James, with his high need to be liked and collaborative approach.
While both Kate and Yasmina displayed male leadership traits such as confidence, self-belief, assertiveness and few displays of emotion, Kate appeared to have a much more balanced male/female profile. This should stand her in good stead in the workplace.
This highlights another issue - the corridor of acceptability. Throughout the business world we find that there is generally a much narrower corridor of acceptability for women than men. A man is seen as confident and for the same behaviour a woman is seen as pushy.
In The Apprentice, we saw two people, Deborah and Phil, displaying very similar traits and while Deborah was criticised for being rude and aggressive, Phil was described as young and over-zealous. Clearly the ‘corridor of acceptability’ is very different for Phill and Deborah. Similarly, I wonder how Lorriane’s "gift" of intuition or gut feeling would have been viewed if she had been a man. Would her views have been dismissed as readily?
How will Yasmin get on as The Apprentice?
Yasmina has clear strengths in being proactive, getting the job done, resilience and being directive. I believe Yasmina’s style would be best suited to some kind of crisis manager role. In situations where you need to make things happen, turnaround under-performance and achieve change quickly, Yasmina’s approach would be ideal.
The challenge for Yasmina will be in how she builds alliances and works with peers in Sir Alan’s organisation. Having been used to running her own business and having everyone answer to her, in Sir Alan’s business, she’ll have to work hard to influence others at the same level as her. This is called horizontal leadership. Yasmina’s used to telling others what to do and has a fairly traditional, autocratic style. She may struggle in a modern business environment which thrives on cross-team working, integration and influence.