We have heard from many viewers that the Apprentice TV programme bore out many of the lessons of Belbin Team Roles. Certainly I feel that Sir Alan Sugar ended up hiring someone far removed from the person he had originally in mind. The selected apprentice, Tom, had regularly featured in the losing teams. Tom was a nice guy and legend has it that “nice guys don’t win.” So why was he finally chosen?
The point is that Tom was also a Plant and he never pretended to be anything he wasn’t. His real value did not emerge until the last exercise when he was paired with Helen, the very efficient lady who had figured in almost every winning group. The pairing produced a brilliant result. But Helen was no entrepreneur. Sir Alan was greatly disappointed in the way she tackled the brief of coming up with a new enterprise. Two other candidates were in the final short list. Susan and Jim talked fluently but their words also proved their undoing. Susan’s ability was undoubted but being quarrelsome no one wanted to work with her.
No good candidate is ever perfect. But we do make a sharp distinction between allowable and non-allowable weaknesses. Allowable weaknesses are sometimes the price that has to be paid for a strength and it matters little if another can play the needed role. But non-allowable weaknesses undermine the strength of others and therein lies the fundamental source of failure.
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