Some thoughts and observations on “The Apprentice”, which came to an end on Sunday night. (If you haven’t been watching, you can consign this to the recycle bin. If you have, I hope you’ll read on.)
So Lord Sugar has finally found his apprentice and the rest of us can go back to doing something else on Wednesday evenings. It’s been compulsive viewing, mainly because of the tension created when you ask people to both compete and collaborate – and then stick a camera in their faces and expose their every action to 8 million viewers, with all the time the weekly threat of Lord Sugar’s finger hanging over them.
As TV viewers, we’re entertained by discord and failure – and the series hasn’t disappointed. In real life, we crave harmony and success. The attitudes and behaviours on view in “The Apprentice” are exaggerated because of the very public circumstances – but part of the fascination is that, albeit usually in milder form, we recognise some of those attitudes and behaviours in our colleagues, our bosses, our customers, our suppliers – even, whisper it softly – in ourselves.
Here are 5 things the candidates might consider if they want to increase their effectiveness before they reach a real board-room.
1. If you don’t want to get into a fight, don’t make value judgements.
You can legitimately say anything about anyone as long as you use “I” rather than “you”.
“Stuart, you’re really difficult to work with” is a value judgement, most likely to be countered with “No, I’m not!” “Stuart, I’m finding it very difficult to work with you” is an incontrovertible fact which can’t possibly be countered with “No you’re not!” Ditto: “Joanna, you’re being very aggressive with me” vs. “Joanna, I feel I’m under attack here”; or “Alex, you’re not following me” vs. “Alex, I feel I haven’t been clear enough”; or "Sandeesh, you're completely wrong" vs. "Sandeesh, I completely disagree".
2. If you want to change someone’s behaviour, try a request rather than a reproach.
We can’t change the past; we can change the future.
When you reproach someone about something they did in the past, they will automatically either get defensive - or launch a counter-attack. It’s genetic. A simple request regarding future behaviour is much more likely to produce a result.
“Chris, it wasn’t your job to agree terms and conditions without referring to me as team leader” will never be as productive as, “Chris, I just need your promise that in the future you‘ll refer to me as team leader before agreeing terms and conditions. What do you think about that?”
3. If you want to achieve an objective, don’t confuse it with a means.
What you want to do during the meeting is a means; an objective is what you want the other person to do at the end of the meeting
“We’re here to tell you about our new bread rolls” is not an objective, but simply a means to an objective; so it’s neither honest nor effective as a meeting opener.
A meeting, any meeting, is a production process and unless you define the parameters of the finished product right at the beginning of the meeting, you’re not giving yourself the best chance of producing that outcome. And if you’re there to get an order, every minute that passes before you say so will be a minute which manufactures suspicion and distrust.
A meeting opener with an honest, concrete and impactful objective would sound more like: “I’m conscious that you may find me over-ambitious; but I think the risk of too much ambition is less than the risk of not enough; so here I go! We have a new line of bread rolls which I want to present to you in detail in a minute. And once I’ve told you about the product and encouraged you to try it, I’m simply hoping that you’ll place a test order for at least 1000 units. How do you feel about that?” If you get the other person’s permission to pursue that objective, you’ve done the hard work within 30 seconds of the start of the meeting.
4. Use your arguments productively
Start using your arguments only once there’s a chance they’ll produce something.
Here are four thoughts about using arguments in meetings: i) when you get an argument out at your own initiative without the permission of the listener, it will invariably produce nothing more helpful than a counter-argument; ii) when you expose an argument without stopping to ask for the listener’s feedback before going on to the next argument, you will have achieved nothing at all; iii) most arguments used in meetings are the ones the presenter wants to expose rather than the ones the listener needs to hear and therefore potentially unproductive; iv) you should think about checking what your arguments might produce before using them.
“How would you feel about me spending 1 minute telling you why you should take our Cockney bus tour?”; “How do you react to what I’ve just told you about our Stilton flavoured crisps?”; “What sales arguments do I particularly need to focus on today to have a chance of you placing an order for our bread rolls?”; “If I go through my sales arguments and you find that they stand up, what can I hope for?” are all invaluable questions which we never heard from the candidates.
5. Blowing your own trumpet is deeply unappealing
Stick to the facts and let the other person use the adjectives
Whether you’re selling yourself or a product, it’s much more effective when the complimentary adjectives come out of the other person’s mouth rather than your own. None of us like working with braggarts, either as colleagues or suppliers. “I’m a brilliant entrepreneur” is not appealing and nor is “Our beach book-stand will be the coolest thing on the beach”.
Stick to the objective facts and let the other person reach for the superlatives. That’s more likely to lead to exchanges like: “By the time I was 21, I had built a telecoms company with £20m turnover. How do you feel about that, Lord S?” “That sounds like brilliant entrepreneurship”; or “Our beach book-stand can be assembled in 30 seconds and allows you to read effortlessly on your back on the beach. What’s your initial reaction to that?” “That sounds pretty cool”.
You’ll never make someone think someone or something is great just by saying it. And if you say the product is great and the customer disagrees, you’ll not only lose the sale you’ll lose the customer’s trust and respect too; and thereby the next sale.
