The Apprentice 2: Why Elizabeth Lost

Fifth is to be loyal. Originally, this meant being loyal to your Project Manager. But in this case it means being loyal to the rest of the team. Elizabeth needed to either take a stand or go with the team. She wanted it both ways, and it wasn’t going to happen. She showed that she could not lead, and also showed that she did not respect their opinions enough to stand by them.

The sixth rule is finally something that Elizabeth didn’t have to worry about – showing her hand. Why? Because she had no hand to show. It was painfully obvious that Elizabeth would be fired – so obvious that Trump didn’t even bother with a second Boardroom sitting!

Getting back to what Elizabeth did wrong, we have the seventh rule saying to play well with others. Elizabeth wasn’t mean or rude or obnoxious, but she didn’t really play nicely with everybody else either. Again, it came back to the way she handled (or failed to handle) the decision on the ad. Everybody because so upset at her that they were ready to stage a coup. Kevin point blank told her off. It was not pretty.

Eighth is to focus on the long-term. Hell, Elizabeth couldn’t even focus on the short-term! However, if she had been looking long-term, she would have realized that this particular challenge was not the end-all be-all of the game. She either needed to go with the group consensus or make an executive decision, and then rode it from there. Either one would have given her something to say in her own defense if they had still lost. And if she had something to say, she might have been able to convince Trump that she was valuable in the long run.

The ninth rule requires that you think outside the box. Elizabeth wasn’t thinking, so the box never came into play. She was reacting, not putting any thought into situations. Maybe the militaristic idea was too far outside the box. But at least there was some thought put into it.

Finally, we have Elizabeth’s last failure – using common sense. It doesn’t take a genius to know that waffling as much as she did was going to make her a huge Boardroom target. As I noted earlier, it was obvious to pretty much every viewer that Elizabeth was on the way out. I’m sure it was equally obvious to her fellow players. The only person for whom it wasn’t obvious was Elizabeth, and that was part of her problem. She really had no idea what was going on around her.

I shudder to think that someday, Elizabeth might actually be in a real management position. If she ever plans on going that route, she is going to need to see a surgeon first for a backbone transplant. Elizabeth was paralyzed by indecision. She was a horrible leader, could not stand up for herself, folded under pressure, and was almost overthrown by her own team. To this day, I wonder if she truly understands just how horrible a job she did. But we understand. We know that it was her utter lack of even a shred of management ability that caused Donald Trump to fire her. We know that is why Elizabeth lost.

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David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at RNO@pobox.com.

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