CorpComms Magazine

This week's Apprentice outcome turned on the art of being able to communicate at different levels - not just in plain spoken English. It was time for the the annual 'let's send the teams somewhere foreign so they can embarrass themselves for our amusement' task. The aim was to sell something British to the French - unfortunately in terms of language most of the group could barely get beyond the word 'bonjour'. Lucky most of the people they encountered conveniently seemed to speak English. Certainly, as Dara O'Briain suggested later on You're Fired, the whole experience made a strong case for compulsory language lessons for anybody in business, given that many schools apparently don't seem to be bothering nowadays.

At team Venture, youthful skincare entrepreneur Susan was keen to be project manager for reasons best known to herself, having admitted she'd never been to France and knew nothing of the French and their funny foreign ways. Luckily Susan had she-who-wins-every-task Helen in her team, so she could do practically whatever she liked, such as ask a lot of crass questions of her team-mates including Do the French like children? and Do they like to travel by car?

Susan's questions could have been better-phrased, and she came in for considerable stick for her naivété, but it was better for her to ask them than to remain silent and allow her decisions to be made on even more of an ill-informed basis. This reminds me of a point I make almost every time I run a media training course about not making assumptions about journalists' level of knowledge; sometimes they will remain silent rather than ask for much-needed clarification - not everyone is as willing as Susan to expose the depths of their ignorance.

On the road, most of the fun was to be had with Team Logic and world-class overachiever Melody, she of the intimate acquaintance with Al Gore, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and for all I know, Princess Diana, Mother Theresa and Lord Voldemort. 'I can speak about six languages,' she said. 'Obviously at UN level you use French a lot.' Modesty was never likely to be her dominant characteristic ('I run a global business'). As Melody got to work, setting up six appointments, all of which she selfishly wanted to keep to herself, colleague Leon could only watch and marvel at her ability not only to speak to the French in their own language, but to understand their answers too.

However, Melody's over-confidence in her own abilities was almost her downfall. One of the advance guard in Paris, she had to help team leader Tom back in London decide which of two products was most likely to succeed in the French market, a baby car seat that doubled as a rucksack, or a novelty light made out of a bone china teapot. Which would you choose? Quite. Even from the most rudimentary piece of research it appeared obvious there could be more enthusiasm for the car seat, but Melody liked the teapot light so she chose to interpret her sample's response through that filter. Hapless Tom, getting an overwhelming vibe of teapot-love from his team-mates, didn't have the courage of his own convictions and dumped the car-seat option, which turned out to be an overwhelming winner for the other team. Lesson: ensure you're not just swayed by one persuasive person's views, masquerading as 'what everybody thinks'.

Melody, despite her obvious capability, also caused a major problem by ignoring Tom's instruction to research La Redoute, a major retailer with which Lord Sugar's team had set up a sales appointment. Overwhelmed with her own brilliance, it seems she clean forgot - so Logic were woefully under-prepared at what turned out to be the critical sales pitch. By contrast, rival Helen aced them with what was perhaps the best Apprentice presentation so far - immediately getting the firm's representatives on-side by saying she was very familiar with their catalogue and had ordered from it many times in the past. English or French, the language of flattery is certainly international.

In fact, for both the current front-runners, their ability to communicate at different levels was a key factor in their success this week. As was perceptively pointed out by flamboyant financial expert Alvin Hall in You're Fired, Helen is very good at reading a situation, spotting and reacting to changes of mood in the room very effectively. In other words, skilled in the art of non-verbal as well as verbal communication. She remains the one to beat in this competition, but Lord Sugar is clearly impressed by go-getting Melody with her language skills - never mind the fact she has an ego the size of several postcodes, and be willing to trample on people on the way to the top.

www.mediatrainingassociates.co.uk

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