This fine rainless autumn day in Manchester as the city prepares for blue/red derby , I hosted a meet the blogger session where I talked about TV and learning. My blogs recently have been mostly about the business talent show the Apprentice. That’s a great reference point for learning, as are many TV programmes and aspects of popular culture. In today’s session we discussed the behaviour of contestants: We chatted about stable and steady Stella, capable Christopher the ex marine and of course some of the less able contestants. Some of them like Mouthy Melissa and Desperate Dan have already been fired and some like Alex, Laura and Sateesh soon will be. I made the observation that whilst the Apprentice is show business, the people in it are real and exhibit behaviour which we can learn from. In future blogs I’ll be wrapping some learning and leadership theory around the various episodes to help us communicate the learning lessons. For me TV is full of such scenarios. Holby city for example is unlike other medical dramas all about roles, relationships and behaviour. The distant dry and un- engaging technical style of the new Director of Surgery Henrick Hansen for example has real lesson for leadership. A different leadership Dilemma is faced by the former chief nurse appointed to the role of CEO. Redundancies have featured as have other difficult issues like depression and debt. We can certainly engage with people on learning and talent if we use these readymade situations as a springboard. They help us to engage people in scenarios they understand. Talking of engagement I’ll be appearing shortly with Tom Crawford of British Gas and Carmel Millar of Surrey County Council as a panellist on our organisational development project Shaping the Future. We wall talk about the barriers and enablers to change, our six key insights and how HR can influence the change journey. I’ll be blogging about the latest Apprentice instalment with more insights. Oh and we’ll be awarding HR excellence tonight compered by Hugh Dennis. Now think about the learning lessons from outnumbered!
A really insightful session, interesting and thought provoking. Loved the idea of applying MBTI to these characters, I already play that game with Coronation Street and some of the US dramas.
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