Dice Fired!

Andrew Dice Clay was the first celebrity to be terminated on Celebrity Apprentice this past Sunday. He was fired for cause. Bottom line, he used poor judgment throughout the task, beginning with his “subtle” inferences to the boss, Donald Trump, that there was no food available to the celebrities when they arrived at Trump Towers. The second nail in his coffin was his “declaration of independence.” He was his own man and he had little to no interest in working with his team. Huge mistake.

The Task: Create , Bake and Sell Cupcakes. They also had to design a mobile sales center. The team that sold the most cupcakes wins the task. I would say that both teams, the men and the women, did a fairly good job of getting the task completed. The issue for both teams, as is true for any organization, was the people.

Think about it for a moment. There isn’t one organization that can survive without people. People bring organizations to life. So when you have people who have little self-awareness about their impact to others. When you have people who don’t want to play by the cultural rules of engagement, i.e. – we are all making cupcakes. Than you have conflict. Conflict is actually not all bad, however when you are playing a team sport – where there will be a determination about a winner and a loser, it would help if everyone on the team would participate and add value to the assignment with the intention to win.

Both teams suffered because of independent thinkers. Again, by itself, having the ability to think out of the box, and be creative are great, but if you are not skillful to, influence, you can create problems for yourself and that is what happened on both teams.

Bottom-line: Andrew Dice Clay is an independent thinker. He knows who he is and what he brings to any given situation. The problem was he agreed to be apart of a team, but then made no serious attempt to participate with the team until he was in trouble and on the verge of being fired. Take a look at your world. Are you an independent thinker who has tremendous value you can bring to an organization? How has it served you? Are you misunderstood alot? Has it created issues for you in the workplace? Step back and evaluate how you show up in the workplace. If there is alot of conflict around you, you may want to re-evaluate how you communicate, may be even how you see the world – at work. If you agree to work in a team setting yet your strength is better suited to be an individual contributor, than you may want to choose out of the situation into one that allows you to contribute as an individual. Otherwise, determine that you are part of the team and play ball with them. Dice was fired! It was the right decision given his antics. He didn’t want to be apart of the team. He wanted to do things his way and when that didn’t happen, he was of no value to the team.

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