[Haydon]

Business guru Sir John Harvey Jones hit out at The Apprentice star Sir Alan Sugar, branding him a power-exploiting bully.
Full story: MSN Newsbox

Do you think Sir Alan is a power exploiting bully?
Are reality shows teaching people that aggreesiveness is the way to success?

[Northern angel]

Hello Haydon,

Management skills are seriously suspect today, when so many large public and private organsisations fail to motivate employees. Sir John Harvey is right and has stood the test of time proving it. In addition reality TV has bred a certain style of bullying some of it extremely direct and deliberately harmful to the development of employee skills. You will get better results from employees who are persuaded to discuss rather than ordered to do something quickly.Employees whose skills at planning ideas and developing ideas of there own, who are not encouraged will seek jobs and motivation elsewhere.

Assertiveness is wrongly taught as aggressive management skills or aggressive management programming. People are being forgotten on the way, I never read of anyone today who has Interpersonal skills in management, who is sensitive to other employees thoughts and contributions within the organisations they are employed in. It is very much a case of I am me, me, me and never mind you. Within reality TV, this has created important roles and financial gain for people who have less viable talents other than to ridicule and demoralise those who may have.

The time scale factor I realise can be a problem, and management officials may see this as a dilemma that only they can solve. But all to often it is not considered in a logical fashion between all staff members who are contributors to a team. As such aggressive managers are best suited to being completely self employed as staff do not relish working for a barsteward or accepting of there lack of true friends and the possibility of increasing stress related health problems, whilst representative of the organisations they are thus employed by.

We have all read of circumstances in where management take the credit for successes lower down the structural strata. Or should management inaugurate something which fails one can almost guarantee that a scapegoat will be found lower down the line.

Alan Sugar and the management team on the apprentice programme are horrendous, you'd need a brain transplant to work for any of them.

Maureen
Northern angel.