So, I resumed my position in front of the TV last week to watch what The Apprentice had in store for me this week, and lo and behold the interrupting, shouting and bickering continued between the hopeful candidates.

The two teams, Apollo for the girls and Synergy for the boys, lined up in front of Lord Sugar and his two side kicks, Karen and Nick, at Heathrow Airport to hear their task for this week – the candidates had to design and create a brand new beach accessory. However, a new twist to this week’s episode was that Stella from the girl’s team was assigned project manager to the boy’s teams as Raleigh had some unexpected personal news and had to leave the competition. So one woman delegated to control all the men – would you be up for it? Stella certainly seemed quite chuffed to be escaping that school girl bickering from team Apollo, and I think I’d be pretty happy about that too!

So off the teams went to come up with a new product to entice holidaymakers around the country. First up, we had Synergy who designed a beach towel with a built in pillow which doubled up to be a cooler as well, to keep your drinks cold on the beach. A pretty original idea -but will it impress the buyers and the retailers? With Stella leading the boys, they were on time and got their product off to the designers so it could be made overnight.

However, this wasn’t the story for Apollo – a pretty shocking effort by the girls and what a way to represent us ladies of business ey? They argued and argued over their pretty awful ideas, and with Laura as project manager, the decision wasn’t made any quicker. Being project manager you need to make the decisions and take a firm stand (which to be fair to her looked pretty impossible with all that bickering between the girls) but it needs to be done or the team will fall apart, as was revealed at the end of the show. The girls eventually came up with a book stand for holding your book when you are on the beach. I wasn’t convinced…

But off both teams went to make their pitches and try and get some sales. Now im no expert in this, but having a good pitch has got to be essential right? Or you will fail to impress the buyers – as was the case with both of the teams this week. A pitch needs to be strong, confident with good knowledge of what you are trying to sell and reasons as to why the buyers should, well, buy the product! And it’s got to be pretty embarrassing when the sellers can’t even put the product together themselves (Apollo!), and refuse exclusivity for the product and advice as to how to make it better from a high class buyer (hang your heads in shame ladies!).

The time then came for all the candidates to congregate back into the boardroom to be grilled by Lord Sugar. Of course, as to no one’s surprise, the girls were the losing team. The boys and Stella, although not selling many of their products, were whisked away to a plush golf club for an afternoon of golf, scones and a nice cuppa!

This was not the case for the girls. It was Laura who was brought back into the boardroom along with Joanna the bully and Joy the wet blanket. It was looking as though Lord Sugar was veering towards firing Joanna, but no – the finger was aimed at Joy this week for not making a lasting impression or pulling her weight. Joanna was given a strict telling off to be nicer to the rest of the girls.

This week, I got to thinking about not only the importance of team work, but also the importance of delegating the jobs in a task. It’s important to identify who the strongest person will be for each aspect of the task to ensure that it all comes together. For example, who will be the strongest candidate to make the pitch, and who the strongest person will be to work out the figures? All of this needs to be identified; this is what our teambuilding events really do reflect and is why teambuilding is so successful!

So another hopeful apprentice down, who will be fired next week? I’ll be back next week to catch you up on more Apprentice gossip.