Jillian Michael's poor leadership dooms her Biggest Loser team

Episode One of every Biggest Loser season follows the same basic script. Once the contestants are chosen, they show up at the gym for a grueling workout. For some reason, the trainers put these people who have barely walked in years on a treadmill for two hours at speeds they cannot maintain. I think the producers just love to see obese people falling off the end of a treadmill.

One of these days there will be serious consequences to this behavior. We already have seen people pulled off to the hospital with cardiac events torn ligaments, fractured joints. Last night we saw two of Jillian's team sitting outside, after being thrown out for being lazy, with iced up knees.

Jillian came back last night with a vengeance after a two year hiatus. The problem was that it was all about her. She seems far less interested in helping her contestants than proving how tough she was. She yelled and screamed at her team, then threw them out of the gym when they proved incapable of living up to her demands.

The other two trainers even remarked on the utter chaos of the gym under her leadership. Bob and Dolvett worked their team up carefully. They also had some people throwing up but nobody complained. And the net result? Even with a five pound advantage on the scales, Jillian's team lost the weigh-in and one of her members had to leave the ranch. Unfortunately it was the one with the most heart-wrenching story.

But this is not my biggest complaint about  her last night's performance. She was so hard on her team, berating and belittling them, that one of them quit. To me, that was not a failure of the contestant, that was a failure in leadership.

Biggest Loser ties up their videos pretty well so I can't insert one but you can catch the episode here.

Biggest losers forget the goal

Last season's Biggest Loser was a watershed. They all got the point that the goal was to lose weight and change lives. When it came to voting people out, the leaders stepped aside to allow those who needed to be on the ranch stay.

What a difference a season makes. The producers decided to ratchet up the drama. They succeeded by bringing on board a real piece of work by the name of Conda

She doesn't know how to shut her mouth and somehow has her tribe following her when she bullies the few who don't bend to her will. She destroyed several other contestants including loudmouth Adrian. His sister, Daphne vowed revenge. Here is where things became interesting.

They forgot the goal of the show in their temporary quest for revenge.

1. During the temptation challenge, Daphne ate 1800 calories in order to have to the power to switch up the teams
2. She chose to switch Conda onto her team (so that she could vote her out? It wasn't clear what her strategy was)
3. She lied to everyone else that she was responsible for the 'anonymous' switcheroo, even when the rest of the players figured it out and caller her on it.
4. Her team decided to throw the weigh-in by all stuffing their faces except for one person they bellieved would beat Daphne so she couldn't gain immunity

I was hoping that at the end Daphne could lose more weight than Chris, the designated loser of their team, so she could vote out Conda but she actually gained 2 pounds for the week! Stress? Extra calories? Distractions?
Check out the full episode here.

What's the lesson here for project managers? Don't forget the goal of the project when you get buried by day-to-day problems and politics. Stay focused on the goal and get the project done.