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This weekend saw three people in different TV programmes deservedly crowned winners: actress Kara Tointon got her hands on the Strictly Come Dancing glitterball, Grand National winner and champion jockey Tony McCoy became Sports Personality of the Year and Stella English was hired as Lord Sugar's Apprentice. 

The final programme pitted investment bank back office manager Stella against investment bank front office specialist Chris Bates in a task to design and market a new alcoholic drink. They both had some great qualities but the programme highlighted key differences between them.

Chris places a lot of pressure on himself by taking the lead in as many aspects of the tasks as possible - he had to come up with the ideas, direct the ad and write the pitch. His progress to the final has been dependent on flashes of effectiveness (Chris himself referred to them as 'moments' and Lord Sugar as 'sparks'):  the selling of the unusual but highly priced dress, the telling of tall stories to negotiate for products and the commission deal for the ticket agency.  Last night was no different as the team waited for his latest 'moment' but this time it wasn't quite good enough. 

Stella on the other hand has many team leadership strengths. She sets direction well and delegates effectively, qualities which have been derided as being 'organisational' and 'corporate'. It could be argued that she had the weaker team but she managed them well and used them to draw out ideas and approaches. Her colleagues felt included and able to contribute. 

When she felt that their input was not being helpful she then took it upon herself to do what was needed. She may not be as innovative as Chris in the sense that she won't come up with all of the ideas but she creates a better environment for creativity to flourish. Under pressure Chris tends to withdraw and isolate himself from others, whereas Stella uses the tensions and conflicts of the team as a source of strength.

Chris was rather lucky to be in the final I think because his flashes have been overrated but it goes to show what can happen if assessors choose to focus on certain eye catching events and lose sight of the bigger picture.  Nevertheless he is a good candidate and whilst he is more of an individualist than Stella he is younger and has shown a great and willing capacity to learn. Stella though is a worthy winner.

A conspiracy theorist would say that the reshuffling of the teams this week was designed to ensure that one of the two weakest contenders, Laura Moore and Stuart Baggs, would be certain to be fired. The teams were back into the original male and female groups from the first task. The women, comprising Joanna Riley, Stella English, Liz Locke and Laura, clearly had much the strongest line-up, but surprisingly they were defeated by the chaps, led by Jamie Lester.

There is a psychological concept known as Counterproductive Work Behaviour (CWB) and it refers to actions that a person takes that threaten the performance and well being of others, as well as the organisation,  and includes dishonesty, assault  and sabotage. Laura has been displaying types of CWB for a few weeks now, in particular that of sabotage. 

She has been careful in several of the tasks to ally herself to the project manager and in doing so has quietly but insistently undermined other team members. Calling this sabotage may be a bit harsh but her primary objective was usually not the successful completion of the project but self preservation.

This is linked to a passive-aggressive approach which means that she doesn't deal with disagreements directly but withdraws and moans to others about perceived grievances. She possesses a lot of abilities but her personality style means that she doesn't make the most of them. Once her team was defeated it was the right outcome for her to be fired.

Laura's team leader Liz Locke took a bit of a battering for failing to recognise that this task was about negotiating and that there was no discussion of how to deal with the various traders they were to encounter, which contrasted with Jamie's explicit instructions to his team on this point. 

However that was a little unfair as the obscure items had to be located first of all and in that respect Liz had a good strategy that enabled them to buy all of the products. Liz has many good qualities and works best within a reasonably structured framework but she lacks a degree of flexibility. Ultimately this could prove to be what counts most against her.

Jamie has managed to bring himself back into contention but Joanna Riley is, as she has been for many weeks, still the one to beat.

N.B. Stuart Baggs's scores two weeks ago were posted incorrectly, an error that was not put right last week but which has been rectified now. Apologies.

If I didn't know better I would have said that this episode of the Apprentice had been based on a recently published psychology paper.

The research looked at the performance of narcissists in pitching ideas for a movie. For movie read personalised DVDs for shoppers and for narcissist read Stuart Baggs. The study found that whilst the narcissists believed themselves to be incredibly creative and highly competent, their written submissions were no better than anyone else's.

However, some people were taken in by the energy and enthusiasm that the narcissists displayed. Luckily no one was left in any doubt about Baggs' limited abilities - apart from himself of course.
 
The bragging Baggs displays many of the characteristics of a narcissist: an unusually high level of self-belief, arrogance, unwillingness to take on board feedback, not accepting responsibility for mistakes and a preparedness to bend the rules.

I discounted him as a contender from episode one and in this task, his first as project manager, he finally imploded. He was incredibly arrogant, lacking in integrity and was dismissive, as he has been throughout, to both colleagues and customers. If his team had not won the task he would not have survived another week.
 
Sandeesh 'Do Something' Samra, who has been fortunate to still be on the show, was, ironically, unlucky to be fired last night. Her performance as PM wasn't that bad: she directed, listened and encouraged people to come up with ideas. She also took responsibility for her part in the defeat and her choice of the two colleagues to join her in the boardroom had merit. She left the programme with some dignity and with her integrity intact.
 
The Top Five have now become the Top Four: Joanna Riley, Jamie Lester, Stella English and Liz Locke have all now definitively pulled away from Chris Bates who put in another lacklustre performance.

For what it's worth, my money is on Joanna who has never been out of the top two throughout the series. See below for full table...

While many - including the shrewd Nick Hewer - tipped Paloma to be in the final three, the league table suggested otherwise. On the surface she can be confident, charming, articulate and at times quite beguiling with customers and colleagues. But you don't have to dig deep to see that she can also be shockingly arrogant and manipulative.

In many ways, what we saw of Paloma was a case of style over substance. Over the past five episodes she has scored only two points and was languishing at the foot of the table. 

Her attempts to shoulder all of the blame on Alex - not only in the Board Room but throughout the task - revealed a manipulative flipside to her charming exterior. She has on occasion been a source of energy and drive in her teams, but most often she has lacked ideas and solutions, and resorted to underhanded playground tactics to get her way.

Alex, on the other hand, may be more of a case of substance over style. The self-styled "retail guru" was re-branded an "irritant" by Paloma, and he certainly deserved some of the criticism, given his patronising and clumsy approach to dealing with colleagues. He almost sold himself down the river by not thinking through his decision to grab a promotional area that turned out to be about an hour's brisk walk from the store.

 
But as irritating as he can seem, Alex does make some useful contributions. He was willing to challenge a dismissive Paloma on store layout (not an easy thing to do) and he chipped in with some useful ideas, including a canny suggestion to bag a commercial on Trafford TV. 

He also delivered in terms of his sales. As a result, he moves up the league from last week and is possibly justified in feeling that he was this week's scapegoat.

Remarkably, Sandeesh survives yet again, more by dint of others' self-destruction than her own leadership abilities. Paloma said it was difficult to "pin" anything on her (a delightful choice and revealing phrase) and this week she apparently contributed more, although viewers didn't see too much of this. She is still at the foot of the table and is surely not long for that final finger of fate.

To be fair to Paloma, she did find herself up against a "dream team" combination, with the five members of Synergy all in the top half of the table. Liz and Joanna once again demonstrated genuine enthusiasm and strong people skills in winning the rights to sell the product that both teams were clamouring for (proving that, sometimes, all that glitters is gold). Equally, Jamie, Christopher and Stella all seemed to chip in and the team, for once, seemed to have few of the usual dramatic moments of crisis.

The Apprentice League week 5
Jamie Lester	14
Joanna Riley	14
Stella English	11
Liz Locke	8
Chris Bates	8
Christopher Farrell	7
Alex Epstein	7
Laura Moore	4
Stuart Baggs	3
Paloma Vivanco (Fired wk5)	3
Shibby Robati (Fired wk3)	2
Melissa Cohen (Fired wk4)	2
Dan Harris (Fired Wk1)	2
Raleigh Addington (Quit Wk2)	1
Joy Stefanicki (Fired Wk2)	1
Sandeesh Samra	1

With a heady mix of paranoia, self-delusion and righteous anger, Melissa Cohen departed the Apprentice tonight calling upon the infinite forces of the cosmos to wreak their revenge on her detractors, Jamie Lester and Stuart Baggs. Or as Kenneth Williams said in Carry on Cleo: 'Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it infamy!'

It was clear from her performance that her energy and enthusiasm can quickly turn to aggression and bitterness when things aren't going her way: they are, for her at least, the flip side of the same coin. At the beginning of this task (to pick and then sell the latest innovations) she put herself forward to be the project manager. 

This appeared a brave move, given her poor outing last week as PM but one that seemed to show that she had absorbed the messages from that experience. It soon became apparent, however, that rather than learning a lesson, she wanted to teach everyone one for having misjudged her so badly.

Her inability to take on board any criticism whatsoever coupled with an exaggerated sense of her own self-worth meant that she lacked one of the key characteristics of any apprentice, indeed any leader, that of potential. She performed badly in a team that, despite its defeat, did well on most criteria. Of those in the losing team she was the lowest scoring in our table and deserved to be shown the door.

Jamie Lester may have been in charge of the losing group but it was an honourable defeat and he emerged with some credit - leading the team credibly, achieving good sales, having a clear strategy. He was ably assisted by Joanna Riley who has risen to second. 

Stella English, a very consistent contestant for the first three weeks displayed some weaknesses last night, in particular a hesitancy and deference to others when making decisions. This appears out of character and everything that she has done so far would indicate a motivation to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Chris Bates showed up for the first time and proved to be an effective thinker, someone who can keep his eye on the bigger picture, even if his presentation style has all the charisma of a speak your weight machine. 

The top three should almost certainly be in the semi-finals of the show. But it's a close race as to who will join them.

A recent paper on the personality of surgeons showed that they are often described in negative terms, using words such as dominant, arrogant, impatient, aggressive and authoritarian.  Last night we saw the surgeon emerging in Shibby as he became the third Apprentice to leave the show.

In what was, at times, an erratic and volatile style of leadership, Shibby managed to show moments of brilliance and charm mixed with moments of utter arrogance, distance and self-destructive frustration. With a show of great enthusiasm, Shibby was willing to take risks and tell the customer "we can do anything" (just as long as it's 16 bread rolls and a handful of muffins) and demonstrated a great capacity to sell - often a strong factor that will sway Lord Sugar's decision-making.

But Shibby's downfall came through his lack of self-regulation, one of the most important indicators of future leadership potential. When upset, he slammed his pad in annoyance, he huffed and puffed in meetings and he crossed the line in his responses to Lord Sugar, something that few recover from. Shibby's unpredictable and at times quite bizarre approach, coupled with poor communication and over-exuberance, alienated not only team members but customers as well.

Across the other side of the Board Room we saw more of Melissa this week. Following a disastrous start, in which she seemed to take too much control yet made no clear decisions, we witnessed a "diabolical" display of how not to use a calculator in meetings. Melissa seems to have an outspoken, intuitive and imaginative approach to business (we should see more ideas and originality coming from her in future tasks) but seemed to lack any grasp of concrete facts or basic details, such as weight and price. If she's to stay in the running, she will need to delegate task management and detail to those who do it best.

Speaking of which, special mention goes to ex-Marine Christopher for his management of the production line and, frankly, for rescuing the team. He showed strong organisational skills that Melissa would do well to lean on in the future.

Paloma featured strongly, though not altogether convincingly, revealing a questionable degree of integrity in the Board Room and a strong streak of arrogance. She clearly has a strong and persuasive impact in sales meetings, but equally had no hesitation in over-committing her team, and it will be interesting to see how much substance she shows in the future. She runs the risk of being dubbed "a bit Muvvah Superiahh" by Lord Sugar if she doesn't listen, tone down the arrogant style or demonstrate more self-awareness.

Sandeesh didn't do herself too many favours either, with a fairly negative and lacklustre approach to all stages of the task. She started out by uttering the words "stupid rolls" and "forget it" and was probably only just saved from the axe by Shibby's many failings. We need to see more from Sandeesh across all aspects of leadership as she has now drifted into the first negative score of any participant.

So, into the third week, and the emerging front runners seem to be Stella and Jamie. Stella was quieter this week, but nonetheless was willing to openly tackle a moment of confrontation and brought a refreshing honesty to the task. Jamie on the other hand was at times negative and brash, but voiced ideas, challenged and was willing to congratulate Melissa, despite their disagreements. He seems to have a focus on learning that could see him do well in future rounds.