Crazy as a fox” is the best way to think about Donald Trump’s leadership style. So says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale School of Management, whose new book argues that comments and actions, which many observers see as the madness of King Donald, actually reflect approaches and beliefs that Trump has consistently and mostly successfully deployed throughout his long career in business and politics. The failure of Trump’s critics to recognise this, and to dismiss him as simply nuts or in other ways dysfunctional, often means they are destined to be, as he loves to say, losers.
Trump’s Ten Commandments: Strategic Lessons from the Trump Leadership Toolbox is an insightful read, going far beyond the “take what Trump says seriously but not literally” line sometimes used to concede that there may be method behind the madness. With a media savvy unusual in an academic, Sonnenfeld is taken seriously as a leadership expert and has known Trump personally for decades, both as friend and foe – notably tangling with him by organising a group of top CEOs to issue a timely statement affirming the 2020 presidential election result – notably tangling with him by organising a group of top CEOs to issue a timely statement affirming the 2020 presidential election result.
The 10 commandments range from centralising power in his own hands (a hub-and-spoke leadership model) and negotiating by “starting with a punch in the face, rather than building trust”, to “avoiding losers like the plague and selective retribution”, rewriting history through constant repetition until something becomes accepted truth, and ceaselessly promoting himself as mythical hero “Donald the Great”.
Key lessons for Trump’s opponents are to be resolutely focused on their goal, refusing to be distracted by his constant topic-changing “perpetual noise machine”, and to stand up to him in coalitions and alliances with others, rather than alone. When Trump cannot divide, he finds it far harder to rule.““
Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty
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