Donald Trump's Leadership Style

The idea of good leadership and how to become a good leader has raised much debate through time. Many theories for the notion ‘’Leadership’’ exists and some are directly related to the individual leader whereas other theories focus on the broad conditions of a leader. In this essay I will analyze an individual leader, Donald Trump, with regarding to following theories: Characteristics, behavior and style. In 2016 the presidential campaign began, and the population started to realize a new and different candidate showing up. The candidate stood out compared former and existing politician through his words and deeds. People started voting for him and now it was only a matter of time when he would become the President of the United States.

As you might guess, this person is Donald Trump and his leadership style is interesting to analyze since he differs from former Presidents of the United States. The fact that Donald Trump was different than other politicians during the election time gave him an advantage to get heard. The campaign he has established had a negative impact among the population and divided people into different groups with extreme divisiveness and polarization ‘’ From Mexicans to Muslims, the others, as described by Trump, do not hold our values and are not like us’’ (Macwilliams, 2016).

The impact Donald Trump had produced a stress factor among American homes but still people voted for him for his personality and leadership style. Therefore, it is interesting for me to analyze and look into Donald Trump’s leadership characteristics, behavior and style.By analyzing Donald Trump’s personality traits we can see how effective and satisfied he is both in and outside of work. The first factor I find interesting to analyze in relation to Donald Trump’s personality traits is his self-confidence. From my personal perspective I think Donald Trump won the election because of his believe in himself. He didn’t win as a politician, a strategist, or a man to the people, he simply won because of his believe in himself as a salesman. He has a lifelong experience in the business world and has successfully build lots of companies which shows he believed in himself as a salesman and now he has established the exact same self-confidence into politics (Harrow et al., 2017).

According to his speech in front of the United Nations Donald Trump stated: ‘’America’s economy is booming like never before’’ and the audience starts to laugh. Donald Trump acts cool, laughs a bit with the audience and kept on talking about how great America is doing ‘’the stake barged is all time high in history’’ and ‘’The Trump administration has accomplished more than any administration in the history of our country’’. This proves once again how his behavior and interpersonal skill within his self-esteem is strongly developed and that he can act cool even under pressure. Also he has a sense of humor, self-effacing humor in front of people who are important or near to him. Leaders use humor to not insult or slight anybody while giving them a task. Donald Trump does not have a problem with giving a task without humor. In the following citation you can read how he treats his employee in his TV-show ‘’The Apprentice’’: ‘’How stupid can you be’’ and ‘’you have been lazy, you have been nothing but trouble’.

In regards to his political career he uses a lot of humor and talks to the audiences emotions through laugh and smiles (Youtube, 2015).To be an effective leader humility is a good trait to have. Donald Trump has not shown any sign of humility through his career as a business man or politician. Also when he himself cannot argue for why he has humility only reinforces my argument ‘’I have more humility than you would think, believe me’’. Besides the humility trait Donald Trump fulfill other leadership traits to its fullest and therefore might still be an effective leader.

The third trait I will look into is a leader’s trustworthiness. To evaluate Donald Trump’s trustworthiness I found an article that stated ‘’Less than one in three people in the new CNN-SSRS poll believe that President Donald Trump is honest and trustworthy.’’(Chris Cillizza, 2018). My thoughts about this is his words and deeds does not match. An example could be his following statement "No, no, I’m not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you’’ (Brent D. Griffinth, 2018) and in his speech for the presidential campaign he claimed ‘’Mexicans are bringing drugs, crime and they are rapist’’ other than that he also claimed ‘’A total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’’.

Besides his words during the campaign Donald Trump has accomplished many work related tasks through his 2 year time as a president and this I will describe further in my analysis of the task-related personality traits. The fact that he has accomplished a lot of tasks makes him more trustworthy. Donald Trump means what he says and show his values, demonstrate passion within his field and radiates self-discipline to achieve results. It is hard to get a clear answer from a politician nowadays, but with Donald Trump this will not be a problem. The above description of Donald Trump shows that he is an authentic leader, he is himself whether you like him or not. In according to (Andrew J. Dubrin, 2010) an authentic leader comes from experiences by reflecting and looking hard at themselves. Donald Trump as mentioned earlier has a lifelong experience within the business industry therefore I assume his authenticity got established from that experience.

Another important traits within the analysis is extraversion and Donald Trump is definitely an extrovert. As shown in previous references he love being on stage and in the limelight, he has a big personality and does clearly express himself (Which also shows he is high on the trait assertiveness). These traits has definitely given Donald Trump an effective career as a leader according to (Andrew J. Dubrin, 2010, p. 38).Donald Trump have the power to establish long-term relationships, for example the meeting with North Korea, which shows a bit of his enthusiasm (Micah Zenko, 2018). Through his whole campaign in 2016 he has shown optimism by letting the population know about his goals though he have not shown any warmth through his extraversion during the election.

In this part of the analysis I will shortly go through the relevant work-related traits, attitudes and behaviors I relate to Donald Trump. Donald Trump is really passionate about his businesses and the government work which is shown by the success of his businesses and the election in 2016. Though Donald Trump lack on the Emotional Intelligence, since he becomes defensive when he gets criticized, don’t admit his mistakes, he cannot control his temper he is not a good listener and he is unrealistically confident, as earlier described. He is good at adapting to the situation (UN Speech), he set the direction through his messages (Election 2016), he ask tough questions and he has high performance standards (His businesses). Courage is the second notion I would like to relate to Donald Trump. He is a man who takes risks, execute his plans and takes initiative. The fact that he never has been into politics and suddenly wanted to become the president of United States shows his courage.

Donald Trump is a very charismatic leader, salesman and politician (wamy S and R, 2014). He knows how to deliver the message to the people who normally turns of when they listen to intellectual arguments. He speaks aggressively and chose specific words which makes people remember what he said ‘’The war in Iraq was a big fat mistake’’ (Bierman and Halper, 2016), he also has a short temper (Chris Cillizza, 2017) and lots of humor as described earlier. Donald Trump will be placed in a top down management, he is the visionary, the one with experience (the coach) and through time he has created long term relationships as earlier described. He is neither democratic in work or politics and his leadership style can be concluded as autocratic (Andrew J. Dubrin, 2010).

From above mentioned I can conclude the following:Donald Trump is a successful entrepreneur and politician. His leadership behavior, attitude and style have definitely helped him reaching his present success within his political- and business career. Though his values and opinions may affect many people among the American population he still masters the characteristics of an effective leader. Still this analysis is very limited caused limited word amount and a further analysis would describe Donald Trump more detailed. Would I vote for Donald Trump? Only if he had different opinions and values. Would I hire Donald Trump as a leader in my company? Definitely since he can higher profits.