Just Some Musings on . . . Leadership Studies Post-Trump

The readings on Trump and leadership undertaken for these blog posts prompted me to reflect on my 15 or so years of teaching leadership in university graduate programs. I determined that the topics important to examining Trump within the context of leadership did not relate well to much of the program content and readings in the leadership programs. The topics significant to examining Trump as a leader seemed not to the part of mainstream leadership studies (leadership research and leadership development programs) in my teaching experience. I am not suggesting that mainstream leadership studies do not cover these topics, just that they are more peripheral than central in my experience.

This post contrasts most leadership studies with the analysis of trump as a leader. Three aspects of leadership analysis important to seeing Trump as a leader usually play a smaller role in mainstream leadership studies. These three aspects include (1) leader rhetoric (narratives and stories), (2) leader toxicity, and (3) the two-way influence between a leader and followers.

Additionally, my reflection reinvigorated the issue of how to distinguish leading/leadership from managing/management. For example, what roles/responsibilities are inherent in being a leader that are not generally required in being a manager? I found this important in trying to assess or evaluate Trump as an executive leader.

The first part of this post addresses this leadership – management issue. Inherent in this issue is the relative importance of formal organizations in the leadership – management discussion.

Part II opens the discussion on rhetoric, followers, and toxicity.

Part III discusses in more detail Trump as a leader within the context of our “post-truth” environment.

Part IV suggests changes in leadership studies based on readings about Trump as a leader.

The final part, Part V, contains concluding comments.

Part I

Leadership studies center almost exclusively on formal organizations and how senior managers should lead or do lead organizations. This suggests that leaders who deal with informal groups or large segments of society independent of managing formal organizations have little studied advice to help them become effective leaders. Political leadership, leading informal organizations and associations, and leading social movements, for example, may require different skills or capabilities than leaders of formal organizations. Leadership studies certainly spend time on “context” but perhaps in a too circumscribed way.

I have always found it interesting that “transformational” leadership became the most dominant theory of leadership in scholarly literature from the early 1980s until recently. I say interesting for two reasons. One because James Downton and James MacGregor Burns first advocated the notion of transformational leadership beginning in the 1970s. Downton, who I think was a sociologist by education, studied leadership in the context of religious and social movements. Burns, a political scientist and historian, first fully articulated the transformational leadership theory through his studies of U.S. presidents. In other words, the start of transformational leadership was generally unrelated to formal organizations much less to business corporations.

It was not until Bernard Bass, an organizational psychologist, developed a usable transformational leadership model in the early ’80s that the transformational model began to dominate leadership scholarship. Until this time, nearly all empirical leadership studies focused on supervisors and mid-level managers. Very few empirical studies dealt with senior executives. Bass’s articulation of a transformational leadership model generated a significant move to studying executive leadership within the context of formal business organizations.

To me, the application of transformational leadership to business corporations still seems an unlikely or perhaps uncomfortable crosswalk. To this day, when I review Bass’s four components of transformational leadership – idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation – I cannot but feel uncomfortable about how or whether those characteristics apply to profit-making organizations.

Perhaps the interweaving of several themes at about the same time was more than mere coincidence in raising the prominence of transformational leadership. Milton Friedman’s September 1970 essay in the New York Times Magazine gave widespread publicity to his long-standing dismissal of social responsibility as having any role in business. The only responsibility a business has is to “increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” A few years later, in 1976, Michael Jensen and William Meckling published one of the most referenced business articles ever written. They argued that the only business objective is to maximize shareholder value. Business executives, as agents for shareholders, could accomplish this if their compensation was generously stock-based.

Bass’s explication of transformational leadership and its application to the business community appeared shortly after the Jensen and Meckling article and around the time Ronald Reagan was touting that the role of business was to make money. The dramatic increase in the relative compensation of senior executives began shortly after Jensen’s and Meckling’s paper and Bass’s advocacy of transformational leadership and its application to the corporate community. The first “rock star” of the business community was probably Jack Welch, CEO of GE from 1981 to 2001. Business and many leadership publications touted Welch as the business hero of maximizing shareholder value. The 1980s witnessed the rise and near-complete dominance of business executives as the most visible and significant leaders. Non-business contexts of leadership studies largely faded.

The interweaving of these three themes raises the question of the overlap between leadership studies and management studies. It appears to me that many, if not most, business studies of leadership conflate management and leadership. For the most part, leadership and management seem relatively similar. Leadership studies seem less likely to conflate the two. But both tend to place management and leadership in the same person, although emphases may be different. Leadership often appears to play a smaller role at lower levels of hierarchy, such as in supervisors or front-line managers and becomes more important as one moves up the organizational hierarchy.

What then distinguishes executive leadership from senior management? I am unsure one clear answer exists. But I would answer the question by saying that three interrelated characteristics, or roles or responsibilities, distinguish senior leadership behavior and responsibilities from those of management: (1) time horizon, (2) scope horizon, and (3) the nature of the problems dealt with.

Leaders tend to have a longer time horizon as they view problems, issues, circumstances, resources, and the overall environment in which they make decisions. The emphasis on increasing shareholder value seems to have significantly shortened the time frame of managers over the past decades. And the extent to which leaders can see the shadows of the future more than five or so years out seems increasingly difficult. Yet, I would argue that a significant difference remains in time horizons between leaders and managers.

The political theorist William Connolly [1) uses the phrase “interim future” to refer to a future close enough in time and shape to enable us to think about possible details. He also realizes surprising events may alter the image created by the actual visualization. By image, he means a visualizing of an interim future that is filled with positive emotion or desire that influences behavior or action. I argue that a key role, indeed a fundamental and inherent responsibility, of a senior leader is to engage others in developing and visualizing an interim future. The nature of this interim future may vary with the scope the leader uses in developing the interim future. The fact that this visualization is identified as interim suggests that the work of visualizing an interim future is close to an ongoing process. Philosopher Hannah Arendt calls the gap between past and future “the proper habitat of all reflections.”

Leaders also have a broader scope horizon than that of managers. By scope horizon I mean two things. One is the breadth of facts, issues, problems, and trends that a leader examines. These go beyond a short-term view of the leader’s formal organization or context in which he or she is leading. Doing so requires a breadth of perspective and a strong inclination toward curiosity coupled with a sense of intellectual humility. It requires an openness to new ideas and possibilities. The scope horizon goes much beyond fact-filling or a somewhat mechanical process of examining what a leader may already know or believe, or what he or she thinks she knows and believes. A single or sole person in very unlikely to possess all the resources or capabilities to engage in a scope horizon much beyond the current and likely environment of the context in which he or she is leading.

To me, this broad scope horizon entails a responsibility broader than regarding the simple and direct context in which one is leading. This entails an ethical requirement to judge one’s role, and the role of the organization or context in which one is leading, in a much broader context than the clear-cut immediate context in which one is leading. One must be at least aware and willing to think about the broader consequences and even unintended consequences of the pursuit of likely objectives and the actions that these objectives require. This broader sense of responsibility, of being aware of ethical consequences inherent in acting within this broader scope horizon, is part of what one buys onto when one accepts and enacts a leadership role.

The final and third piece of this set of interrelated leader responsibilities deals with the nature of the problem leaders act upon. One can evoke the well-known distinction between tame and wicked problems. Oversimplified, a tame problem can be solved while a wicked problem can only be worked on. More specifically, wicked problems have these several characteristics among others: (1) those who work on a wicked problem must define the problem, there is not a prior agreed-on definition; (2) solutions to wicked problems are good, better, or best; solutions are neither true nor correct; (3) wicked problems have no single root cause; every wicked problem is a symptom of another wicked problem; and (4) possible solutions to wicked problems are infinite.

Although the wicked problem framework literature is long and deep, a richer problem framework to me differentiates between simple or complicated problems on the one hand and complex problems on the other. Tame problems generally equate to simple or complicated problems while wicked problems are very similar to complex problems.

Complex problems are [2]

• ” systemic, which is to say that one cannot understand them by dividing them into parts and treating the parts separately,
• ” path-dependent in that history and the sequence of events shape the nature of the problem,
• ” sensitive to context because the nature of a complex problem depends on detailed patterns and events,
• ” episodic – that is, change happens in fits and starts so that problems can self-organize into completely different problems that have features that no one could have predicted, and
• ” emergent – complex problems continually emerge.

I think Connolly describes emergence well. He says emergence is causal in that movement at one level or system induces effects on others. “But it is emergent in four respects:

• ” The volatile elements are not knowable in detail before the effects that emerge,
• ” Some of them become infused (pour or diffuse into) the organization of the emergent phenomenon so that the causal factor is not fully separate from the new formation,
• ” The new infusions get into heretofore dormant capacities of self-organization within the affected system, and
• ” Feedback loops flow back and forth, sometimes creating more stability and at other times more disequilibrium.”

Leaders often face emergence as they deal with complex problems. Connolly makes this important point relevant to leaders: “When an inquiry is launched, investigators may act as if a complete explanation is possible. But in a second gesture made as the inquiry proceeds, we contest the hubris invested in that regulative ideal. We do so [because] the world presents an element of opacity to us. . . .” This opacity and volatility often exceed our capacity for inquiry. We must accept the possibility of significant revisions as we try to explain causality – akin to American pragmatism’s notion of fallibilism.

Both managers and leaders need to correctly assess whether the problems they are addressing are simple/complicated problems to which there are definite answers or solutions, or complex problems. Managers generally address simple-complicated problems while executive leaders focus primarily on complex problems. Leaders need to be comfortable with problems that are unmanageable and permanently unsolvable. Complex problems generally require a problem-addressing strategy quite different from the strategies or processes used to solve simple or complicated problems.

What can cause a leader to mistakenly identify a complex problem as a simple or complicated one? There may be many ways to answer this question. But a key one to me focuses on the interrelationship of the above three responsibilities or obligations of a leader. If one takes a very short time horizon one may easily see a problem as simple or complicated when a longer time horizon may provide information or stimulate thinking about the complexity of a problem that is otherwise not seen. Similarly, if one takes a narrow scope horizon, one may not see any signals or characteristics of complexity. In other words, if your time horizon and scope horizon are very limited one can see nearly all problems as simple/complicated.

For example, a lower-income household may purchase a house taking a risk that the increase in value will minimize its risk of finding the mortgage unpayable. The real estate agent who sold the house is satisfied that the buyer met the conditions of financing and he or she, the real estate agent appropriately earned a commission on the sale. The mortgage financier may be satisfied that the buyer can make initial payments, and then stops worrying about the mortgage because is it packaged into a collateral debt obligation or a mortgage-backed security, where the mortgage lender faces no consequence for failure to pay on the part of the house buyer. Rating agencies, eager for continued business for firms that securitize, may give more generous ratings than the assets underlying the security.

Think of the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, perhaps the millions of such transactions. Singularly, each housing sale/financing is a simple problem, but as these simple problems scaled up over time and involved others more distant from the original purchases, they evolved into a complex problem. I think it was John Maynard Keynes who said something like “what was individually rational proved to be collectively disastrous.” It is not outrageous to label the “Great Recession” as a failure of leadership.

Part II

In examining Trump as a leader, the blog’s leadership posts perhaps place their primary emphasis on Trump’s rhetoric. Most leadership studies place little emphasis on a leader’s narratives and stories. Two points may explain this. Relatively few people know Trump personally or have much experience working with/for him. Consequently, Trump, or anyone operating under these circumstances, must have a powerful way of connecting with people. Second, leadership studies generally assume that the leader operates within a formal organization or institution. Here rhetorical skills may be much less important because followers/employees have some knowledge of the leader, if not personal contact.

The analysis of Trump’s rhetoric largely makes the point that his rhetorical content, as well as his rhetorical style, significantly facilitate his success. Trump’s rhetorical content usually focuses on resentment, emotionally exploiting the fear or dislike people have of the “Other.” Leadership studies work contrary to this. Leaders in formal organizations must promote collaboration, cooperation, and consistency in developing common outputs and outcomes for the organization. The conscious promulgation of resentment and division harms the organization and is contrary to leadership in a formal organization. Writ large, one can suggest that the effect of Trump’s rhetoric not only intensifies the divisions within our country but also heightens the emotional antagonisms between those divisions. A further discussion of Trump’s rhetoric occurs later in this article.

The emphasis on followers provides a second major difference between scholarly research on leadership versus studies of Trump. Leadership studies don’t ignore followers. A major part of leadership studies focuses on the relationship between a leader and his or her followers. However, leadership studies focus on how the relating between leader and follower takes place. Analyzing the nature of a leader’s followers, their personal characteristics and beliefs, and the influence they have on the leader seems relatively unimportant within a formal organization context.

Trump’s leadership behavior largely focuses on maintaining divisions within society and on adopting or exercising values often outside the mainstream. Such behavior necessitates an understanding of how or why the personal characteristics, beliefs, and values of his followers lead them to support Trump. In formal organizations, leaders usually try to influence or mold the behaviors and values of followers/employees to promote successful organizational outcomes. Trump, however, attempts to intensity and bring out from his followers the beliefs and values that often lie beneath their surface. He believes these behaviors and values will sustain his leadership. To Trump and his followers, the politically incorrect has become politically correct.

Although the blog posts have yet to cover this, several commentators on Trump’s leadership increasingly suggest that people who work for and directly act within Trump’s orbit often act as members of a cult. An argument can be made that Trump acts like or becomes a cult-like leader, that he can mold the people around him to treat him as a leader of a cult. Leadership studies rarely treat the leader as a cult-like figure or address cult leadership. Yet, it seems to me that leaders of some formal organizations can create an organizational culture that may have some cult-like characteristics.

What I find particularly interesting in Trump’s connection with his followers, and this perhaps comports with the notion of Trump as a cult leader, is how unidirectional it is. Trump does not engage his followers in discussion, does not ask for their opinions, what they are interested in, or what their priorities are. He presumes that he fully articulates their desires and priorities.

The notion of Trump as a cult-like leader blends into the third difference between leadership studies of Trump and the leadership studies more generally, and that is the emphasis on toxicity.

The Trump leadership posts stay close to the topic of toxicity. This may mean focusing on the influence of the dark triad of dysfunctional narcissism, Machiavellianism, or psychopathy.

Put simply: (1) dysfunctional narcissism refers to people who have an unrealistic sense of grandiosity and self-admiration that requires validation and recognition from others; (2) Machiavellianism refers to people who manipulate other people and possess an unemotional coldness and indifference to morality; (3) psychopathy refers to people who have a persistent antisocial behavior and who lack empathy and remorse.

People who possess these traits can often appear likable and competent. Toxicity can also relate to other dysfunctional excesses, such as lack of intellectual humility, dishonesty, bullying, excess hubris, dishonestly, or arrogance.

Leadership studies discuss toxicity, but usually see toxicity as relatively rare or perhaps even relatively inconsequential. Often, toxicity is addressed in conjunction with ethics. But what if leadership toxicity occurs not at the margin? What if it is relatively common? How do organizations and followers deal with toxicity?

Many leadership studies programs undertake personal assessments of students so that students can better understand their behavior and their interaction with others. In the programs in which I have been involved these assessments include, for example, Extended DISC, Meyer-Briggs, the Five-Factor model of personality, and various measures of emotional intelligence. Generally, these assessments focus on positive aspects of one’s personality and behavior, seeking to identify one’s various strengths and one’s less strong aspects.

Little if any individual assessment work with students focuses on the Dark Triad or similar constructs of the darker side of personality and behavior. Thus, students generally do not become aware of the extent to which their personalities or behavior might tend toward, for example, Machiavellianism, or psychopathy, or dysfunctional narcissism. Consequently, students may have no or only very little awareness of the extent to which leaders may exhibit these characteristics and, more importantly, how to recognize and deal with these darker aspects of leadership.

Part III

Max De Pree, the founder, and CEO of the renowned Herman Miller office furniture company died several months after Trump’s presidential inauguration. De Pree wrote several books on leadership. In one of his most famous statements, he pointed out that leaders need to tell the truth, that the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. (See also The Leader as Chief Truth Officer.) De Pree wrote before the full advent of our current post-truth era. Trump embodies the post-truth era.

I start this brief discussion of post-truth with a quote from The New Yorker magazine:

“No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other, and no one, as far as I know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues. Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools not only of the politician’s or the demagogue’s but also of the statesman’s trade. Why is that so?… Is it of the very essence of truth to be impotent and of the very essence of power to be deceitful?”

The article, by Hannah Arendt, was published nearly 53 years ago.

Although Arendt speaks within the historical overhang of fascism, Nazism, and communism we should not assume that lying, that not telling the truth, characterizes primarily government and politics. Some readers may remember Bernie Madoff saying in 2007 that “in today’s regulatory environment, it is virtually impossible to violate rules.” A year later, his Ponzi scheme, the largest in history, became clear, showing that he had defrauded his clients of $18 billion. Perhaps fewer readers may recall the CEO of the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company telling a congressional committee that “cigarette smoking is no more addictive than coffee, tea, or Twinkies.”

Trump is the first fully post-truth president. By mid-January 2020, the Washington Post enumerated over 16,000 lies, mistruths, and false statements made by Trump. Presidents have lied before, usually on significant events or issues they wish to hide from the public and Congress (see Vietnam War, Watergate, Iran-Contra, weapons of mass destruction) but none have lied as continuously and about so many events and issues as Trump. The lies and mistruths seem to seep through to many members of the Cabinet and key political staff. Yet, these lies mistruths seem to have little if any consequences for the president.

Trump has clearly adapted to if not provided political leadership to our current post-truth era. Trump’s success with lies and mistruths are based on his followers. From this perspective, the role of followers in leadership becomes a paramount issue. I have often wondered why Trump continues to concentrate solely on intensifying his base rather than broadening his base. Though there may be an exception, I cannot recall a President who after being elected does not move to expand and broaden his base of electoral support. But Trump, even as a minority president, has made no effort to do so.

Two related factors answer the question of why Trump refuses to try to expand his base. One such factor is the nature of Trump’s personality and the leadership style that fits him. The first part of the answer centers on Trump being a highly narcissistic personality. Here, I will paraphrase a clear and fairly short description of the narcissist personality [3]:

Primarily, narcissism involves an unrealistic sense of grandiosity and superiority, manifested in the form of vanity, self-admiration, and delusions of talent. But this sense of superiority is unstable because a narcissist’s self-esteem is high but fragile. Narcissists crave validation and recognition from others. Such inner insecurity is almost never found in humble people.

Narcissists tend to be self-centered. They are not much interested in others, have little if any empathy, and are generally unable to feel what others are feeling. They rarely display consideration for people other than themselves

Finally, narcissists have high levels of entitlement. They behave as if they deserve certain privileges or enjoy a higher status than their peers enjoy. This sense of entitlement can justify their exploitive behavior: when you think you are better than others, you find unfairness where there is none and behave in demeaning and condescending ways toward people.

As perhaps an extreme narcissist [4], Trump constantly needs reaffirmation, constantly seeks validation and recognition from others. On the other hand, he has a thin skin, is easily offended or hurt, and lashes out at people who criticize him or are disloyal to him. He can safely bask in the adoration of his followers. But broadening his base risks losing portions of his base. It also runs the risk of engaging in what for him would be rough give and take as he tries to move from positions that secure his base to positions that might be attractive to some of those not now in his base. Trump appears frozen into his base and does not possess the adaptability to broaden his base. He seems inherently incapable of wanting or desiring to expand his base.

Why do his followers seem so intensely supportive of him? Probably because nearly all his followers see him as a charismatic leader. Trump realizes that his charisma is his key electoral strength. He perhaps understands that followers give him the gift of charisma, that charisma is in the eye of the beholder. (Or perhaps he incorrectly sees charisma as an inherent part of his personality.) Charisma is an inference that followers give to their leaders. Trump’s formula for success is a rather simple tight circle: narcissists need constant adulation and reinforcement; followers give a leader charisma, approve his behavior, and bestow adulation on him. Trump knows how to sustain the charisma his followers give him in order to receive the adulation he needs.

Why do followers see Trump as charismatic? One can make several speculations based on the leadership literature. Followers tend to grant charisma to a leader when they feel under duress, such as being in a crisis or perceiving an external threat or feeling deprived or hopeless. One can suggest that when followers feel duress they may develop, in Kant’s phraseology, a self-incurred immaturity that impedes their ability to understand their situation without the guidance of another. This makes it easy to see others as their guardians.

Analysis of voters in the 2016 presidential elections showed they tended to express a preference for a strong leader if they felt jeopardized by economic conditions or threatened by immigration. This suggests that his charisma will hold if Trump continues to blame the Other that his followers believe have placed them in a precarious situation.

This Other is rather numerous but chief among them are non-white immigrants, Muslims and other non-Christians; Democrats; professionals and experts; various minorities who prey on his base directly or indirectly; foreigners and nations who take advantage of America; the mainstream media; and other members of the swamp that stand in opposition to him. Anger toward this broad set of the Other needs to be continually and emotionally reinforced. In my mind, there is little question that the emotion Trump continually develops in his followers is anger toward, rather than fear of, the Other. Today, anger seems to drive the political polarization rampant in the country.

While Trump may have mostly manufactured a sense of crisis and instability in his campaigning, he tapped a strong latent current in much of the population that had been building for several decades. He successfully promoted the belief that various kinds of elites (perhaps what Trump calls the “swamp”) caused the duress perceived by many people.

The media environment plays a significant role in sustaining Trump’s charisma. The Fox news media acts as an informal state-controlled media for Trump. Media talk show hosts reinforce the Fox network by showering adulation on Trump as has the social media network that has fostered and facilitated Trump’s rise to power. Even mainstream media, the media that Trump lovers and loves to hate, provides him with superb publicity over the silliest things.

Importantly, the visible religious-oriented accolades given Trump by some evangelical leaders also bolster his charisma.[5] Trump complements this media adulation with his electronically direct contact with his followers via his consistent tweeting and his frequent rallies.

The Republican Party [6] elites, especially members of Congress, give almost unthinking support to Trump that reinforces his charisma. They steadfastly refuse to reign him in or provide checks on his actions. They usually side with him or stand mute in his attacks on others. Rather than acting as an oversight board of directors, the Senate Republicans act more like a subservient set of followers.

Finally, another point that may be made is that Trump’s rhetoric and actions largely sustain what might be called the plutocratic-evangelical meta-narrative. At one time I might have called this the neoliberal-neoconservative-libertarian narrative. But over time I believe this meta-narrative has sharpened (narrowed and intensified) into the plutocratic-evangelical narrative. Neoconservatism as all but dropped out of this narrative, while libertarianism as infused in both the plutocratic and evangelical components. The 1970s saw the beginning of this meta-narrative and it was well developed by the end of the decade. After 1980, this meta-narrative took hold of the country.

While there are contending meta-narratives, such as global sustainability, social justice, multiculturism, or pluralism, these other meta-narratives do not have the power of the plutocratic-evangelical narrative. Linda Kinz’s [7] phrase of “resonance” best describes the function and power of the plutocratic-evangelical meta-narrative. In her study, “resonance refers to the intensification of political passion in which people with very different interests are linked together by feelings aroused and organized to saturate the most public, even global, issues.”

The micro-environment around Trump relishes his lies, untruths, and alternative facts as long as these lies and untruths attack the Other. It makes little difference if his followers believe or do not believe Trump’s lies. These lies become part of the performance that sustains his charisma because his followers actively collude with him to oppose the Other. Followers give Trump permission to lie as long as these lies and alternative facts show that Trump is on their side and is trying to protect them. I suggest that this is a key reason why Trump continues to lie and throw out alternative facts. After a while, they become a comfortable part of the environment, where constant repetition engenders belief or reminds his followers that he is on their side.

Additionally, the barrage of lies and alternative facts feeds the emotion among Trump’s followers which he needs to sustain his charisma. These emotions and feelings become more important than whether Trump is telling lies or the truth. In fact, the emotion carried through Trump’s lies and half-truths become more important than the success or failure of his programs and policies. Although Trump may fail to complete or even start many of his campaign promises, his charisma will ensure that he will not lose the support of his base followers.

So, we have come to the post-truth presidency in which fact-checking, or the laying out of reality in a rational, logical, and fact-filled way, or critical thinking has little effect.

Many aspects of our post-truth environment precede Trump, but he along with the radical right media have arguably enhanced two characteristics of this environment. They have intensified and broadened the war on science and expertise. In current times arguing against science perhaps started in earnest with the private sector’s counterarguments regarding scientific evidence of harm by the tobacco and energy sectors (global warming). But Trump intensified climate change science by totally ignoring its evidence and treating such as fake news. His lies and fake news comments have focused on a wide variety of topics including intelligence, law enforcement, the courts, weather forecasting, and a wide swath of environmental topics. Overall, he has deemphasized if not ignored the notion of expertise. [8]

Second, Trump often uses his propaganda in ways that actively promote and broaden his authority, moving beyond science to positions that arguably focus rule by one, the position of the president. He largely enacts this through his prioritizing of personal loyalty above everything else.

Arendt’s article shows that the contemporary debate about how new and different our post-truth era is must acknowledge that this era was not born just several years ago.

Nonetheless, Arendt’s article has a chilling conclusion: “the result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lies will now be accepted as truth, and the truth be defamed by lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world – and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end – is being destroyed. And for this trouble there is no remedy . . . . consistent lying, metaphorically speaking, pulls the ground from under our feet and provides no other ground on which to stand . . .. Conceptually, we may call truth what we cannot change; metaphorically, it is the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us.”

Peter Wehner, who worked for Reagan and both Bushes, states, “Trump is engaged not just in an assault on truth; he is engaged in an effort to annihilate the truth. We’ve never seen anything like it in American politics. It’s relentless; it is done morning, noon, and night. And it is not just lies. It’s the nature of the lies. It’s an assault on provable truths, demonstrable truths.”

What happens when we become knowledge resistant and logic resistant as well as fact resistant?

Overall in my view, Trump lacks the fundamentals necessary for being an effective executive leader. His main skill is encapsulated in his rhetorical powers accompanied by bellowing the resentment, fear, and anger within his followers. If propaganda can be defined as the use of biased or misleading information to promote a cause or point of view, then the primary leadership skill of Trump may be his skill at propaganda.

More specifically, Trump sees all problems as simple problems; refuses to acknowledge much less deal with reality, and neither commands or cares.[9]

Nonetheless, he demonstrates the significance of a leader’s rhetoric to his or her followers. This is especially true when most of the followers cannot have personal knowledge much less acquaintanceship with the leader.

Part IV

This part makes recommendations for leadership studies, especially leadership development programs, based on the prior three parts. These suggestions primarily focus on graduate leadership programs, especially doctoral programs. Although I have also taught leadership at the undergraduate level, I am now very uncertain about the desirability of an undergraduate major in leadership.

I am not trying to be provocative. I believe these suggestions are reasonable, realistic, and overdue. Overdue, in part, because of the decades-long strong ties between leadership, management, and business, especially within academia.

Toxicity

Leadership development programs should add the dark triad of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy to the current personality assessments now in use. There are well-used and verified measures of each of these personality traits, although as with all personality measurements they need to be handled carefully. The research on measuring toxicity suggests (1) that each element of the dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) be measured separately and (2) a preference for using the long-form measurement instruments.

Chamarro-Premuzic indicates that about 4 percent to 20 percent of senior managers score as psychopathic compared to a rate of about 1 percent in the general population. He also suggests that the rate of narcissism in the general public is about 1% compared to about a 4% rate among CEOs. He is referring to pathological narcissism, which is a clinical diagnosis. More recent research suggests the rate of pathological narcissism could range to 6% at the high end. Much more common is what is called the narcissistic personality type, which is not a mental illness but an extreme form of normal, everyday narcissism. Some studies suggest that the occupation or institution contains the highest levels of narcissism is the military (about 20% may be narcissists).

The assessment of toxicity should lead to a focus on how toxicity affects leadership, how it can be recognized and dealt with. Leadership studies have done a pretty good job of examining the downsides of charismatic leadership but not so well regarding the dark triad. A clear exception is an article by Padilla et al. in the Leadership Quarterly, which was probably about 8 or 10 years ahead of its time. The article demonstrates that while leadership studies have not ignored the dark triad it often does not get into the mainstream.

Part of the discussion of toxicity should include its role in the promotion of non-leaders to leadership positions. Studies suggest that when looking for potential leader candidates those who impress by showing confidence tend to get promoted over those who shine with competence. Narcissists, Machiavellians, and psychopaths tend to be promoted into leadership positions but often turn out to be relatively ineffective leaders.

Breaking out of the formal organization box

Since about 1980 leadership studies have focused primarily on the leadership of formal organizations, usually business organizations. Often, labeling one as a successful or effective leader depends often on the extent to which the organization or part of the organization someone leads meet targets and specified objectives. Instrumental rationality dominates discussion about effective and successful leaders. Leadership studies need to expand their own scope horizon to include not only private organizations but also governmental and nonprofit organizations as well as movement leadership.

The focus on formal, especially business, organizations seems more typical of American leadership studies than European or Australian studies. An expansive focus means paying greater attention to the leadership of movements, to political leadership and public leadership, cult leadership, and leadership in a variety of associations and nonprofit organizations.

Breaking outside of the box also entails ensuring a focus on what differentiates leading from managing. To me, this means focusing on longer time scopes and broader horizon scopes. Questions like the following should be asked and addressed. What are the processes that leaders can use to lengthen their time scope and broaden their horizon scope? Similarly, what are processes or methods that help leaders address complex problems, processes and methods that must largely be different than solving simple or complicated problems? I found articles by Daviter, Termeer et al., and Alford & Head helpful in thinking about how to think about addressing complex/wicked problems.

Complex/wicked problems generally spawn deep disagreements. Academic leadership programs generally are unable to address how one might resolve or best address deep disagreements because little intensive disagreement exists among students and the literature they read. Both students and faculty tend to be similar in the values expressed in leadership studies. Getting and then trying to resolve sharp, intense disagreements becomes just about impossible. One way to handle this problem is to use real-life issues that generate deep disagreements, such as immigration, gun rights/control, abortion, or gay marriage. The intent is not to come to an agreement on these issues but to confront a set of circumstances that permits the use of approaches the can help defuse if not resolve deep disagreement.

One such approach uses deliberative dialogue. Jorgenson and Lindaman argue that the practice of dialogue and deliberation cultivates the abilities necessary to address persistent and polarizing issues. One can read about such practices, but practicing deliberative dialogue is a much greater learning and skills development experience. Consideration should be given to exploring the use of deliberative dialogues developed by the National Issues Forum. The literature on “deep disagreement” (see examples here and here) can also be useful in this regard.

Narratives and stories

Although there is some good American leadership literature on the use of narratives and stories in leadership, European leadership studies more fully address this topic. Leader discourses, especially narratives and stories, can significantly influence others, whether those others are employees, customers, a community, or members of the public at large.

Narratives are stories we tell one another. But they can be more than that. Stories can be consciously developed to achieve certain objectives and stories can be repeated, retold, and revised over time to become part of collective consciousness. If successful, they can help promote a specific path dependence, shielding them from counter-narratives.

Narratives can play multiple roles. They can simplify complexity to help others make sense of what might otherwise be unintelligible. They help people store information in ways that analytical, rational discourse may find difficult to accomplish. They do this by amalgamating new information to patterns of existing information. Narratives can also help people understand and negotiate with others. Narratives play a key role in social communication because they influence not only how people think about issues and ideas but also how they feel about them.

Perhaps many people reading this article have watched the film 12 Angry Men. With hindsight, I now recall how the jury came to its conclusion using narratives and stories. It seems that every jury had a story to tell, something to narrate. I think each jury member told a story that somehow related to how they were thinking and feeling about the defendant. Over time, and increasingly collectively, the jury members moved to find the defendant not guilty. In the absence of these jury narratives, I don’t think they could have reached a unanimous verdict.

I am reminded of this film as I read an article by Saletta et al. about the importance of narratives in illustrating how intelligence analysts came to solve the complex problems they faced. The authors concluded that “narrative thought processes play an important role in complex collaborative problem-solving, reasoning with evidence in problem-solving. This is contrary to a widespread perception that narrative thinking is fundamentally distinct from formal, logical reasoning.” These ways of thinking complemented each other as the jury drove to its conclusion.

A public policy framework called the narrative policy framework (NPF) can be useful for understanding and analyzing narratives. NPF analyzes a narrative through several elements: setting (context), characters, plot, and moral of the story (a policy or decision choice). For example, the NPF will identify characters such as heroes, villains, victims, and allies. It can be used to analyze a narrative’s structure. 

The NPF can be used at the micro-level (how an individual can use narrative to affect other individuals), the meso-level (narrative the use by groups or coalitions to influence individuals or other groups), and macro-level (how institutional or cultural narratives affect society generally or groups and individuals within society).

At the meso-, or group/coalition level, the NPF is often used in conjunction with the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). The ACF can be a lens to understand and explain belief and policy change when there are goal disagreement and technical disputes across multiple actors.

Overall, stories and narratives are significant in addressing complex/wicked problems. These problems often generate conflict and deep disagreement among a variety of interests and factions. Addressing well complex/wicked problems requires different skills and processes than solving tame or complicated problems.

Understanding and acknowledging meta-narratives

Mentioning the use of the NFP at a macro level recalls the significance of understanding meta-narratives. Meta-narratives exert influence over us, generally indirectly/subtlety or subconsciously, as we go about forming judgments and making decisions. If we do not try to become aware of these meta-narratives, we limit our time and scope horizons. I will give an example from my own experience.

Earlier, I implied that in the 1980s and 1990s the dominant meta-narrative for America was an amalgamation of neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and libertarian themes. A key aspect of neoliberalism is “responsibilization.” This can be simply defined as the transfer of responsibility from higher authorities to communities or individuals who are then called up to take an active role in resolving their own problems. More colloquially this term was better known through such phrases as everyone is (ought to be) an entrepreneur or everyone is their own business. People are responsible for themselves; they must take the initiative to adapt and change to meet changing circumstances.

In Wendy Brown’s words, responsibilization “tasks the worker, student, consumer, or indigent person with discerning and undertaking the correct strategies of self-investment and entrepreneurship for thriving and surviving.” Responsibilization occurred within a broader narrative that emphasized individual freedom and autonomy. I generally bought into this idea and thought it was a good idea.

But over time I realized that while this might be a good idea for some people, especially professionals, well-educated people, it made little sense for many people. Many people, perhaps most, do not have the skills, background, or environmental/geographical/community context to be facile enough to change readily with changing circumstances. As I got to know people, good, hard-working people, who worked in conditions now called precarious employment or in fissured workplaces or the gig economy, I discovered that regardless of their hard work and best efforts they really could not reinvent themselves. If left to their own circumstances they would at best tread at their current level or more likely sink.

If people are seen primarily as human assets in society, they quickly become assets generally. If they cannot perform and meet the changing requirements of a business, they become expendable, as does an asset that no longer provides the required return. I am not saying an organization should not downsize or pursue reductions in force. But I am saying that leaders need to consider the impact of employment on people who would find reemployment difficult. They need to be cognizant of their hiring and compensation practices and the effect these may have on people as human beings and not simply as human resources or human assets [8].

My recognizing the impact of this thread of the dominant meta-narrative took time and was aided by seeing the real consequences on people. It also took changing my own essential values as I began to recognize and embrace the greater importance of human dignity.

Readers may not agree with or share my reaction to becoming more consciously aware of the effect of what I came to believe was the dominant meta-narrative. But everyone should try to become conscious of how various meta-narratives play out in real life and how these may affect, albeit subtlety, their judgments and decisions. Leadership does not occur in a social or societal vacuum. Leaders need to be sensitive to how societal meta-narratives, especially the dominant ones, may unknowingly influence their judgments and values. They need to try to measure whether their values are consistent with the dominant meta-narrative or whether their values are more aligned with a contending meta-narrative.

Followers

I find the need to reconfigure the discussion of followers difficult because leading is especially about obtaining and influencing followers. Calling someone a leader who has no followers makes little sense, although one needs to recognize that a person could be ahead of his or her time in securing followers. Certainly, leadership theories often deal directly with followers, as is the case with leader-member exchange, relational leadership, and charismatic, transformational, servant, and stewardship leadership theories. Other theories posit that the person who becomes a leader among a group of people often best models or typifies the members of that group. Yet leadership literature perhaps often treats followers/followership lightly if at all. Leadership studies need a more serious treatment of followers. Not only how leaders may affect followers but also how followers may affect leaders.

All prior recommended changes proposed for leadership studies are likely to develop further consideration of the role and relationship of followers within the context of leadership. First, if leadership studies can get out of its instrumental/formal organization box it would confront different follower relationships. So this change alone may facilitate better treatment of followers in leadership theories. Second, a greater emphasis on leader toxicity will also likely develop a greater emphasis on followers, especially regarding the effect of toxicity on followers and how followers deal with toxicity. Third, greater emphasis on how leaders use narrative/stories will also develop a better understanding of followers within the context of leadership.

Finally, using the processes that more effectively address complex/wicked problems should have the same result relative to furthering the development of followers in leadership studies. Dealing with complex problems requires intellectual humility, openness, and the involvement of different perspectives including those of followers.

Part V

This final part draws several concluding comments. First, my own teaching experience and the curriculum used in the years I taught leadership certainly influenced my perception of mainstream leadership studies. Different experiences may have led to different analyses and recommendations.

Second, I have focused on “senior leaders.” There are many people who lead through influence or position who may not be senior leaders. Team leaders, for example, rarely need long time horizons or broad scope horizons. If leaders are simply those people who have followers and influence followers, most may not fit the definition of senior leaders as used in this article.

Third, some suggestions are more easily adopted than others. For example, given the prevalent use of instruments that measure personality traits and behaviors, including measures and discussion of the dark triad should be relatively easy. Perhaps a bit more difficult is paying more attention to time horizons, scope horizons, and procedures useful in addressing complex/wicked problems. Moving beyond the organizational/instrumental rationality box may be more difficult because it may require more structural change in curricula. Paying more attention to narratives and stories and more significantly addressing the role and nature of followers may fall somewhere in between.

Fourth, and probably most significant, these suggestions possess synergy. Paying more attention, for example, to the role of narrative and stories will likely involve paying more attention to followers and, as well, help develop policy and decision processes that better address complex/wicked problems. Getting beyond the formal organizational box is apt to develop a better understanding of the use and utility of longer time horizons and broader scope horizons, provide a different perspective on the role and nature of followers, and assist in thinking about the potential influence of meta-narratives. And so on.

This synergy, especially as it creates the capacity to address complex/wicked problems through collaboration and dialogue, can facilitate those skills important to leading in a post-truth world, skills such as critical thinking, empathetic listening, and issue framing.

Finally, this article raised some topics only weakly or implicitly that may deserve more attention. For example, one might view leadership studies as being a good candidate for transdisciplinary research and the importance of reflexivity among different interests. (See also the introduction to Leading in a Complex World.) Another example is the potential usefulness of design thinking as a possible way of improving how we think about and act on complex/wicked problems.

I end with a final reprise: leadership is too important to be channeled into a set of boxes that may have little effect or influence on major societal and social issues that matter greatly for our human future.

Notes

[1] All the Connolly quotes are from Connolly, William D. (2008). Capitalism and Christianity, American Style. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

[2] Boulton, J., Allen, P., and Bowman, C. (2015). Embracing Complexity: Strategic Perspectives for an Age of Turbulence. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

[3] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. (2019). Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

[4] See the fascinating study, completed prior to the 2016 presidential election, of Trump’s personality pattern by Immelman.

[5] As an illustration see The Sanctification of Donald Trump.

[6] I mention this specifically because most studies of democratic backsliding (the move away from democracy by leaders elected democratically) suggest that the key tipping point occurs when leaders of the political party of the elected leader, who eventually becomes autocratic or dictatorial, discover that contrary to their assumptions they can no longer control the elected leader. See Levitsky, S. and Ziblatt, D. (2019). How Democracies Die. NY, NY: Broadway Books. We may have come up to that point when Republicans in the Senate refused to allow witnesses and new evidence in Trump’s impeachment trial.

[7] Kintz, L. (1997). Between Jesus and the Market. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

[8] This is not to deny the important but sometimes controversial role of science and expertise in a democracy. See a recent paper by Mirowski for a perspective on this controversy.

[9] Using the framework from earlier in this post, Trump’s time horizon seems very short. He focuses on immediate problems and on getting immediate results without much thinking ahead. His lack of impulse control contributes to this short time horizon because he readily reacts to various stimulants in real-time Also, his experiences in propaganda, branding, marketing, and image management all require paying daily attention to feedback he is getting. Trump relies very heavily on his instinct or “gut,” which is based on a narrow range of experiences that do not connect well with serving as president of a large, complex nation. Trump’s horizon scope also seems very narrow. He narrowly defines problems, sees problems as one-offs not connected to other problems, and as problems that he (alone) can “fix.” One can suggest that Trump’s fixes may create future significant problematic circumstances because his fixes focus on the immediate and the singular. All this strongly implies that Trump sees problems as solvable and tame and not as complex or wicked. In my opinion Trump’s limited time horizon, narrow scope, and inability to recognize, much less effectively deal with, complex/wicked problems make him unsuitable for presidential leadership. Also, see note 4 above for how Trump’s personality may affect his leadership behavior and decision making.

[9] Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the Demos. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books.

[10] See the interesting article by Dundon and Rafferty. They make a similar point: “We advance the argument that HRM [human resource management] is at risk of intellectual and professional impoverishment because of a pro-market ideology rather than a pro-business orientation. By pro-business, we mean a focus on longer term sustainability of both organizations and people, rather than just immediate shareholder interests of profit-taking.” Unfortunately, I think they use the term pro-business more as a marketing label to encourage business interests to consider their position. Their article goes beyond a corporate social responsibility approach. Their argument, with which I largely agree, requires a much more fundamental readjustment of the business community.