Welcome to Episode 87 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast, I am Jack Shitama. Before I get into the meat of this episode, I want to emphasize that what I am doing here today is breaking down Donald Trump's leadership style on the basis of emotional process and family systems theory.

This is not an episode about politics.

I've done this in episodes 28 and 44, which I will link in the show notes. Today's episode is a slightly different take. Clearly, Donald Trump's victory in 2016 has shown that he can be effective politically. I believe this is in large part due to the fact that his leadership style is so unorthodox that it disrupts things in a way that enables him to take advantage of a certain moment in history. Donald Trump is unique. Few other people, if any, could pull off what he has done.

So from a leadership standpoint, I think it's important to take a look at whether or not his style invites people to follow in a healthy way or creates anxiety. You can guess from the title of this episode that I see it as doing the latter.

So let's get into it. The first way that Donald Trump creates anxiety in America is through narcissism, in the family system sense. I define this as being all about self-definition without any emotional connection. Edwin Friedman would define this as charismatic leadership. According to Friedman, a charismatic leader is one who is able to define him or herself, but is not able to give others the freedom to disagree.

For a charismatic leader, it is my way or the highway in the extreme. This results in a cultic togetherness where everybody must agree with the leader. This creates an intense amount of surrounding togetherness pressure to conform to the norms that are set by the leader. Donald Trump has shown that he has no problem cutting loose people who aren't willing to conform to his wishes. He demands loyalty from his followers but does not reciprocate. This increases the anxiety in the system in America and especially among his own party.

A good example of this is Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, who early on was very critical of President Trump.

However, he quickly realized the political reality was that if he continued to oppose Trump, he would be isolated. Graham did not want to be on the outside looking in, so he changed his tune and conformed to Trump's wishes. Whether you agree with Trump's political leadership or even his approach in the business world, I don't think most of us would find this to be an effective approach.

Leadership through self-differentiation is about self-definition and emotional connection. It's about saying what you believe while giving others the freedom to disagree. Donald Trump may be able to get away with a lack of empathy and emotional connection, but I think the rest of us would do this at our peril.

The second aspect of Donald Trump's leadership style that is increasing anxiety in America relates specifically to the covid-19 pandemic. Now, this pandemic in itself would increase anxiety. But I believe his approach to leadership has made it worse. What President Trump has done is refuse to take responsibility as a leader. Political commentators can debate the president's motives or whether it is the right political move. However, it is clear that he did not seek to lead a national effort to address the crisis.

Instead, he specifically pushed responsibility to states in general and to their governors in particular.

While this may ultimately be an effective move for him politically helping him to avoid responsibility for any real downside in the pandemic, this has the effect of creating chaos and increasing anxiety. One thing that people look for from a leader in good times and bad is a sense of vision. They want to know where we are headed or at least where the leader thinks we should be headed. I had a conversation with a coaching client recently that reminded me of something that happens to our family occasionally on extended family vacations.

We don't have dinner plans. We know we're going to go out and we start asking, where do you want to go for dinner? The response is, "Oh, I don't know, where do you want to go?" And the more we do this, the more anxiety is created because there's no leader, there's no direction. And the longer it goes, the hungrier and the grumpier we get. That is the effect of uncertainty on anxiety.

Donald Trump's refusal to take responsibility for a national effort to deal with the pandemic has created this kind of uncertainty, which has in turn increased anxiety in our country considerably. The uncertainty would be enough even if there were a national effort to address the pandemic. But without one, people feel the chaos, they feel the uncertainty, they feel the anxiety.

And again, this may be a political move for President Trump that may ultimately work out. But we are not Donald Trump. And at least for me, when I am in a leadership situation, I realize that one of my first responsibilities is to own the problem and to at least share what I think we should do to respond. That's leadership through self-differentiation.

The third thing that Donald Trump has done to increase anxiety in America is to emphasize a law and order response to the civil unrest over racial injustice.

Again, I believe this is a political move, especially because we know that this exact approach worked for Richard Nixon in 1968 when there was civil unrest over both racial injustice and the Vietnam War. While this approach may increase the likelihood that he gets re-elected, it is unlikely to actually reduce conflict and violence. One of my basic leadership tenets is that people don't like to be told what to do. No matter who you are as a leader, you are unable to impose your will on others in a healthy way.

Even in situations where you are capable of ordering people to do what you want because of the authority that you have in the hierarchy, if it is not something that they willingly want to do, it's hard to expect that people are going to give their best effort. When we talk about dissidents, insurgents and civil disobedience, the outcome will be even worse. Trying to impose one's will to create order actually results in even stronger resistance and conflict.

I am not condoning the violence that has occurred recently. I support the right of people to protest peacefully. But violence, looting and property destruction are criminal acts and should be punished. What I am saying is that rather than focusing on finding solutions that put police in a better position to administer the law fairly, at the same time protecting the rights of the protesters, a blanket approach of saying we are going to impose law and order will only backfire.

I believe it will only make things worse. I think it's likely that Donald Trump will continue this approach because it is also likely to increase his votes among a certain segment of the population. However, I also think that it is likely that the result will be an increase in violence from both the left and the right if he keeps this approach up.

I recently listened to a podcast from Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History. I'll post a link in the show. Notes is actually a chapter of his book, David and Goliath. It's well worth a listen to hear the similarities between the unrest in Northern Ireland in the late 60s and early 70s and the unrest today. His point is that unless civil authorities are able to establish their legitimacy by earning the respect of those they govern and are supposed to protect, their efforts to impose law and order will only result in more conflict and more violence.

No one likes to be told what to do. Most people agree that racial injustice is a major problem in the United States, it is not a problem that will be solved easily and it's going to take a lot of effort by many people.

Reducing violence and increasing the sense that the system is changing in positive ways is a complicated task. Simply saying that we are going to impose law and order doesn't reduce anxiety. It increases it. For me, the takeaway here is that leadership itself is complicated. When we are dealing with difficult problems, we don't necessarily have the answers. But what we need to do is earn that legitimacy, earn the trust of the people we are leading. We do that not by trying to impose our will, but by showing that we are willing to do the hard work that it takes to address complicated issues while staying connected to the people who are affected.

As I said in the opening, Donald Trump is unique. What works for him is unlikely to work for you or me. If you want to be a non-anxious leader, say what you believe while giving others the freedom to disagree. I think this sums up the task of leadership. It fulfills the primary task of the leader, which is casting vision, while also maintaining healthy emotional connection with those you lead. It also avoids the tendency to impose one's will on those who seek to follow.

So that's my take on Donald Trump's leadership style. Whether you are a Trump supporter or a Never Trumper or somewhere in between, I hope you can learn from what I've shared today.