THE ORIGINAL BOSS FROM HELL

Trump styles himself as a great CEO. If he had been running a private entity his board would have fired him by now

What kind of boss would you like to have? And when you leave your job and set up your own stall, what kind of boss would you like to be?

Hundreds of books have been written about US President Donald Trump’s politics. Thousands more will be written. To my mind the book that’s really needed is a Trump people-management handbook.

He sounds like the original boss from hell. So it would be a “how not to be that guy” kind of book.

Just last week, while watching television, Trump saw one of his former employees opining on his stint at the White House.

Rex Tillerson is a bit like many readers of this august magazine. For 10 years he was the CEO of Exxonmobil. Early last year he chucked it all in to join the

Trump administration as secretary of state. It’s a big job, regarded by many as the most senior post after the president himself.

Just a year later Trump fired Tillerson. So, asked last week what it was like to have a boss like Trump,

Tillerson replied: “What was challenging for me, coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented Exxonmobil Corp … was to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but, rather, just kind of says: ‘Look, this is what I believe. And you can try to convince me otherwise, but most of the time you are not going to be able to do that.’”

Imagine running a company like that. It may explain why turnover of personnel in the first year of the Trump administration was 34%, exceeding that of the first year of the five preceding presidencies, according to the Brookings Institution.

Essentially, Tillerson was saying he left a stable, high-powered, high-paying job to work for a self-absorbed megalomaniac who doesn’t take advice.

Anyway, Trump saw Tillerson’s remarks on television and, true to form, reached for his iphone to fire off yet another tweet.

“Rex Tillerson didn’t have the mental capacity needed,” Trump wrote. “He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell.”

If you think “dumb as a rock” is the worst thing one can call a former employee, spare a thought for Trump’s former White House aide, Omarosa Manigault Newman. Trump called her “that dog” and a “crazed, crying lowlife” after her allegations that he was racist and not as sharp, mentally, as he used to be.

Trump repeatedly said during the 2016 election campaign that he would “hire the best people” for his administration. You have to wonder how he could have hired people he now refers to as “that dog” or “dumb as a rock” in the first place. Maybe his choices were not that great after all?

Trump has been the target of more than his fair share of insults, too. His former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, said the man was “like an 11-year-old child”. Former White House deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh said working with Trump was “like trying to figure out what a child wants”. Gary Cohn, his former chief economic adviser, said Trump was “less a person than a collection of terrible traits”. He also said the president was “dumb as shit”.

This weekend Trump announced yet another departure from his inner circle. John Kelly, the retired marine general tapped as chief of staff by Trump last year, apparently to bring some semblance of order to his chaotic White House, will leave the job by the end of the year.

In 2012 Trump tweeted that “part of the reason why @Barackobama can’t manage to pass his agenda” was because he had had three “chiefs of staff in less than three years of being president”.

Trump’s third chief of staff will start next January as the president ends his second year in office.

Oh, dear.

Trump styles himself as a great CEO. If he had been running a private entity his board would have fired him by now.