From crisis candidate to our crisis leader?
Donald Trump has cemented his stature as a crisis candidate, painting the bleakest picture imaginable about the current course of direction in the United States and the world. Riding a wave of doom and gloom has energized his rise to Republican stardom. Assuming he is successful in his bid for the presidency, he will then need to transition from being a crisis candidate to being a crisis leader — the people he convinced to vote for him, and all other Americans, will be cast as followers in difficult times. What will they expect of a crisis leader? How is this likely to play out?
Literature on crisis leadership may offer a glimpse into who a President Trump will need to become. In 2001, within days of 9/11, West Point colleagues and I set upon a research strategy to become experts in crisis leadership — we needed a sophisticated understanding of crisis leadership in order to better prepare officers to lead in difficult and dangerous circumstances. To that end, we conducted more than 175 interviews in Iraq during declared offensive operations. We also studied people who led in high-stakes jobs, like climbing guides, adventure film crews, professional skydivers and SWAT team leaders. We substituted opinion and speculation with professional interviews and carefully gathered data.
Our results shed light on how a crisis candidate and a crisis leader might differ. One of our principal findings was that expert crisis leaders reduce, rather than increase, fear and anger in people In real crisis, people are already edgy and upset, and it’s organizationally destructive to have a leader who increases such concerns through hysterical or animated rhetoric. Mr. Trump has coalesced a party base of fearful, angry Americans. How long will it take their fear and anger to become a liability if there is a hiccup in, say, getting the Mexicans to pay for a giant wall, or if the laws governing international armed conflict are not changed to allow for waterboarding or the bombing of ISIL fighters’ families?
We also found that during genuine crisis, people lacked confidence in leaders who themselves displayed anger or fear. If people see that their leader is already spun up, they view them as unstable, unreliable and emotionally ineffective should things get even worse. At the same time, the drama of Candidate Trump’s animated speeches can create loyalties among people who are not actually in a crisis. Crisis candidates can afford to turn up the volume to move the electoral needle. Crisis leaders undercut their own position when they do the same.
We also found that expert leaders in real crises routinely declined personal safety or comfort beyond that they could provide to others. Such humility and solidarity builds trust. Candidate Trump, instead, has run for office by highlighting the stunning displays of luxury and advantage his success has given him, relative to the rest of America. He has proven incapable of showing empathy for a mother who lost her son. He consistently attributes his comfort to his own genius, when much of his wealth was kick-started by his family before him. Adopting a messianic posture is a disadvantage for a leader in a true crisis because followers sense that self-centered leaders may throw them under the bus. In fact, in our research we did not find one professional crisis leader who acted that way.
Candidate Trump’s self-adulation has been rewarded with a lot of air time, but much of our work suggests that President Trump will need a significant behavioral reversal in order to effectively lead the country, and especially if there is an acute major crisis such as a 9/11, a Katrina, a Fukushima, or worse.
Our research clearly revealed that competency was the quality most important for professional crisis leaders. Transparency about the leader’s performance was key. Candidate Trump offers his presumed business acumen as a proxy for experience in public service or foreign policy. This is why Trump should be eager to highlight his tax returns and leverage evidence of his competence. It may also be why he doesn’t dare release them, especially if they reveal weakness. Even a tiny crack in the veneer of competence would be devastating for a candidate who has offered a proxy for actual experience on the job.
Dark visions can give crisis candidates political power, but sooner or later all successful crisis candidates have to transition to being crisis leaders. And when that happens, no amount of inflammatory rhetoric can make up for a lack of quiet confidence, humility and shared risk, or genuine competence at the task.