Why Trump's Command and Control Style Is Set to Lose

THE CHALLENGES OF THE GLOBAL CONTEXT REQUIRE A COLLABORATIVE, NONCOMPETITIVE APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP. THIS REQUIRES TIME AND PATIENCE, AND TRUMP IGNORES IT IN FAVOR OF SHORT TERM POLITICAL POSTURING

by Massimo Magni, Dept. of Management and Technology, Bocconi
Translated by Alex Foti


In the last decade, the command and control leadership style seemed to have gone out of fashion, since it didn’t seem consistent with the environmental complexity that characterizes the Fourth Industrial Revolution. On the one hand, the challenges organizations face in the global arena require highly specialized skills, and on the other hand they also require the ability to integrate one's specialized skills with those of others. Knowledge has therefore become a necessary but not sufficient component, because it is now essential to read the context, combine different skills and understand the long-term impact of decisions and actions. This ensures long-run sustainability and attention to the needs and the interests of the various stakeholders involved.

Despite the evolutionary trajectory of leadership being oriented towards models driven by consensus and inclusion, it seems that Donald Trump has dusted off the Command & Control style to underline his power and influence at the national and global levels. The leadership style of the current president of the United States reflects a centralizing approach, expressed through strong messages and statements that leave little room for dialogue and discussion. If we were to analyze his behavior and statements according to contemporary models, we could say that Trump's style is competitive in all respects. The competitive style of leadership has a high level of attention to one's own interests and a marginal focus on the interests of counterparts and maintaining long-term relationships with them. In other words, those who employ this kind of style see the global arena as a zero-sum game, in which one party’s win is another party’s loss. According to this vision, actions that are undertaken by global players can only be aggressive and aimed at maximizing one's own results at the expense of the others.

The communication impact of a competitive style is far from negligible. Public opinion is exposed to a message of strength and authority, which implies a paternalistic protection. For public opinion, the competitive approach is very reassuring, since it is based on immediate actions aimed at achieving results that have a strong short-term emotional impact. But in the long run, aggression can lead to a deterioration of relations with counterparts, triggering equally aggressive retaliating reactions. For example, just think of the declarations and related actions related to import tariffs. These actions were certainly oriented toward increasing domestic welfare, while completely ignoring the interests of political allies and global well-being. In terms of communication, the message that the president wanted to convey was one of force, independence and protection of the interests of US citizens. In the long term, however, this stance could deteriorate relations with trading partners, and cause heavy economic repercussions both domestically and internationally. And this would benefit neither the US nor the other world actors.


A collaborative approach, one that balances self-interest in the light of the interests of counterparts, would be much more coherent with the challenges that need to be tackled globally. Interdependence between countries cannot be resolved through an aggressive style, aimed at obtaining domestic short-term benefits. A model of leadership and management of relations based on a collaborative logic requires a higher investment in terms of time and energy, thus clashing with the impetuousness of a paternalistic model, which projects a perception of strength that may well turn out to be ephemeral.