You can tell a lot about a chief executive by how they lead. The first indication of an executive’s ability to lead can be seen in who the leader hires to help run an organization. As he has in the past, Donald Trump is continuing to exhibit a strong preference for people who look like they came from “central casting,” which explains why so many Fox News talking heads have suddenly shed their positions as camera-ready pathological liars and assumed new positions as government employees who are continuing to lie through their teeth at public expense.
For example, consider newly minted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth who spent a grand total of two years in the National Guard, subsequently destroyed not one but two veterans’ organizations through gross financial malfeasance, has been credibly accused of sexual assault, and whose public drunkenness has repelled his colleagues in virtually every position he has ever occupied. He lied his way through his Senate confirmation hearing and is now comfortably installed at the Pentagon, where his first act was to scrub Black History Month from any sort of official observance at the department he leads, along with firing a number of Black generals. He is now ridding the military of gay people and women and has endorsed the firing of veterans working for the VA, but hey, look at his square jaw and arrogance—hired!
Since the list of other similarly unqualified appointees is almost endless, we will just let Hegseth stand as their standard-bearer.
The next indication of someone’s leadership style involves crisis management, and I can tell you from direct personal experience (as can anyone who has ever worked within an organizational structure) that the first principle of crisis management is to work very hard to mitigate the possibility that a crisis will occur in the first place. Good leaders understand that foresight and preparation reduce the probability of endless emergencies.
Then, if a crisis emerges in spite of the leader’s foresight and proactivity, the structures previously established to avert or swiftly respond to the crisis are already in place (e.g., if you are a well-trained driver and you see an obstacle in the road, you might try to navigate away from it, or, failing to avoid it, you dial 911).
When an occasional unforeseen crisis occurs despite how well prepared the leader may be, the leader addresses the crisis with effective action, effective communication, and the awareness that crises are traumatic for the individuals who may have been harmed; therefore, the leader’s response must give evidence of empathy.
Donald Trump not only does nothing to prevent crises, he intentionally foments them. Leaving aside the crisis he deliberately incited on January 6, 2021, to say nothing of a pandemic that he completely mismanaged through his own hubris and stupidity, he has begun his second term as America’s CEO by deliberately destroying the government agencies and departments that meet the needs of ordinary Americans each and every day and by precipitating a collapse of financial markets due to his idiotic tariffs.
As for harboring even a shred of empathy for the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who will shortly find themselves unemployed, or the veterans who will no longer receive the care they need at the VA, or the young adults who will not be able to finish college because they can no longer get a Pell Grant, or the children who will die of measles because he hired a disinformation-spewing, anti-science wingnut to manage public health in America, don’t count on it.
Finally, the best leaders have a strong sense of integrity and ethics. They know that duplicity and corruption are the handmaidens of failure. They strive to exemplify strength of character because they know that the best leaders lead by example. Martin Luther King Jr. led by example. Mahatma Gandhi led by example. Barack Obama led by example. John McCain led by example.
Because they embody higher purpose and good character, they inspire the same commitment to the greater good among those they lead. This particular hallmark of good leadership is, unfortunately, rare, and Donald Trump possesses none of it. He does not read the Bible, he just peddles it for profit. He is an extortionist who is running an international protection racket from behind the Resolute Desk. Because he has no moral center, he hires in his own image a collection of people who really are a basket of deplorables: a secretary of education who covered up the sexual abuse of children in her wrestling organization; an attorney general who was more than happy to drop a case against Trump after he made a generous donation to her campaign fund; a director of national intelligence who is a Putin propagandist.
Good leaders lead by example. Bad leaders lead by example, too. Donald Trump’s government is a reflection of his bad judgment, unmitigated greed, pathetic need for attention, criminality, impulsivity, disdain for women, disdain for immigrants, disdain for people of color, disdain for the LGBT community, disdain for his own supporters, and disdain for the rule of law. A bad leader cannot keep good employees (please refer to the revolving door of Trump’s first administration) because good people can detect the stench of corruption from a great distance; a bad leader cannot tolerate an open and frank exchange of ideas, because the only ideas that matter to him are his own; and bad leaders mismanage the assets of the organizations they lead.
Through their own narcissism, stupidity, lack of integrity, and lack of foresight, bad leaders drive their organizations into the ground. Donald Trump is a convicted felon who has repeatedly bankrupted himself because of his resoundingly poor judgment and lack of character, and now that he has once more succeeded in failing upward, we are next.
