Image created from: Library of Congress images and Jonas Nilsson Lee, Image of river in woods
In the age of Trump, my initial inkling was that I was wrong about almost everything I knew about leadership. At the core of what I learned, effective leadership meant creating trust in teams, much of that cemented by showing self-awareness, authenticity, and vulnerability as a leader to bind the group in a reciprocity pact.
From my education and 16 years in business, theory held and experience showed that self-discovery drives your ability to impact organizations. My MBA colleagues and I did exercises like Reflected Best Self, where we sought to unlock our secret sauce by asking our peers, bosses, and direct reports across our career for stories when we were our very best. In classes, we filmed ourselves and watched how we either dominated conversations or timidly held back in our teams. We also pored over a battery of personality and leadership assessments, skimming our positive traits and thinking about the bad ones when we—got coffee—walked down the hallway—and slept. We took that reflection back to our teams, recognizing silent nodding heads as a flaw in our leadership, not congratulatory decision-making accelerant.
As I sat with my heaviness with Trump’s leadership, another thought crossed my mind. Maybe Trump is actually tapping into how authenticity unlocks influence, but with a twist. What if we colluded with Trump in truth yearning, fear, and tribalism to kill American leadership?
Truth Yearning and Fear of Other: Trump Not Filtering
What’s more authentic than releasing whatever comes to mind at the moment of arrival? How refreshing must that be in a political field lacking transparency? Are we so surprised by this appeal? I think many of us crave unveiling ourselves at our jobs and in our lives.
Trump attracts people because he appears to walk this path of unveiling. He does not filter. He does not back down. That quality can be alluring. Unfortunately, when we actually focus on his words, we mostly hear about his greatness and notice these “unveiling” words serve to disguise.
Let’s pull this back into the concrete. Our historical powerbase maintained a symbiotic relationship between the white and wealthy, and the white and middle class. The tribe was easy to identify. If I step into their shoes, I can imagine my fear creeping up. First, globalization starts to eat away at middle class jobs. Next, we face the arrival of terrorism from a culture we don’t understand and hear quotes from a religious text we cannot read that talks of killing infidels. This leads to endless war. Soon after, the markets crash in our Great Recession. Then we get a black President and hear that minorities will soon become the majority. With all of this societal churn, I suspect fear of the “other” unconsciously creeping in.
I hold that most people are good and believe many are not consciously racist. Coming from a rural town, I remember being fearful of gay people as a young man, and ironically relied on my Christian upbringing—Jesus loving those who were different than him—to challenge that fear to find humanity and friendships. However, subtle influences on our psyche shift us, especially when attached to threats of unknown.
Tribalism: Trump as Safety and Authentic Self — Sort Of
So, in this midst of societal turmoil, a strong man comes and says our jobs will come back and we will be great again. We see him walk with a firm step, shoulders fixed back, and chest forward. He points to targets to blame. He magnifies the divide.
And even if, like me, you are biracial or nonwhite, you can understand this desire to feel secure. You’ve faced the same thing, but you have not likely had much of the power. You may have supported strong men and women that fought for your share—some with violence, others with the weight of morality, and some with both. At times actors intentionally directed the system that oppressed you, but more hauntingly, came the roots that continued to spread, many forgetting their beginning. That forgetfulness fueled the pain you felt and crafted an elusive fix.
In short, we all want that home to laugh in, money in our accounts, and streets without police sirens. Unfortunately, tribalism remains vigilant to shatter the quiet, and the human brain has been wired for it. How many relationships with people can you maintain? Research says it’s 150. If you come from a small community and do not travel much—you stick to those you know and who look like you. That’s whether you are white, brown, or black. When we homogenize our social interactions, there’s bound to be societal ruptures, unless leaders remind us of commonalities like both our daughters like piano, economic devastation doesn’t know race, and the like.
So back to Trump—he wears confidence as skin. Therefore, if he appears to be part of your tribe, absorbing his aura feels reassuring. Let’s call this manifestation his little “a,” the thin layer of authentic self that remains unlocked for his access. While I’m not a psychologist, I suggest Trump remains unconsciously detached from his deeper, more vulnerable feelings, his big “A”—authenticity. If these feelings do surface, primarily through someone challenging him and his worth, Trump manifests wrath to quash them. Trump appears particularly sensitive to criticism or expertise greater than his that likely trigger shame. To protect against this awareness he either needs the world not to expose his vulnerability or a tribe to reassure him.
So yes, Trump is being himself—sort of--at least the insecure self, and I still, at times, feel his uncanny gravitational “a.” And just so you know, in those far off unconscious regions, I do believe there is a vulnerable side to Trump wanting to be nurtured and to come out. I do think we all contain this connecting, positive side to us, even when we are not showing up as the best version of ourselves. We all walk a redemption journey, and only a higher power knows where we end up.
Change Needed: Reducing Fear of the Other Through Leadership
In our own walk towards redemption, it’s time we each stop thinking we are better than the other and realize that if we were in that same situation, we could be like them. I recall my rural roots that held both fear of the other and the grace to grow. Likewise I know cosmopolitans who view country folks as naive, yet hold urban power to overcome such judgements and division through their exposure to diversity. Both groups hold this grace and power to accept differences that could be the hope to connect us and wake us up. America needs to wake up, because if we don’t, we will continue to die as a divided nation. This virus and unrest is teaching us that. However, we already experienced this: “[l]et us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling” (Lincoln 1860).
So, if we start mingling left and right and across race, then these disparate groups stop having so much fear of each other. We stop “needing” a strong man. We don’t need the little “a,” because we can tap into our deeper authenticity, admit we have fear, and still progress. We can build our tolerance for difference and release our shame. Leaders can help.
As a leader, when you authentically connect to a group and remind us of our collective humanity, you create power. You can do that with a little “a,” but that will eventually crack apart. You do that with a big “A” and you change lives by reminding us of our common pains and hopes. You change organizations. You create a world you are proud to leave to your future blended tribe.
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