Online exclusive
Sandy Burgham is a principal at Play Contemporary Leadership CoLab, a consultancy practice specialising in leadership development and organisational culture. Her fortnightly listener.co.nz column focuses on modern corporate life - and the people you might meet.
Opinion: If I was to imagine Donald Trump turning up to one of our leadership courses, it would be easy to pick which leadership archetype he would align to.
Trump has echoes of a particular type common to male leaders who, research shows, are moderate in leadership effectiveness. With high levels of ambition and autocracy, this type is called “The Forceful Knower.” The patriarchy was made for him and he is ready to play!
This archetype derives from The Leadership Circle Profile data gained from more than 460,000 leaders worldwide who have been evaluated using this data-driven tool. We invite most of our leaders and managers to do this comprehensive leadership assessment because of the extensive research that underpins it, which includes measuring leadership characteristics against the actual delivery outcomes of businesses and organisations. The instrument also gives a 360-degree view of the leader’s competencies and reactive tendencies and points to where they might be in their adult development. This helps identify the specific types of beliefs and fears that underlie and give rise to the individual leader’s behaviours.
Forceful Knowers have an identity centred on dominance and the superiority of ideas. They pride themselves on rationality (despite often holding a narrowness of worldview) and are happy to point out what is wrong in any situation, which can lead them to freely criticise other people while rarely taking any self-responsibility for troublesome situations they may have created. What they assume is an air of self-assuredness, others may consider arrogance.
Their breathtaking energy might give them a type of executive presence but can also suck the oxygen out of the room, leaving little space for others to contribute in new and different ways. At best, Forceful Knowers are simply unaware of their impact on others. Our experience has been that once they are made aware of what the behaviour is that holds back their leadership impact and why it exists, a far more balanced leader within can be unleashed. But it takes courage to dig deep into the “why” as it means uncovering hidden beliefs and fears.
At worst, Forceful Knowers don’t want to, or perhaps are incapable of, going there. They are what we would term “uncoachable”. Leaders like Trump fall into this category. They appear child-like in their speech. Notice how Trump refers to other world leaders as “my friend” or how his first line of defence is often lying, which he does as effortlessly as a child or teenager. These sort of patterns can be a developmental red flag, particularly, as in this case, the subject is reminiscent of a particular type of kid we all knew at school - the blustery braggard who gets the attention he craves through unashamed egocentricism:
“I’m very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words”
“Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it”.
“”I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”
“No president ever worked harder than me”
And the priceless: “I have done more for women than just about any President in US history.” Hmmm.
Leaders like this can actually run a personality-cult quite effectively - why? Because they use fear - one of the most primal, powerful motivators. Think TV mafia boss Tony Soprano or any number of dictators, including Trump’s “friend” Kim Jong Un. Trump himself said in an interview with famous investigative journalist Bob Woodward in 2016, “Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.”
While their followers fear some sort of loss - be it missing out, rejection or simply being forgotten in a sea of change - from a leadership development standpoint, we are more interested in the leader’s own underlying fear that drives their behaviour. Those Forceful Knowers who are willing to explore their deepest fears know that this personal commitment to change is a long-term game. Those like Trump who have gone on for years unchallenged and have willing enablers egging them on, do not feel the need to change because if it all goes horribly wrong, they can still retreat to their own private golf club and be surrounded by a posse whose dependence is mistaken for loyalty and fandom.
So what is their real fear? The research tells us that Forceful Knowers’ behaviours do not necessarily indicate a fear of failure (Trump himself has failed many times). Rather, they have two deeper fears - the first is vulnerability. Because emotionality and feelings in the workplace are anathema to their self-image, they have an inability to deeply connect with people on a really human level. So, in their leadership they are a bit of an enigma to others, and perhaps also to themselves. (Long- term commitment to a good psychotherapist might help. But maybe they do not have the capacity or maturity to want to explore their psyche. Maybe they are simply pathological. That is what was so compelling about Tony Soprano - he had a conscience so we held out hope he would change).
But the second fear lurking in the subconscious of Forceful Knowers is the fear of irrelevance. Many Forceful Knowers hang on to power, aware that they have been labelled “pale, male and stale” by more seemingly progressive types. The world is changing and given their identity is forged in a patriarchy created in their image, many Forceful Knowers, who have not had any robust personal or professional development, will just hang on and fight for survival. Indeed, the only words Trump uttered in his state of shock after the recent assassination attempt were “Fight, Fight, Fight”. We were witnessing a frightened man projecting his own fear of inevitable intergenerational change onto the crowd . It was, as he might say,……#sad.
