Leadership psychology offers some fascinating insights into the way the relationship between Donald Trump and his followers generated electoral success.
Donald Trump sold himself as a transformational leader. An outsider who vows to reshape the establishment. Psychologists know quite a lot about transformational leadership. Research led by Bernard Bass shows that followers see a transformational leader as “charismatic-inspirational”, as someone who relates to and understands them (“relational”), and as someone who gets them thinking (“intellectual stimulation”).
Transformational leadership stands in contrast with transactional leadership. Followers perceive a good transactional leader as fair, and as someone who deals with problems proactively. A good transactional leader is a safe pair of hands to keep things working. But skim through the business leadership shelves in Kinokuniya and you’ll see that transformational leadership, not transactional, is the flavour of the last few decades. As a businessman, this is where Mr Trump is coming from, and from where he looks down on politics and politicians. And this is how he outflanked Hillary Clinton.
In US presidential elections, Democrat candidates traditionally appeal to followers who want government to make big changes. In 2008, Barack Obama used powerful rhetoric of transformation; “Yes, we can”. A simple caricature is that Republicans generally seek less government, and to keep things as they used to be. So Democrats expect the promise of transformational leadership, while Republicans settle for transactional leadership. The thing is, in the 2016 election it was Mr Trump who took over the transformational narrative (“It’s going to be great. It’s going to be amazing”). This made Mrs Clinton a transactional safe pair of hands when middle-Americans were looking for transformational answers to deep problems.
Throughout the campaign, Mr Trump was adept at using Howard Gardner's four psychological “power levers”: storytelling, connecting with the followership (“he’s one of us”), making the complex simple and “existential confidence”. This last one, “existential confidence”, is about projecting ease with the paradoxes and conundrums of human existence. In this, Mr Trump came across to his followers as a true master. He successfully projected the lapses in his behaviour as evidence that he too struggles with the human condition.
Another of Gardner’s “power levers” was that of connecting with followership. But how could a billionaire be embraced by an impoverished electorate? Part of the answer comes from cultural psychology. Psychologist Geert Hofstede identifies the US as a deeply “individualist” culture with “horizontal” orientation. So, values of individual aspiration and achievement are of paramount importance, combined with the belief that everyone is on a level playing field.
Leadership psychology also suggests, though, that is going to be a problem for Mr Trump. As a candidate, his cultural affinity and “outsider” status make him typical, albeit supersized typical, of his followership.
He is what the psychologist Michael Hogg describes as a “prototypical” leader. But prototypical leaders become disconnected from their followership when no longer one of them and as president of the United States, he won’t be. He will become a politician, like it or not, because that’s what the president is; the heart, not just part, of the Establishment that his followership voted to reject.
Arguably, the capacity to make the complex appear simple is the “power lever” Donald Trump used most effectively during the presidential election.
America faces huge challenges as it adjusts to the 21st century’s global economy. Mr Trump’s action words – “I will”, “It will”, “Clinton is” – and suspicion of complicated argument, furnish proof, to his followers, that he grasps the heart of matters. So why not the global economy too? Well, let’s see.
Greg Fantham is assistant professor of psychology at Heriot-Watt University Dubai Campus
