Donald Trump has effectively gone from managing his family-owned real estate company — and his own career in show business — to running the executive branch of the United States.
That's a pretty big leap.
Business Insider asked four management experts to weigh in on Trump's management style.
They didn't discuss his politics — just his performance as the leader of the executive branch of government.
Here's what they had to say:
SEE ALSO: A look inside Donald Trump's Manhattan office
He's an aggressive negotiator
Trump frequently touts being able to make deals as one of his greatest management strengths.
His ghost-written best-seller "The Art of the Deal," highlighted some of his aggressive negotiation strategies, like being prepared to alienate people and blur the truth in order to get what you want (although the book also acknowledged that the best deals allow both parties walk away satisfied).
Trump once summed up his mantra on negotiating to Business Insider: "It's give-and-take. But it's gotta be mostly take. Because you can't give. You gotta mostly take."
Christine Porath, a professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and co-author of "The Cost of Bad Behavior," told Business Insider that such a tactic can only go so far. She said that managers must often take an assertive stance in negotiations, but a pattern of antagonism can wear thin.
"It may be very appropriate for Trump or any other leader to use that style of negotiation, if the issue's very important to us or if he's up against someone with that style, because you don't want to get steamrolled," she said. "Typically, if there's a pattern of that style, people will not want to work with you. You're losing out on the relationship or the long-term gain of being able to collaborate with a person, group, or country."
"Friend or Foe" co-author and Wharton professor Maurice Schweitzer said that reports of squabbles with Australia, Mexico, and the EU might be a sign that Trump's style is not effective for dealing with long-term allies.
"I would say the foundations for negotiation require careful attention," Schweitzer said. "This isn't to say you can't bring down a heavy hammer and exploit leverage that you have. You can do that in a short-term way that extracts surplus, but, in the long run, it's not an effective strategy."
His co-author, Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky, agreed that a more nuanced approach is usually needed when hashing out any sort of deal.
"The lighter your touch, the less people think they're being pushed by you, the more likely to think that something is of their own volition, the more likely they are to own it and embrace it," he said.
He has business management experience
Porath said that Trump's business experience is his biggest strength when it comes to tackling the challenge of managing the executive branch. Trump has had a hand in his family's real estate business since he was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania.
"He has a lot of experiences to draw from," Porath said. "It's experience with having to deal with different parties to get deals done. For example, I imagine that with his real estate dealings, you have to work with a lot of people, whether to buy the property and or to make changes and or to get things approved."
He's a top-down manager
As president, Trump must navigate an increasingly uncertain world. Escalating tensions with North Korea, repealing and replacing Obamacare, and navigating relations with the Kremlin are just some of the challenges on the table.
MIT Sloan School of Management professor Hal Gregersen said he would characterize Trump as a "top-down" or "command-and-control" manager. He said that such leaders tend to work best in "predictable and certain" atmospheres.
"If we look at the opposite extreme, where it's unclear what to do or it's even unclear what to pay attention to, a top-down, command-control approach to leadership can become can become an extremely dangerous Achilles heel for any leader," he said.
Paraphrasing former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Gregersen said that failing to recognize "unknown unknowns," or unanticipated risks, will harm leaders and organizations in the long run.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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