The B-School Professor & Donald Trump

WHEN REPUBLICANS DISCOUNTED TRUMP, SONNENFELD TOLD THEM NOT TO COUNT HIM OUT

Some 12 months ago, when many Republican leaders were writing off Trump, not thinking he could ever win, Sonnenfeld found himself defending the man. At a party at Larry Kudlow’s home, recalls the professor, Republican financial backers and strategists were diminishing Trump’s credibility as a candidate.

“That motivated me to write an article which got a fair bit of attention, entitled  “Why Dump Trump Will Fail,” Sonnenfeld says. “Immodestly, this piece prophetically outlined the roots of Trump’s strength in the American psyche. I came to understand it as I challenged it. Some critics were and are so hostile to Trump that they do not understand that the 50% of the nation that backs him is not entirely composed of the dislocated and unemployed or nativists, racists, and misogynists.

“There are surely disenchanted and hostile elements among the supporters, but there is something else I saw in the surprising enthusiasm for ‘The Apprentice’ which carried over into this campaign. In short, like Groucho Marx, Trump punctures pomposity. Unlike the long celebrated 11^th Commandment of Ronald Reagan, he does and did go after immediate partisan rivals.”

HELPING TO VANQUISH A TRUMP RIVAL IN THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY

In fact, when Carly Fiorina was a rival of Trump’s during the Republican primaries, it was Sonnenfeld who help to derail her by pointing out what a dismal failure she was as CEO of Hewlett Packard. Trump gleefully argued the same, citing Sonnenfeld’s acerbic critique of Fiorina’s five-year run as chief executive during which the company lost half its market value.

Later in the fall, Sonnenfeld took the left-of-center political economist from Yale, Jacob Hacker, author of Winner-Take-All Politics and American Amnesia, for a constructive confrontation at Trump’s office. “Trump was surprisingly open and eager to learn and debate campaign finance reform, healthcare reform, tax reform,” Sonnenfeld says.

Sonnenfeld is not the only leadership professor to have a perspective on Trump. Jeffrey Pfeffer, another well-known leadership scholar at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, has also had a somewhat contrarian opinion on Trump. Pfeffer has said that while some may disapprove of Trump’s self-promotion, disdain for facts, and unapologetic persona, these are surprisingly common leadership qualities  (see Everything We Bash Donald Trump For Is Actually What We Seek In Leaders). “Trump actually embodies many of the leadership qualities that cause people to succeed — albeit they are pretty much the opposite of what leadership experts tout,” Pfeffer wrote.

So who will the professor vote for? Sonnenfeld isn’t saying, but he notes that for the past 26 years he has been a friend of Hillary Clinton’s. He also considers Trump a friend for at least the past 10 years — ever since his attack on “The Apprentice.” “I’m a nonpartisan scholar with a serious interest in understanding a wide variety of leadership styles and how they connect with different sets of constituents,” Sonnenfeld says.

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