Maybe that's exactly the intended result.
I learned a lot about Trump's management style while reading a fascinating account of the coaching methods used by the legendary Herb Brooks when he led the U.S. hockey team to its improbable "Miracle on Ice" gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics.
The similarities between Herb Brooks and Donald Trump are uncanny, and it's worth remembering one story in particular ...
Brooks knew that the key to the team's success was to get them to exceed their own expectations of themselves, and he did it by devising a plan that would drive most of the players to despise him even while they played hard. He wasn't shy about being manipulative with the players, and in one case he enlisted the help of one of the players to play out a "stage act" of sorts that ran for six months in late 1979 while they trained and prepared for the 1980 Olympics.
The player was a guy named Jack O'Callahan, a defenseman on the team who was the toughest and most highly respected player among his teammates dating back to his days as a top collegiate player at Boston University. Brooks knew that he could keep the players motivated even under severe duress if he could keep them inspired by O'Callahan, so he sat down with O'Callahan early in training camp and devised a plan with him.
He basically said to him:
"If I yell at you and berate you and humiliate you and I call you 'O-Cee' (his nickname), then you will know that I'm only doing it to humiliate you in front of your teammates so they'll accept the same hard-ass approach when I do it with THEM. If they see you taking this abuse and using it as motivation to work harder, then they will do the same."
"If I yell at you and berate you and humiliate you and I call you 'Jack,' that means I really want you to correct or improve something that applies only to YOU."
The man was probably nuts, but he was an absolute genius when it came to laying out a plan for reaching a goal -- and executing it to perfection.
I think we are seeing a lot of this unfolding now with President Trump.
I respect your analysis but Trump’s personnel style still rubs me the wrong way.