In January 2024, people, some people anyway, took a hissy fit when the CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, had the temerity – or maybe it was the foresight – publicly to praise Donald Trump. Dimon did not say Trump walked on water, but he did applaud some of Trump’s positions such as on, for example, trade and immigration.
A year later the tide has turned. Seems America’s CEOs – including some of the nation’s most powerful, who previously spoke against Trump – cannot line up fast enough behind the American president. Either proactively or reactively many of America’s most prominent chief executive officers are bending the knee to – sucking up to – the man at the Resolute Desk. Elon Musk is, of course, an exception to this general rule. But he is alone in his dispensation.
Their subservience has been in evidence since the day after the November election. No time for grass to grow under their feet – such was the alacrity with which many leaders of America’s biggest businesses rushed to make peace with the president elect. Most visibly tech leaders including Meta’s CEO, Google’s CEO, and Amazon’s founder, whose companies contributed handsomely to the inaugural festivities and who promptly were rewarded with box seats at the inaugural ceremony. As they saw it, their task was to make clear to the Big Man that whatever their objections to him in the past, they were out the window.
Their subservience was in evidence again this week. Leaders like Bezos and Zuckerberg stood by and silently watched as President Trump withdrew from or in some cases dismantled initiatives that were aimed at slowing climate change – an issue on which in the not distant past they were at the forefront.
In my book, Bad Leadership, I identified seven different types of bad leadership. One of these was Insular Leadership which I defined this way: The leader and at least some followers minimize or disregard the health and welfare of “the other” – that is, of those outside the group or organization for which they are directly responsible.
I grant that dual loyalties present corporate leaders with a dilemma. Is the first loyalty of a chief executive officer to their shareholders, their board, their employees? Other obvious stakeholders? Or is it, instead, to the public at large, in this case a public that obviously would benefit from climate change that is somewhat controlled as opposed to entirely uncontrolled?
The track record of business leaders who collaborate meekly and mutely with political leaders is not good. More precisely, mixing profits and politics can be good for them personally and professionally and, in fairness, for the companies for which they are responsible. But if the relationship is too close – corporate leaders too dependent on political leaders – the outcomes for everyone else are much more likely to be bad than good. Sometimes even very bad or very, very bad.