I have long been disappointed in the failure of the leadership industry clearly and consistently to distinguish between “management” and “leadership.”* Several experts have defined the words, ostensibly clarifying the differences between them, but none of their efforts have stuck. Moreover, institutions of higher education have continued to conflate and confuse “management” and “leadership” – to the point where mostly they are used interchangeably, as if they were synonymous, which they are not.
Whenever distinctions between “management” and “leadership,” the latter has usually been more highly valued – “leaders” favored over “managers.” For example, leadership expert Warren Bennis wrote that, “the manager administers, the leader innovates; the manager is a copy, the leader is an original; the manager maintains, the leader develops;” and so on.**
The issue – leadership versus management – came to mind again recently with so much attention on the Republican National Convention and on Donald Trump’s transformation of the Republican Party. In just a few years it became a MAGA party, a party of the right not the center, no longer the party of Ronald Reagan, now the one of Trump. In thrall to him and him alone. Despite his deeply flawed character and his multiple malfeasances, during the Republican National Convention Trump was an object of admiration, even veneration.
Which raises the question of how he rose from the ashes of electoral defeat, the subsequent insurrection, and a string of legal and financial setbacks. Rose to become King of the Republicans, and plausibly elected American President for a second time. The answer lies in Trump’s exceptional leadership – and in Trump’s excellent management.
While his leadership skills have gotten relentless attention, his management skills have not. We seem to assume Trump’s powers are so exceptional that his current kingship was almost to be expected. But it was not. It was the entirely unanticipated outcome of his management of small groups of people composed of his closest aides and advisors, and his brain trust. The word “management” then should be applied to Trump’s ability, largely behind the scenes, to assemble a team that has done a remarkably good job of resurrecting a man presumed by many if not most to be politically dead.
After his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Trump hired a familiar operative, Susie Wiles, to oversee his political committee. She in turn built a team that included, for example, Chris LaCivita, a skilled political veteran prepared to dedicate himself wholly and completely to getting Trump back in the political mix. To make him for the third time, despite all his baggage, a viable presidential candidate.
Once this was accomplished, the party line, the Trump party line as opposed to the previous Republican party line, prevailed at every turn. This was evidenced before and during the Convention, notably as it pertained to Trump’s determination completely to control the party platform.
The task was left to a small group of fiercely committed Trump loyalists. The New York Times: “The Trump campaign decided it would go to every delegation in the country to handpick the people who would represent the campaign on committees for rules, credentials and the party platform. It was an enormous organizational exercise overseen by James Blair, the political director of the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. A small team was set up to draft the platform. A speechwriter, Vince Haley, took the lead. There were only a handful of people on a list of those receiving the text.”
Once the text was drafted, Trump’s closest advisers reviewed it, cut it, and confirmed it conformed to his style and syntax. At that point Trump made his final edits. Not a smidgeon of work was left to be done at the convention itself. The thousands of delegates, a good number of whom were anticipating participating in crafting the platform, found there was nothing left for them to do. Everything had been done – so far as the party platform was concerned every “I” had already been dotted and “T” already crossed.
Is this highly effective leadership? Or highly effective management? Debatable, I suppose, especially since the words mean different things to different people. Still, seems clear that a small band of highly skilled and dedicated loyalists does not require superior leadership to make it a well-oiled machine. What it does require is superior management. In this case it required 1) Trump’s keeping his eye on the prize; 2) Trump’s recognizing that to win the prize work had to be done; and 3) Trump’s understanding that this work required him to recruit a small number of people who were exceptionally smart and exceptionally committed to his cause – his personal, political cause.
To his credit then, Trump has succeeded not only in leading his enormous, enthusiastic base. He similarly succeeded in managing a small group of activists and administrators who excel at sculpting a world in his image.
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*For an extended discussion of this issue see Barbara Kellerman, Professionalizing Leadership (Oxford University Press, 2018).
** Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader (Perseus, originally published in 1989).