There’s no denying that if you wake up one day and decide you want to run the country, you’ve got to be at least a little narcissistic.
Thanks to social media platforms like Twitter, we sometimes get a glimpse into the unfiltered minds of the elite we’re not afforded when listening to a scripted speech.
Don’t get me wrong, we all know most leaders don’t tweet themselves, they have important things to do like legalise same-sex marriage and stop climate change killing us all, right Malcolm? But we all know who I’m talking about when I refer to rogue tweeting.
Some super smart researchers decided that because of this, they should analyse Trump’s 35,000 tweets and what the implications of those are for political leadership and publish a study about it in Springer’s journal Small Business Economics.
They found his entrepreneur story checked out – he showed strong features of a so-called ‘Schumpeterian personality’ that is said to be typical of successful entrepreneurs.
This means he’s creative, change-orientated, competitive and rule-breaking – can’t argue that.
It’s not all good though, the analysis also indicated Trump has neurotic tendencies, and experiences underlying low well-being.
“These traits are rather untypical for entrepreneurs since working as an entrepreneur may not only require emotional stability and optimism but also be able to increase happiness due to procedural utility,” explains one of the researchers Obschonka.
He added that neuroticism isn’t necessarily all bad, it can also stimulate competitiveness.
“Maybe this high neuroticism is a major motivator to succeed in Trump’s entrepreneurial projects in his business life, but also in his role as political leader,” speculated another researcher Fisch.
“If social distinction is a core principle of the entrepreneurial personality, then we clearly see this principle reflected in his unusual personality profile,” says Fisch. “Many experts agree that really successful entrepreneurs not only dare to be different – they are different.”
This is all well and good if Trump had stayed in the entrepreneur game but what do the results mean in terms of leading the free world?
They’re not sure. The researchers stress leading a company is very different to leading a country, which sounds obvious but judging by the amount of people who voted for him because he “successfully” built an empire, the distinction needs to be made.
The researchers are also unsure whether political leaders with an extremely entrepreneurial personalities, like Trump, can only act strictly entrepreneurially in their high-responsible role.
