Mentoring Trump: Volunteers needed

Mr Trump’s tweeting is a little hard to understand. Here is what I think. There can be significant differences between someone with experience as a boss and someone with experience as an elected leader. It doesn’t have to be this way, but the experiences can be very different. A boss may be used to getting his or her way through firing, buying, bullying, or suing. It cannot work in any of these ways for very long when you are elected.

Most folks can develop skills especially if they have a good mentor; someone to explain how things really work and provide examples. If your primary means of communicating is Twitter how difficult can improving your performance be. I will take my mentoring turn first.

Here is an example. Mr. Trump attacks Congressman John Lewis for responding to a question about whether Trump’s selection as President was legitimate. Trump’s response is included below:

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to….

See what I mean. A leader would not respond is this way. Ignoring the issue of an argument by switching to a personal attack completing unrelated to your concern with the position of your peer is not particularly impressive. This seems to be Mr. Trump’s go to move, but the strategy is still the mark of an amateur.

Some alternatives:

Don’t respond at all if what you have to say makes you look thin-skinned and probably having some of the same concerns.

Attack the argument and not the person. If you can challenge the position that the late announcement by Comey followed by the even later “never mind” or the Russian release of the stolen emails had no impact on voters, explain how this would work.

I withdraw my second recommendation. I can think of no way to actually sell this position. I think stay off Twitter makes the most sense.

Your turn. Take a tweet and offer suggestions.

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