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Reflections on the final Presidential Debate

Don’t be a Trump: Reflections on the final Presidential Debate

By Ben Houghton, CEO, Noggin

The final debate of the 2016 presidential election took place last week, the last in the series following two other general election debates, nine Democratic primary debates, and 12 Republican primary debates.

This last presidential debate brought to light a range of thought-provoking behaviours noticeable in both candidates running for President of the United States.

Reflecting on Donald Trump’s behaviours, we thought he held it together well and did a good job of engaging the audience in the first 30 minutes, however, shortly after this he started to lose his calm and composure.

Here at Noggin, part of what we do is help leaders understand the impact they have on others and why we can get pushed into losing our cool.

Our leadership development processes help to deliver a tangible shift in self-awareness and behavioural flexibility for anyone who leads people, giving people leaders more choice in how they think, communicate and behave. It delivers the self-awareness and leadership techniques needed to impact positively on those around you, which is of course is what Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton were aiming to do.

When it comes to a leader having a positive impact, there is a fine line between getting it right and getting it wrong. Here we explore this in the context Donald Trump’s behaviours in the final presidential debate.

Green and Red Behaviours

When we talk about the distinction between getting it right and getting it wrong we call this ‘dialling up Green’ behaviours and ‘dialling down Red’ behaviours.

Whilst there is a fine line, one thing we are sure of is that when a person is in an unresourceful state their behaviours will be driven into the red, or the ‘Trump zone’ as we might begin to call it.

We have developed our own diagnostic tool that measures how often a leader strays into the red. Here are some examples of what it measures:

“Hard edged”…… “Transactional…” ……“Robotic”….. “Overdramatic”…….”

“Critical”…… “Apathetic”…… “Overbearing”….. “Shifty”…….. “Needy….” …..“Cold”…….

“Sometimes irrelevant “…… “Needs to be centre of attention”…….. “Lectures”……

“Patronising”…. “Oversimplifies…..” “Impersonal”……. “Cagey”……..

In contrast, here are some examples of Green behaviours:

“Highly engaged”…… “Inspirational presence”…… “Highly influential”…… “Honest”……

“Open”…… “Fully transparent”…… “Motivational”…… “Enthusiastic”……

“Encourages depth”……“Clear intentions”…… “Decisive”……

“Stretches the group”…… “Highly facilitative”…… “Natural”…… “Authentic”……

Over the course of the three debates, we thought that Donald Trump demonstrated quite a few of the reds rather than the greens, don’t you? Particularly during the final debate, Trump showed himself to be easily riled up by Clinton’s comments and reacted in a way that suggested that, under pressure, his behaviours would frequently stray into the red.

The Trump Zone

What drives people into their ‘Trump zone’? I hear you ask. Here are our thoughts…

“A trip into the red is typically a pre-logical response triggered by a primal fear.”

People fear feeling insignificant or ignored, people fear feeling incapable or humiliated, and people fear feeling rejected or disliked.

These fears are primal and drive our needs from others. If they get triggered for some (mostly unconscious) reason, we start to cross the line into the red or ‘Trump zone’.

As it becomes clearer that Donald Trump is likely to be the unsuccessful candidate, one or all of these primal fears might be driving his state and behaviours into the red.

In contrast, Hilary stayed as cool and as calm as her outfit.

If you ever fancy finding out how often people encounter you straying into the red, or more positively how often you stay in the green, check out our diagnostic – it’s called “Catalyst”. You can find more information here.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ben Houghton .