“Too Much and Never Enough,” what can we learn from Trump about reputation management?

Today, I'm going to talk about America and how one man can change the reputation of a country. For those of you that haven't seen the news, Mary L. Trump, the niece of President Trump has just published a new book entitled Too Much and Never

How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. Apparently, it's already sold out on Amazon, and it hasn't been printed yet and will be delivered in four weeks' time. So, how did we get to a stage where one man is dominating the headlines about a whole country when, during the fourth of July, this should be a time of celebration? I have a lot of good friends that I love and respect in America from my time living there, so I'm sending them a shout out. From a public relations point of view, the world of Donald Trump and his impact on America and the reputation of America can teach us a lot of lessons about how we can manage our own PR for our own company, or if there are any world leaders out there, for your home country. A recent survey in 2018 by the Pew Research Center out of Washington DC found that 70% of respondents had no confidence in the Trump leadership. Even though America's image has declined since Trump's election, through surveying 25 nations, they found that the US still receives positive remarks. I would argue that this is because of the good work done over the last 200+ years by American people, American companies, and some presidents to build the reputation of America as being "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Many people in America, of course, believe in this American dream. The American dream, if you like, could be considered one of the greatest public relations exercises of all times. It was actually started in the 1600s, and it was used by those in Europe, predominantly landowners and the wealthy classes attempting to get immigrants to leave Europe, to settle in what was, at the time, an unknown land, probably of savagery and of certain death for a large number of people. It was this idea that one could escape even indentured servitude in Europe and get a free pass, and even some free land for those that went to Virginia, for example, under the King Charles grant, or with companies that were sponsoring them to go, or in the case of the pilgrims to the northeast, the idea of political freedom. I studied American Studies and I have a degree in that subject so, personally, I have had a long and loving relationship with the country and the philosophy. But what's going wrong now is that the outside world is finding that foreign policy over the last decade and a half hasn't really been considering world affairs, but more its own affairs. This started with the Bushes and the adventures in the Middle East, and it came back, according to the Pew Research Center, during Obama's administration, but under Trump and his America First policy, America has been seen to be walking away from many of its old traditional allies and from some of the global commitments that it made, like on climate change. As American watchers and, let's face it, we're all influenced by America as the world's largest economy, it's almost like having a parent, like seeing a father start to hit the booze and womanize and not come home on time. It's the equivalent of losing trust in the leadership of an organization or a company, because one individual that is representing the whole country of America has started to behave in a way that suggests that he doesn't care about anybody else. The sanity check is that there are a number of people inside America who do still care about that, and as what we're seeing in the international media, some of these people have a voice. But because the American presidency is all powerful, and holds the press briefings less and less frequently, the president really has the ear of the world, or now with social media, the eye of the world, so the role of the "CEO" of a country, much like the CEO of a company, is really all encompassing. The upside for those of us that believe that America will regain its place as a leader in many topics, such as on human rights, commerce, and free speech, is that there are people like Former Vice President Joe Biden, who's been talking to Republican Sen. John McCain. McCain had said that they felt that Trump was damaging the international reputation of America. In his book that he co-wrote with Mark Salter entitled The Restless Wave, McCain says that, "Trump seems uninterested in the moral character of world leaders and their regimes. The appearance of toughness or a reality show facsimile of toughness seems to matter more than any of our values. Flattery secures his friendship and criticism is his emnity." The reason I share this is because individuals running companies and countries can make or break a reputation, and many countries are now starting to worry about America's role. What's happening now is that, as we've seen on June 22 in Europe, the European government is turning to China. If we have an organization that we are leading, then where are the clues as to what we should be doing that would get people to follow us and not turn away? Because, in effect, what Trump is doing to the Europeans is he's putting them into the camp of the Chinese. He's creating a much stronger competitor for himself and for America than they otherwise would have been. Interestingly enough, a Pew report earlier on in 2015 said that Americans overwhelmingly think of the Japanese as hardworking, inventive, and honest people with a few negative personal traits. However, the Japanese view Americans as the opposite. In fact, they said that only 25% of Japanese believe that Americans are hardworking. While 19% of Americans view Japanese as selfish, 47% of Japanese say that the Americans are selfish. Of course, we have two cultures there, the Asian culture with the family and society being of more importance than the individual, and the American dream being about the pursuit of individual happiness. These two societies, and all of them in between, are diametrically opposed to one another. What it is showing is that countries and companies are living with preset biases about them, and that the leadership of an organization can enhance or undermine that. There was a survey report in 20 3 from the Organisation for Econ mic Cooperation and Devel pmentm (OECD) which stat d that the Japanese considere the Americans as less indu trious, even though this same esearch showed that the avera e Japanese employee worked 1,735 hours while the average Ameri an worked 1,788 works. In other words, the Americans were putti g in more hours than the Japan se. Bruce spokes, the Direc or of Global Economic Attit des at the Pew Research Cente , at the time, said that stere types such as honesty, inven Mr. Stokes is saying that stereotypes matter, and the iveness, aggression are value that are not rational nor bac ed by data, but these values do matter, because such stereotypes help drive broader attitudes a out policy. I'm quoting the Pew Research partly because it' one of the great American in ependent thinktanks and also, a good friend of mine, Daniel Mor ison, is the Vice President f Communications there and reason that this is important when it comes to public e shares these wonderful repo ts. Dan, if you're reading this, thank you as always for being leading light and one of the Americans that I trust to be a bastion of good leadership and ntegrity. relations is that people will view a country or a company from a position of stereotypes. Now, unless we have someone like Donald Trump, who is going around actively undermining this stereotype, the stereotype of a country, a company, or an organization is quite hard-fixed and hard-wired. It takes a long time to build and also a long time to destroy. So, when we are looking at our own performance and our own leadership, I wonder whether John McCain would be a man who would give us some guidance as to what people are looking for. In his evaluation of Trump, he talks about moral character. This comes back, time and time again, to leadership, that it is the leadership that we show during good and hard times, but more importantly, that leadership is about showing care for others and that taking care of others is important. If we follow that mantra, then we look at our organization and our company as showing leadership by knowing how to create value and take care of those people, whether they are internal, our partners, or our external. There's another stereotype which we have to look at, which is that of where our business sits already in the worldview of economics, for example. I had a conversation today with an accountant and I explained what I do. He said, "Oh, that's great, because if you've got your offices in Asia, you're already set for a great business, because two centuries ago belonged to the British, last century to the Americans, but the next century will belong to Asia, and probably more realistically to China." He has in his mind that Asia is already where the future lies, and that America is not where the future lies. Of course, I agree. What it does is it creates a supportive environment for a business like mine where I'm working to help companies to go overseas through cross-cultural communications and actually get work done in individual countries, as we've done for Ineos. Our companies will live with a stereotype about the kind of company that it is. There will be a stereotype about the kind of leader or people that we are, and that will also impact how people view our company and whether they want to do business with us. There'll be the broader macro aspects of how our company is positioned inside a growing or maturing, or even a declining economy. Independence Day in America is different every year. But as we've seen from the Pew Research, the reputation of America is not the same every Independence Day. Our reputations as business owners and the reputations of our businesses and those of our countries are made or broken by the work that we do for others, more than the work we do for ourselves, which is why America First might have been a great vote-winner, but as the Pew research shows, it's not been a great way to build the reputation of America as a world leader.