PRACTICE OPTIMIZATION FOR PROFESSIONALS
  • Home
    • Video >
      • The Alignment Doctrine
    • Communication >
      • Elements >
        • The Golden Rule
        • The Five Essential Qualities
        • The Five Essential Questions
        • The Five Step Cycle
        • The Ten Commandments
        • The Ten Sources of Authority
      • Modules >
        • Modules A-M >
          • Avoiding amateurism
          • Change: Understanding It, Facing It, Profiting From It
          • Communication for Long Term Relationship
          • Communications Horror Stories
          • Communications that blow up in your face
          • Communicating toward success
          • Earning the Right to Be Heard
          • Gerunds, Mesolects and Other Arcane Terms of Art
          • Having a Toad Day
          • Healthy Fear
          • Hippos and Raccoons-- Deadly Underestimation
          • How I Moved From Doing What I Liked to Doing What I Loved
          • How to Be on the Same Wavelength as Your Audience
          • How to Pick Up a Porcupine-- Dealing With Difficult People
          • Key of Trust
          • Manipulation
          • Mastering the Technologies
          • Mining the Subconscious
        • Modules N-Z >
          • Quick and Dirty-- the 80/20 Rule
          • Sabotaging Your Message
          • Scar Tissue
          • Secrets of the Druids
          • Some Specific Approaches to Communications
          • Specific audiences
          • Symbolism-- the Heart of the Communicative Process
          • Talking to Yourself and Why You Should Do It
          • The Difference Between Leadership and Management
          • The Eyes Eat First
          • The Eyes Have It
          • The Lizard Within-- What Your Reptilian Brain Makes You Do
          • The Media of Communication
          • The Respect Deficit
          • The Secret of Authenticity
          • Thinking About the Kinds of English
          • Websites, Blogs and Newsletters
          • When you don't have time to plan
          • When You'd Rather Shoot Yourself
          • Who's your audience? Targeted communication.
      • About us >
        • Karen Bowley
  • Norman Bowley
  • FREE
  • Services
    • Keynote Speaking
    • Training
    • Coaching
    • Troubleshooting
    • Consulting
    • Writing >
      • Ghost Writing
      • Transitional Ghost Writing
  • Testimonials
  • Blog

​Donald Trump: Communication Wizard?

4/1/2018

1 Comment

 
What???!!! How can Mr. Covfefe even qualify? Isn’t he the worst thing that has happened to the English Language since 1066? Well, yes and no. (How did you guess I used to be a lawyer?) 

Donald Trump is many things. As a practitioner of good English, he’s an utter disaster. But as a shuck-and-jive artist (my language is intentional) he has no equal. As such, he is still a master communicator, in a very narrow sense. As students of communication we would do well to consider his successes. If you only learn from people you like, you’ll miss a lot. Follow me, then...

There are at least five things at which he excels. 

First, he is a master of body language. When he hovered behind Hillary like a cloud of sewer gas he was very intentional. It was pure Hollywood. Feet braced, thumbs hooked in his belt and putting on his best Dirty Harry face, he was the Sheriff about to “lock up Crooked Hillary”. He knew that most of us found his antics boorish and abhorrent, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t performing for us. He was performing for his base, and they ate it up.

Which leads us to our second point: he understands his audience and speaks directly into their hearts. They aren’t concerned with theories or lessons, they just want some understanding, some love, and some protection. Hillary called them “deplorable”, but he sings them a love song. Does he really care about them? Who knows, but they think he does, and that’s all that matters.

Third, he has mastered the verbal devices of the shady used-car guy. Think Robin Williams' Cadillac Man, except not funny. Creepy and annoying, perhaps, but for the right crowd, completely effective. “Everybody else has lied to you, folks, but I’m telling it like it is.” Listen to him stop, start, dodge and weave, leaving gaps for you to fill in as you want to hear. He tosses around “Believe me!” and “by the way” and he gulls you into his confidence. It’s not the content, it’s the rhythm. P.T. Barnum would be proud. 

Fourth, he tweets to divert attention. This is straight out of Magic 101. While we snicker at “covfefe” and are outraged by his childish rants, our eye is entirely off the ball while he is changing the legal landscape of America by executive order. Right before our eyes, if we were watching, which we’re not.

But here’s number five, and the key: he knows how to count. He understands that about forty percent of voting Americans want (and perhaps need) to hear what he is saying, be it bashing the NFL or China or the Deep State, and he continues to tell them what they want to hear. That is the true genius of Donald Trump. For any politician or marketer, 40% bedrock ain’t bad. Are you treating your bedrock right?

Am I suggesting, dear scholar of communication, that you fully emulate the Donald? Heaven forbid. But there are lessons to be learned everywhere, even from the Donald. 

(For those readers who are going to ask, “Yeah, but what about Hillary?” let me save you the trouble-- Hillary was a communication and political disaster. But that’s for next Friday.)
1 Comment
Jack link
26/5/2022 05:02:14

Thiis is a great post

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Norman Bowley teaches the Alignment Doctrine and the Client Code-- secrets to building the professional practice you and your clients deserve.

    Archives

    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    February 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
    • Video >
      • The Alignment Doctrine
    • Communication >
      • Elements >
        • The Golden Rule
        • The Five Essential Qualities
        • The Five Essential Questions
        • The Five Step Cycle
        • The Ten Commandments
        • The Ten Sources of Authority
      • Modules >
        • Modules A-M >
          • Avoiding amateurism
          • Change: Understanding It, Facing It, Profiting From It
          • Communication for Long Term Relationship
          • Communications Horror Stories
          • Communications that blow up in your face
          • Communicating toward success
          • Earning the Right to Be Heard
          • Gerunds, Mesolects and Other Arcane Terms of Art
          • Having a Toad Day
          • Healthy Fear
          • Hippos and Raccoons-- Deadly Underestimation
          • How I Moved From Doing What I Liked to Doing What I Loved
          • How to Be on the Same Wavelength as Your Audience
          • How to Pick Up a Porcupine-- Dealing With Difficult People
          • Key of Trust
          • Manipulation
          • Mastering the Technologies
          • Mining the Subconscious
        • Modules N-Z >
          • Quick and Dirty-- the 80/20 Rule
          • Sabotaging Your Message
          • Scar Tissue
          • Secrets of the Druids
          • Some Specific Approaches to Communications
          • Specific audiences
          • Symbolism-- the Heart of the Communicative Process
          • Talking to Yourself and Why You Should Do It
          • The Difference Between Leadership and Management
          • The Eyes Eat First
          • The Eyes Have It
          • The Lizard Within-- What Your Reptilian Brain Makes You Do
          • The Media of Communication
          • The Respect Deficit
          • The Secret of Authenticity
          • Thinking About the Kinds of English
          • Websites, Blogs and Newsletters
          • When you don't have time to plan
          • When You'd Rather Shoot Yourself
          • Who's your audience? Targeted communication.
      • About us >
        • Karen Bowley
  • Norman Bowley
  • FREE
  • Services
    • Keynote Speaking
    • Training
    • Coaching
    • Troubleshooting
    • Consulting
    • Writing >
      • Ghost Writing
      • Transitional Ghost Writing
  • Testimonials
  • Blog