What We Don’t Get About Trump’s War On The FBI
We’ve been talking with a lot of people we know, and many of us have shared a similar situation in our professional lives: We’ve been brought in as an “outsider” to shake things up in companies where there had been a popular “insider” many employees would’ve preferred for the job.
What did almost all of us do in that situation? Sat everybody down and said “let’s talk about the elephant in the room”, listened as people aired their concerns and then said “I’m going to work hard for you to prove to you that I was the right choice.”
Never did any of us think for a second the correct approach was to immediately start telling our employees they are crap, berating their lack of loyalty to us, compiling a list of our own grievances, whining about how everybody was being unfair to us, and gloating about how we got the job, and that other person didn’t.
And through that, we gained at least some measure of respect that was completely necessary in order to make that workplace work. (Even with that, we did occasionally have to let people go who were arrogant, or would not get on board with any changes we wanted to make. But that was by far the exception).
That’s because we believe loyalty grows out of respect. And so do most of our friends. To borrow an analogy from Mitch Landrieu, “punching people in the face” and then ordering them to follow you blindly does not breed loyalty.
And with Trump, this isn’t just some department of some company. It’s the F.B.I.
Let’s say half the people in the F.B.I. voted for Hillary (just because half the people in the country did). Let’s say an agent texted some dumb things. How is it productive to attack everybody in the bureau? Because it plays well with your base? And because you know the F.B.I. is proud enough of its professionalism they’ll do their jobs anyway? Could be.
Then again, we didn’t become President of the United States. So maybe Trump’s approach is better…
(This story originally appeared in “The Chaos Report” Newsletter. Subscribe at https://thechaosreport.com/subscribe/?scr=Medium)
