--- title: 39 Corporate Executives Were Asked to Describe President Trump's Management Style, and Their Answers Were Pretty Brutal description: A new CNBC survey asked CFOs to describe President Donald Trump's management style, and the most popular words were chaotic, erratic, reckless, and unpredictable. authors: - name: Brad Tuttle role: Senior Editor url: https://money.com/author/brad-tuttle/ bio: Brad Tuttle is a former senior editor at Money with over 10 years’ experience covering a vast number of personal finance topics, including careers, cars, travel, budgeting, investing, insurance, credit cards, consumer psychology, real estate, banking, and shopping and deals. education: Columbia University School of Journalism, MS at_money_since: 2014 articles: 366 covers: - Economy and Politics - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Pets - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology social: - https://twitter.com/bradrtuttle - https://linkedin.com/in/brad-tuttle-834b225 former_staff: true published: '2017-06-23T15:43:49.000Z' modified: '2024-05-16T12:31:24.000Z' section: Economy and Politics tags: - business leaders - Executives - leadership - trump word_count: 451 canonical: https://money.com/president-donald-trump-leadership-management-style/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![US-POLITICS-TRUMP-CABINET](https://img.money.com/2017/06/trumpmanagementcnbc-em-695237882.jpg) *President Donald Trump during a cabinet meeting at the White House in June.* Donald Trump ran for president based on his success as a leader in the business world. So what do the chief financial officers of some of the world's largest companies think about President Trump's management style? Roughly six months into Trump's presidency, [CNBC posed just this question](http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/cfos-react-to-trumps-management-style-and-its-not-pretty-survey.html) to its [Global CFO Council](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/08/cnbc-global-cfo-council.html), which includes executives from companies such as AT&T, BNP Paribas, Cisco, Clorox, DuPont, Facebook, Ford, Levi Strauss, Marriott, MasterCard, Unilever, and United Airlines. Thirty-nine CFOs completed the anonymous survey, and of the 35 that answered the question asking them to describe Trump's management style in a single word, only four responses could be construed as positive. They were "Business-style," "Directive," "Fluid," and "Unconventional." (Yes, the latter two aren't necessarily positive, but we're giving him the benefit of the doubt.) The rest of the responses trash Trump as a manager. The most popular answer, mentioned by four CFOs, was "Chaotic," and "Chaos" was named once separately as well. Three other words got two responses apiece: "Erratic," "Reckless," and "Unpredictable." Among the other terms used to describe Trump's management as president: "Arrogant" "Authoritarian" "Clueless" "Confusing" "Dictatorial" "Hubristic" "Incompetent" "Narcissistic" "Self-absorbed" "Terrible" "There are no words" The executives who participated in the survey are also growing less optimistic that Trump can follow through on the promises he made as a presidential candidate. The CFOs' confidence fell significantly between February and June when asked about Trump's ability to repeal and replace Obamacare, begin building a wall along the Mexican border, launch a large infrastructure plan, and enact corporate and personal tax reform by the end of 2017. For example, in February, when a similar survey was conducted, the CFOs were 59% confident that corporate tax reform would be law by the end of the year. By June, the CFOs' confidence level fell to 44% on the issue. Many organization and management experts have been unimpressed with Trump's leadership style from the beginning. After the [*New York Times*](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/business/donald-trump-management-style.html) consulted several such experts a few weeks into Trump's presidency, this was the consensus opinion: > Thus far, the Trump administration is a textbook case of how not to run a complex organization like the executive branch. On the other hand, 100 days into the Trump presidency, [BusinessInsider.com](http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-management-style-2017-3/#-1) asked four management experts to weigh in on how he was doing as a leader, and they had some good things to say. They characterized President Trump as an aggressive negotiator who has lots of energy and projects confidence. Yet one of the experts, Columbia Business School professor [Adam Galinsky](http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/cbs-directory/detail/ag2514), offered this caveat on how confidence translates to leadership: "I think we are attracted to confidence, but I think eventually that confidence has to be connected to actual performance." ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/president-donald-trump-leadership-management-style/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Economy and Politics", "item": "https://money.com/economy-and-politics/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Politics", "item": "https://money.com/politics/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "39 Corporate Executives Were Asked to Describe President Trump's Management Style, and Their Answers Were Pretty Brutal" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/president-donald-trump-leadership-management-style/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/president-donald-trump-leadership-management-style/", "name": "39 Corporate Executives Were Asked to Describe President Trump's Management Style, and Their Answers Were Pretty Brutal", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2017-06-23T15:43:49.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/president-donald-trump-leadership-management-style/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/president-donald-trump-leadership-management-style/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-05-16T12:31:24.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "39 Corporate Executives Were Asked to Describe President Trump's Management Style, and Their Answers Were Pretty Brutal", "articleSection": "Economy and Politics", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2017/06/trumpmanagementcnbc-em-695237882.jpg", "width": 5568, "height": 3712, "caption": "US-POLITICS-TRUMP-CABINET" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Brad Tuttle", "url": "https://money.com/author/brad-tuttle/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/brad-tuttle/#author", "description": "Brad Tuttle is a former senior editor at Money with over 10 years’ experience covering a vast number of personal finance topics, including careers, cars, travel, budgeting, investing, insurance, credit cards, consumer psychology, real estate, banking, and shopping and deals.\r\n\r\n", "image": "https://img.money.com/2014/01/Brad-Tuttle.png?w=226&h=247&crop=1", "alumniOf": "Columbia University School of Journalism, MS", "sameAs": [ "https://twitter.com/bradrtuttle", "https://linkedin.com/in/brad-tuttle-834b225" ] } ], "publisher": "https://money.com/#organization", "datePublished": "2017-06-23T15:43:49.000Z", "description": "A new CNBC survey asked CFOs to describe President Donald Trump's management style, and the most popular words were chaotic, erratic, reckless, and unpredictable.", "abstract": "A new CNBC survey asked CFOs to describe President Donald Trump's management style, and the most popular words were chaotic, erratic, reckless, and unpredictable.", "@id": "https://money.com/president-donald-trump-leadership-management-style/", "inLanguage": "en-US", "dateModified": "2024-05-16T12:31:24.000Z", "wordCount": 451, "keywords": [ "business leaders", "Executives", "leadership", "trump" ], "about": [ { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Political economy", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy" ] }, { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Politics", "sameAs": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics" ] } ] } ] } ```