Winner takes it all - or do they?

This is not about the release of two new songs from ABBA after nearly 40 years.  Rather it is about “winning” and strangely it was Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Iran nuclear deal that caused me to start thinking about “winning”.

“When I make promises, I keep them” he trumpeted (see what I did there) when he made his announcement on the Iran deal.  Now, previous Mrs Trumps might disagree with that, however for Trump himself doing what he said he would do means he has “won”.

Trump likes winning and certainly believes he is a winner as the numerous books he has written/had written for him will testify.  Titles like “Think like a Champion” and “Think Big and Kick Ass in Business Life” are not for the faint hearted.  When it comes to dealing with any kind of conflict with his own views his style is right at the “confrontational” end of the scale.  Whilst this was OK for the rest of us when confined to his business dealings (as long as we weren’t involved) it is causing a lot of concern now he is President of the USA.

There are some useful insights into this from the work of Kenneth Thomas, a leading expert on motivation at work and related matters, one of which is “conflict resolution”.  He identified five conflict resolution approaches and that using the approach that was most suited for the particular situation would produce the best result for all involved.  However in practice most people habitually use a limited number of approaches (usually just one) so it is not surprising that success in resolving conflicts is so often hard work.  A simpler derivative of Thomas’s five approaches which many of us may be more familiar with are:

Win/Lose – Lose/Win – Lose/Lose – Win/Win

Clearly Trump favours Win/Lose.  But the funny thing is that this confrontational approach is often actually what is needed to get other parties to recognise that there is a problem and it is a problem for them so maybe we had better start the argument.  This is what Trump has done with Iran and with North Korea.  With Iran we will have to see what happens next but with North Korea, so far at any rate, a remarkable turnaround has apparently been achieved.  It is still early days but just maybe Kim Jong-Un has worked out that he can now go for win/win, even if it means giving up his nukes, because then he can go down in history as the man who brought peace to the Korean Peninsula.  This would do more to cement his regime in power for the foreseeable future than any sabre rattling of the kind he has indulged in so far.

So my “deep thought” is does Trump actually know what he is doing and can he be flexible in matching his approach to the developing situation?  If he does and he can then we just may be in for some pleasant surprises.  If he doesn’t and therefore won’t then – oh dear!  The tragic events on the Israeli Palestinian border on the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem are the direct result of an approach based solely on win/lose.

https://www.z-to-a.com/

http://www.changeworld.co.uk/

http://www.teamofequals.co.uk/