Comparative Leadership Study: Trump's and Obama's Presidential Styles

This report provides a comparative analysis of the leadership styles of former U.S. President Barack Obama and current President Donald Trump. It delves into their backgrounds, leadership styles, ethical considerations, power dynamics, and communication methods. The report highlights Obama's transformational leadership, emphasizing his motivational approach and ability to connect with diverse audiences, contrasting this with Trump's autocratic tendencies, characterized by dominance and a focus on personal traits. The analysis further explores the ethical dimensions of their presidencies, examining how their personalities and values influenced policy decisions and their approaches to domestic and international affairs. The study also investigates their respective uses of power, with Obama adhering to constitutional principles and international law, while Trump's actions often challenged established norms. Finally, the report examines their communication strategies, including the use of social media and public speeches, to assess their influence on the public and their ability to garner support. Overall, the report concludes that Obama exhibited more robust leadership qualities compared to Trump, based on the criteria analyzed.

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COMPARING LEADERSHIP QUALITY BETWEEN TRUMP AND OBAMA
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1COMPARING LEADERSHIP QUALITY BETWEEN TRUMP AND OBAMA
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Discussion....................................................................................................................................2
Background..................................................................................................................................2
Style of Leadership......................................................................................................................3
Ethics and Personalities...............................................................................................................4
Power type...................................................................................................................................5
Method of communication...........................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Reference.........................................................................................................................................9

2COMPARING LEADERSHIP QUALITY BETWEEN TRUMP AND OBAMA
Introduction
President is referred as the head of the country and the first person of the state. In
countries like USA where the constitutional set up makes the President most powerful, it enables
the President to lead the country from the front (Presidents, 2018). In response to that the role
and leadership quality of US Presidents are very relevant and imperative to study. The present
discussion encircles a comparative study between the former President Barack Obama and the
current Head of the State Donald Trump. The primary focus of the report is to address the
leadership quality of both the Presidents and make an assessment by analysing different traits of
leadership.
Discussion
Background
The United States of America has a federal set up where all the powers of legislative,
executive and judiciary are vested in the hands of President, Senate and federal courts. As a
reason of that, President of US enjoys a dynamic power and it requires a serious leadership
quality for the President. However, the empirical evidences prove that the former US presidents
followed a number of leadership theories from moderate to extremist value. In this regards, ea
number of leadership styles will be taken into consideration (Presidents, 2018). According to the
‘Great Man’ theory, leadership is an inherent talent that the leader has destined since born. The
theory also advocates that leadership is meant for the male in the society and thus it incorporates
the military leadership as well. Besides this, the Trait theory also perceives the same concept
where it can be identified that extroversion, self-confidence are the key feature of trait theory
(Uzohue, Yaya & Akintayo, 2016). Moving with the situation is the basic idea of contingency

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theory where good leaders can be marked out on the basis of their behaviours and decisions on
the basis of changing situation (Mittal, 2015). The behavioural theory of leadership referred to
the learning process through which people will be elevated as leaders. In response to that the
leadership quality of the US presidents subsequently follows any of the theories or sometimes
their style of leadership resembles a mixture of different theories. In this regards, the behavioural
theory can be considered as the best policy in a democratic country where no such notion of in
born talent is considered to be the right way to choose leaders. Rather, the learning process and
observation are the key features of making a good leader.
Style of Leadership
The report will take into account a reflection of the current President of USA, Donald
Trump and distinguish between the differences of leadership of Trump with the former President
Barack Obama.
While discussing the leadership quality of Barack Obama it can be identified that his
style of leadership is very much similar with the notion of Transformational Leadership.
According to this leadership, the appearance of a leader is quiet motivational and it can inspire a
generation. In relation to Barack Obama’s leadership quality it shows that his engagement with
the audience was so robust that it left a good impression on the American people. Another
important aspect of the Transformational Leadership is that the leader can motivate his or her
followers to follow his path (Street, 2015). In case of President Obama, most of his speeches
addressed different class of people from the working class to the business personalities.
Moreover, building relationship and trust made him very acceptable to the US people (Dunlap,
McCright & Yarosh, 2016).

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On the contrary, the current President of America, Donald Trump enjoys a different kind
of leadership which contains the traits of high dominance, charisma and influence. These traits
have a close affinity with the autocratic principles or the authoritarian ideas. According to this
concept, most of the authoritarian leaders come to power through elections but gradually
circumscribe the civic liberty in the name of national security (Immelman, 2017). It means the
autocratic leaders have a manipulative skill to get maximize vote and after gaining power they
are not willing to pursue benevolence. In case of Donald Trump, he also enjoys such kind of
leadership quality. Narcissist behaviour leads him to become more dominant and conservative in
nature which further heightens the possibility of over confidence. During the electoral process
and after getting elected as the US President Trump has violated a number of US regulations.
However, he got most of the votes in 2016 Presidential election (Siegel, 2018). The reason
behind this victory was his personality and behavioural traits. It can be seen that most of
Trump’s leadership quality are very similar to the notion of Trait theory and contingency theory.
Ethics and Personalities
It is generally acclaimed that every political leader has their own style of personality and
values which is very unique and they set some moral values regarding their personalities.
However, in most of the cases the national interest becomes more pivotal than the personality of
the leaders. Hence, the political leaders are kept focus on the moral and ethical values rather than
their own personalities. In this context, the report is going to discuss difference of attitude
between Obama and Trump and the measure by which policy and character are playing the role
of a determinant.
Barack Obama became the President of United States in 2009 and had been observed as a
phenomenal event which could change the American life. The Chicago Tribune narrated his

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electoral win as a light of hope which would be able to transform the world perception about
America (Roberts, 2015). Obama was also the first African American President which enhanced
his acceptability and widen up the global acceptance of USA as a liberal country. Nonetheless, it
cannot prove Obama’s acceptance of ethics over personality. In most of his speeches he talked
about the moral value and humanitarian approaches towards the world. He transformed the
image of US foreign policy from aggressiveness to a saviour in difficult times. The withdrawal
of US military from Afghanistan was also a drastic step that enhanced the moral value and
helped to shape a firm step in international politics.
However, after the coming of Donald Trump as the President of United States the entire
global perception about US has been changed rampantly. Trump is more concerned about his
personality rather than morality or national interest. His personal image is so blatant that he
vehemently maintains a close contact with the business and rich section of the society (Dorf,
2016). In fact, on the matter of immigration Trump took a drastic step by putting heavy
regulations and acts on the immigration policy. It was also been alleged that Donald Trump is a
male chauvinist who did not want to give opportunity to a female presidential candidate to hold
the leadership of a country. This is a genuine example of authoritarian regime.
Power type
The constitution of USA gives so privileges to the President that he or she can achieve
great influence in order to amend the constitution. In response to that, it is the responsibility of
the President to restore justice and peace across the world.
Ex-President Barack Obama had a deep faith in the US constitution as well as
international laws and he was more likely abiding those laws. In order to restore peace, President

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Obama referred to the international law as a tool to maintain peace and prosperity across the
world (Goldsmith, 2016). This attitude of leadership is seemed to be more dedicated to the
constitutional edifice and more respectful to the democratic governance. In fact, during the
Obama administration sensitive issues like racism or gender discrimination were decreased
rapidly (Lundberg et al., 2017). It was the sole championship of Obama and his government that
successfully restricted the practice which was prevalent in America for a long time. This quality
of government represents a strong obedience to the democratic decorum and not in a mood to
perturb the federal structure.
Despite the efforts Obama government had taken, the Trump administration is going to
shake the roots of this very establishment. Donald Trump does not resemble any idea of the
power of US constitution. In fact, by misusing his power Donald Trump is going to amend the
US regulation for citizenship rights. Putting more stress on the immigration policy the Trump
government wants to put a ban on other religion especially on Islam (Savoy, 2017). In US, every
child born in American soil is being treated as a US citizen, but Trump amend this act and
impose more conditions on US citizenship. Hence, it can be argued that an authoritarian idea of
power has been identified as the key component of Trump’s use of power.
Method of communication
Communication is considered to be a pivotal factor for influencing the mass. In response
to that, it is also important to figure out the diverse method of communication that the political
leaders are associated with. In fact, the leaders have to be a good speaker to maximize the
support. Moreover, with the advent of social media the dimension of communication has been
expanded with a great pace and it reduces the activity of conventional communicative methods.

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In this regards, the 2008 presidential campaign had been changed significantly when
Barack Obama was going to shoot a YouTube video for publicity (Gerodimos & Justinussen,
2015). Social media is considered to be a useful mechanism that was helping Obama a lot to
collect national support. There are a number of methods that the Democratic Party was used for
the promotion of Barack Obama. For example, campaign websites, blogs and e-mail promotion
played a key role as digital promotion. Furthermore, twitter was also become a part of the
Obama’s political campign (Branch, 2016). After getting elected the Democratic Party still
continued its promotion through social media.
However, Donald Trump is very comfortable to ventilate his words in public speeches.
During the political campaign for presidential election Trump and his party were very much keen
about using humorous slogans and pronunciations which would indirectly attack the opponents.
Nevertheless, Donald Trump is very much open-minded to share his expression. The Trump
administration deliberately follows the strategy of repeating false statements so that the US
people will believe it true (Mettomäki, 2017). Therefore, it is beyond any doubt that utilizing the
media is a popular practise among political leaders.
Conclusion
Political manoeuvrings and influence are the fundamental principle of politics and the
political leaders must have the skill to convince the mass. However, this is just a part of
leadership quality. There are plenty of attributes which contribute to the enhancement of
leadership ability. Better communicative skill and efforts to convince the popular psyche cannot
be the only factors for leadership quality. Good behaviour and moral efficiency are also
necessary to be a good leader. Therefore, it can be concluded that leadership quality is very much

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related to the popular demand and Barack Obama had more powerful leadership quality than
Donald Trump.

9COMPARING LEADERSHIP QUALITY BETWEEN TRUMP AND OBAMA
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