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Donald Trump’s Iowa results carry an important message for corporate communicators — and they’re about more than just politics…
I find American politics to be almost endlessly interesting. Never more so than when there are crazy, high profile candidates such as Donald Trump. I have little respect for the man, partly because I don’t agree with his politics, but mainly because he has so little respect for anyone else.
The results of this week’s primaries in Iowa, however, also provide an important lesson to anyone who works in the corporate world. As you will have heard by now, Trump lost. Although most people expected this, Trump didn’t. Pundits like to say he had “Trump-sized-expectations.”
His whole candidacy has been that he’s a winner. So, guess what happens if he doesn’t win? He not only isn’t a winner (which is bad news for him), he also undermines the whole basis for his campaign (much worse news).
This is the trouble facing Donald Trump: He set himself up as the frontrunner and then failed to deliver. He’s been crafting a story of inevitability and yet he couldn’t do it. It makes him look untrustworthy and incapable of achieving his own goals.
If you work in communications, be very careful about the predictions you make. If you are ever wrong, then your readers or listeners are going to be less likely to believe future messages you have to deliver.