Learn the Trump Talent Stack and Change Your Life
See part 1 – The Hedgehog and The Fox
See part 2- Political Deathmatch – Hedgehog vs Fox
This election was a string of surprises for most people. Donald Trump, seemingly the man least qualified for the job, won a victory chain leading up to his becoming the President of the United States. Trump the novice went against battle-hardened political professionals and soundly defeated them (and in some cases destroyed them). How did he do this?
Scott Adams the creator of Dilbert Comics foresaw Trumps victory in August of 2015, seven months before the Iowa Caucus in February 2016. Adam’s said it was easy to bet on Trump. He gave the example of walking into a fight…
Imagine walking into a park and seeing a group of kids getting ready for a fight. You’re trying to pick a winner, but it’s hard. There are big kids and little kids, strong kids and fast kids; some are carrying small sticks and some are carrying big sticks. As you stand there trying to size up the kids and pick out a winner, a new kid walks in. He’s carrying a flamethrower. At this point the guesswork is over.
Adams saw that Trump had a talent stack, so powerful that the other presidential candidates were outclassed. Are you feeling a little skeptical? Keep on reading.
Scott Adam’s of Dilbert Comics proposes that the secret to Trump’s success was that he created a unique talent stack (more on that here). Trump developed multiple talents and skills that when combined formed effective and powerful tools. To quote Adams “One of the most powerful systems I have seen involves layering one modest skill on top of another until the effect is something special.” Look at how Trump combined the ability to branding with humor creating a labels that stuck (think Crooked Hillary). This amalgamated tool gave Trump an outsized impact.
Love Trump or hate Trump, the fact is he won. In life you will succeed if you follow the victory principles of winners. I propose that his Donald Trump’s skills are transferable. This means that whether you are a democrat or a republican, you can win too. You can win in politics, in business, in relationships and in life. Today we are going to reverse-engineer Trump’s winning recipe, his Talent Stack (link). It can be broken down into specific skills and abilities that you can intentionally and successfully cultivate. Let’s do this!
Here are some of the tools in Trump’s talent stack. We’re also going to explore ways that you can develop this same skills. Many of these skills “stack” together. They cross-pollinate creating a supercharge effect.
Tools mentioned by Scott Adams (link)
Tool 1– Public Speaking-“Trump is an engaging speaker and he knows how to entertain a crowd.” People enjoy listening to him. It’s pleasant, engaging and you’re usually in for a surprise.
Develop This Tool- Go to toastmasters. This club will give you tools and the framework to develop your public speaking skills in a wide variety of mediums.
Stack This Tool- Supercharge your public speaking with Humor, Branding, Conversation Skills.
Tool 2– Humor- Trump’s jokes especially the politically incorrect or personal “draw people to the fight”.
Stack This Tool- See what happens when you add humor to public speaking and branding.
Tool 3– Intelligence- Clearly Trump is smart. If you thought he was an idiot before he won, fine. But now he won. You’ve got to acknowledge the brains and acknowledge that you underestimated him.
Tool 4– Branding (need to add self vs others)- Trump branded Hillary as crooked Hillary and the name stuck. The creation of Lyin Ted and Low-Energy Jeb destroyed both campaigns.
Stack This Tool- Use branding to enhance your Social Media (specifically Twitter) and Context/Framing
Tool 5–Social Media- Trump understood and utilized the power of social media, specifically Twitter. His tweets were an atomic weapon that no one anticipated.
Develop This Skill- get a twitter account and follow the greats. Then start doing your own writing. Believe it or not, twitter can raise your writing ability (link to article that twitter writing that of slate). Twitter forces you to condense your thoughts into clear, concise, articulate forms.
Stack This Tool- Enhance your social media impact with branding and context/framing.
Tool 6– Conversation Skills- he can fill a stadium up with people and basically just have a conversation with them for a couple of hours, still maintain their interest. They leave feeling better than when they started. (Stacks with public speaking)
Develop This Skill- practice storytelling. You can with your kids or any kids for that matter.
Stack This Tool- Enhance your conversation skills with public speaking, humor and branding.
More Powerful Tools
Tool 7– A/B Testing- Trump constantly A/B tested (link). A/B testing is commonly described as a marketing tool. Imagine that a clothing company wants to sell a bathing suit. The company has a targeted email they’ve prepared for their customers. A/B testing is strategy where the company switches up the standard email and sends half its customers “version A” of the email and half the customers receive “version B”. The company then looks at customer engagement and clicks and sees which version is does better. Very often the results are unexpected and counterintuitive.
Trump was constantly trying differently strategies and creating frameworks to see which ones worked, which ones didn’t and ways to tinker and improve his campaign. Look at how Trump used rallies as massive A/B testing fields:
From politico[i]- “ Trump’s rallies became the centerpiece of the campaign. Trump told Lewandowski to book as many of them as he could. And they served to obscure the campaign’s glaring shortcomings, while letting an improvising candidate… road-test his talking points. Trump picked up insights and policies like a stand-up comedian collecting material for a show… and Trump’s promise to build a wall on the Mexican border became a staple, simply because it got the greatest applause lines.
“He lives for the energy. There’s no one better at taking the temperature of the crowd, ”Lewandowski told me during the campaign. “You can get instant feedback. … We’d test out all of our best lines, some would work, some wouldn’t… That’s how we got ‘Little Marco’ and ‘Lyin’ Ted.’” How precise a focus group were the rallies? Trump started with Little Marco—then switched to “’Lil” because it got more laughs.
You can also see how Trump A/B tested with his Internet campaign here (link).
I wonder if Trump’s genius is not brain smarts, but rather constant A/B testing. What if Trump found the tools that work by accident? (Stacks with humor, context/framing)
Develop This Skill- apply A/B testing to your life. Try saying good morning to people in different ways and see what gets the better response. Use two different styles for writing emails, see what engages people. Try showing some new people you meet your thoughtful side and others your playful side. Look at the responses with humility and an open mind. Then choose what works and keep on testing.
Stack This Tool- Use A/B testing to refine and sharpen your branding, humor, public speaking and context/framing.
Tool 8– Antifragility- Nassim Taleb coined the term anti-fragility, getting stronger from stress or the opposition. It seems that the more people attacked Trump, the stronger he got.
Develop This Skill- Start by reading Antifragility. Then move on to_____________________
Tool 9– High Energy- It might have been Trump’s energy that won him the election. You look at the closing days of the campaign. Trump kept on doing rally after rally, sometimes five in a day, lasting till two in the morning. (The battleground states were won by margins as thin as 10,000 votes.)
Trump’s energy also energized his followers. Look at video footage of any Trump rally (for example here).
Develop This Skill- How can you raise your energy levels? Try diet, exercise and a cold shower in the morning.
Stack This Tool- Use high energy levels to enhance public speaking and alpha male.
Tool 10– Loving the fight- Trump seemed to relish the political fights. Since politics is a battle, if you enjoy it, you’ll do much better.
Develop This Skill- Embrace the fact that haters are gonna hate and that you deserve someone to stand up for you, namely you.
Tool 11– Repairing relationships- ex-wives, Megan Kelley – Ivana Trump and The Donald had an ugly divorce. It seems that years later, Ivana is one of his strongest (like The Post article) (except that she thinks she should be the first lady). Similarly, Trump worked on repairing many of his broken relationships and working with his opponents. Examples include Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Megyn Kelly, Fox News, the Republican party
Develop This Skill- Reach out to someone who you’ve had a break with. Tell them you’re sorry, you miss them and that you want to have them back in your life.
Stack This Tool- If you can move on, it will be easier to repair your relationships.
Tool 12– Insults/Deterence/Authenticity- Imagine you’re a criminal, a bully or a politician. You’re out for blood. Who are you going to attack, the easy target or the one who fights back?
Scott Adams notes that Trump’s insults are very effective strategically. They deter opponents. For example, the Koch brothers detested Trump and very badly wanted to take him down. But as was reported in the __________ they were afraid of Trump going after them with his twitter account.
I’d add that they give Trump a ring of authenticity. You can trust your relationship with someone if you know that he’ll call a spade a spade and that if he has a problem with you, he’ll tell you.
Develop This Skill- Work on being authentic. People will respect you more. Read “The Power of No” by _____________.
Stack This Tool- Branding, Going out of your Comfort Zone
Tool 13– Counter Stereotypes- At the televised tech meeting (link), Trump sat next to Peter Thiel (an openly gay man) and didn’t just shake his hand, he gave it a whole hand rub. It’s much harder to call Trump a homophobe now. (See this New York Times article ____ shared by Scott Adams (link).)
Develop This Skill- What do people think is your biggest weakness? What radical move can you take to shatter the stereotype? Think “Back to the Future”.
Stack This Tool- To counter stereotypes you will need to exit your comfort zone.
Tool 14– Positive Thinking- Never in the history of man has so much money been spent attacking someone and trying to convince the public that a businessman was the next Hitler. Trump radiated confidence and humor throughout. To quote an uber driver “I never Trump use a ‘failure word’. Everything was about how we was going to win.”
Develop This Skill- Read ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ by Trump’s pastor Norman Vincent Pearl.
Tool 15– Trusting Intuition- Throughout the campaign, this political novice typically discarded the advice of the experts and trusted his intuition. Trump took advice, selectively.
Develop This Skill- Do daily reflections. Meditate for five minutes every day. You’ll develop listening skills. You’ll learn how to listen to your inner voice. You’ll make better decisions and how to trust yourself.
Tool 16– Meditating- picture of Trump meditating (see “your average day of jury duty, from notes”)– It looks as though Trump may meditate. If he does, we may understand his locus of control, confidence and ability to turn out random noise and focus on the important signals.
Develop This Skill- You can meditate too. The Dalia Lama says that with 50 hours you will start to see your life change. Some great resources are _________ and ______.
Tool 17– Noise vs Signal (knowing the difference)- In life, there are millions of data bits jumping out at you. Trump was able to focus on the issues, fights and outreach where it mattered. For example, Trump ignored the media and polls and focused on the A/B testing at his rallies (see above).
Stack This Tool- Find the true signals in your life with A/B testing, meditating and breaking out of the echo chamber.
Tool 18– Differentiate Private and Public Life- Ben Carson described there being two Trumps. There is the public persona: brash, loud and self-involved. Carson described Trump one-on-one as being thoughtful, contemplative and a great listener. Some other public figures who have different public and private persona’s include _________________________.
Develop This Skill- Let go and learn to trust the people closest to you. This will be a source of strength even when the world is full of hate.
Tool 19– Survive Negativity- Never in the history of man has so much money been spent attacking someone and trying to convince the public that a businessman was the next Hitler. Trump radiated confidence and humor throughout.
Stack This Tool- Antifragility
Tool 20– Peer Behind the Curtain- Freud says that the secret of the artist is that he has a conscious connection deep into his psyche; that he connects to the primary processes that are unconscious for most people.
Trump was able to express the silent, unarticulated and suppressed thoughts of many. This means he connected to others and himself in a very deep way. Trump also seems especially prone to Freudian slips. It’s likely that Trump has connected to the psyche on a deeper level than most of us.
Develop This Skill- Do free association writing (source) or try a sensory deprivation chamber. There are medicinal means that are only legally available in Mexico and other countries (not recommended).
Stack This Tool- Humor, Branding, Deterence
Tool 21– Exit Your Comfort Zone- Trump introduced radical ideas to the American public and dramatically shifted the Overton Window (link) on many issues. For example, now no one doubts that that there will be a wall, the only question is whether Mexico will pay for it. There is little opposition to extreme vetting from countries with high terror levels, the opposition merely attacks the “Muslim registry”.
Trump went outside of our comfort zone and established ways of thinking and showed us a new ways of looking at our country and new solutions to seemingly insolvable problems.
Develop This Skill- Ways to go out of your comfort zone.
Stack This Tool- Peer Behind the Curtain and Diverse Friends (Trump’s decision to call out Mexican “rapists” at his kickoff, for example, was inspired, in part, by a random chat he had with two Border Patrol agents at one of his golf resorts[ii].)
Tool 22– Context/Framing (only Rosie O’Donell)- Megyn Kelly announced the day before the debate that she would take out one of the candidates (source). Similarly, Brett Bair said that there was a contingency plan to physically remove Trump if he couldn’t handle Kelly’s questions.
When Kelly attacked him, saying that he was sexist and that he described women in degrading terms… Trump responded with “Only Rosie O’Donell” this deflected the question, refocused people on a very specific image and person (who is disliked and detested). Trump effectively neutralized Kelly and the issue and won the debate. (link- Adams)
Trump’s ability to frame and reframe issues and controversies is magical. Consider his framing the access Hollywood tapes as “locker room talk”.
Develop This Skill- Think about what you say. What is the best way to frame your strengths and your weaknesses (expand)
Tool 23– Choose the Right Battles (ex- Iraq war, but not gay marriage)- Trump choose his battles and issues brilliantly. For examples in attacking the Iraq war, Trump went against most Republican intelligentsia. It was a fight he won. Trump refrained from attacking Bernie Sanders and even praised him. (The Sanders supporters who voted for Trump or didn’t vote, may have given Trump the win in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.)
Similarly, Trump openly embraced the LBJT community and tried work with them to prevent Muslim immigration.
Tool 24– Have diverse Friends Trump worked with an amazingly diverse cast of characters. From embracing Kanye West to hiring Steve Bannon; from Ann Coulter to Rience Priebus to Julian Assange, Trump was willing to engage and work with a wide variety of people. Trump told Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner that he/she could use any bathroom in Trump Tower (source).
Develop This Skill- Do you have friends outside of your social and political views. Do you have friends with very different interests and hobbies. Now is the time to make this friends.
Tool 25– Move on (when the battle is over)– One of the biggest chants of Trump follower was “lock her up”. Trump even said that he would appoint a special prosecutor to go after Hillary Clinton. But after he won, Trump said _________ Hillary is a good person…
Similarly, Trump invited Ted Cruz (who had viciously attacked him during the campaign) to the Republican National Convention to be speaker. Trump fights with intensity and then after winning, he moves on and even reaches out the enemy.
Stack This Tool- Repairing relationships
Tool 26– Not getting held back by mistakes- Trump made many mistakes during the campaign but he didn’t let them hold him back. For example when the Access Hollywood tapes came up, many people thought it was over for Trump. Trump went on to dominate the debate like a “silverback gorilla” (as described by Nigel Farage (hyperlink). Trump’s words describe his mindset ___________ (we’ve got bigger things to worry about like ISIS).
Develop This Skill- What feelings of guilt and regret are holding you back? Acknowledge your mistakes, feel bad, try to correct them and then move on.
Tool 27– Alpha Male- Trump was clearly the alpha male during the Republican nomination. This translated into areas as diverse as Jeb Bush falling apart during the debates and women screaming “I love you” at rallies and then voting for him. People believed Trump that he had the “power” to fulfill his campaign promises and succeed against impossible odds. The devotion of Trumps followers was due to the fact that they felt that in Trump they had found a leader.
Develop This Skill- ????????????????
Tools to include- perseverance, work ethic, (breaking out of echo chamber), street smarts, self-confidence, rif, flow states, not overthinking, unpredictability (keep people guessing),
Can you name more skills in Trump’s Talent Stack? Want to share some new ways to utilize and maximize your Talent Stack? Tell me here (link).
Donald Trump has showed us the power of a diverse and strong talent stack. Are you ready to develop yours? It’s time to develop your talent stack and change your life (link).
Follow Up / Credits
Of course the biggest credit goes to Scott Adams for creating the Talent Stack idea illustrating how Trump’s talent stack gave him the tools to succeed. (Link)
https://medium.com/@ade3/what-s-your-talent-stack-a66a79c5f331#.azv4hjk2z – read your article while preparing my talent stack article- was very helpful for framing (I liked the Adam’s talent stack quote you used)
http://frontierdispatch.com/2016/03/23/the-hedgehog-the-fox-and-the-talent-stack/– I thought this guy had beat me to the hedgehog and fox comparison. I was wrong.
More Talent Stack Ideas- How different fields require different talent stacks for success
[i] Politico- 10 Crucial Decisions that Reshaped America
[ii] Politico- 10 Crucial Decisions that Reshaped America
