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Former President Donald Trump has been found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in an historic criminal trial.
The jury reached the verdict in less than twelve hours, which made Trump the first former or current US president to be convicted of a crime.
Throughout the six-week trial, the court heard from 22 witnesses, including Stormy Daniels, whose accusations that the former president paid her to be silent over an alleged sexual encounter in 2006 were at the center of the case.
While the hush-money payment in itself is not illegal, prosecutors argued Trump falsified business records by marking a $130,000 payment to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, as legal expenses, with Cohen claiming he was told to pay Daniels the hush money.
Former employees describe Trump as a “micromanager”
Many of the 22 witnesses were current or former employees of Trump.
Over the past six weeks, the business-mogul-turned-celebrity-turned-politician has been given a damning character reference from his ex-staffers.
“I would describe him almost as a micromanager from what I saw,” said David Pecker, a former mentee of Trump. “He looked at every, all aspects of whatever the issue was.”
One former employee – a manager at one of Trump’s golf properties – testified Trump would “just yell and scream and fire, and then we would have to all scramble to do something different the next week,” when recalling the process of picking paint colors at the property a few years ago.
The prosecution also relayed excerpts from Trump’s books that, per a New York Times commentary on the trial, depicted him as a “frugal micromanager who always questioned his invoices, distrusted his employees and had a penchant for revenge.”
Broken employee-leader trust: Trump trial proves micromanagement never wins
Trump’s unfortunate reputation for putting zero trust in his employees could have tipped the scales of justice against him. Prosecutors aimed to show that Trump “caused” the falsification of business records rather than personally falsifying any documents or orchestrating the scheme.
Depicting Trump as a leader who could not permit others to make decisions without his input undoubtedly put a major dent in the argument that he had no knowledge of the scheme.
Undone by his track record of not trusting employees to do their work, the former president has become the latest leader to fall foul of micromanagement.
It’s not just specific to this case, either. There is a long (and growing) list of Trump’s former staff who have turned from crony to critic, from military leaders to White House advisors.
All politics aside, the ever-expanding selection of those who are prepared to speak out about his leadership style appears to show how costly micromanagement can be.
Indeed, built on a lack of trust between employees and their superiors, micromanaging employees has myriad negative impacts on their engagement, productivity, and wellbeing.
A 2023 American Psychological Association study finds that 42% of US workers feel micromanaged at work, with those who report being micromanaged feeling nearly twice as likely to be stressed during their workday.
While the majority of the headlines will rightly focus on the historic verdict – which Trump plans to appeal, describing the decision as a “disgrace” – there is a lesson here for HR teams to encourage their managers and bosses to avoid mistrust and micromanagement at all costs.
