Ah, the difficulties of being a really rotten leader in the Twenty-first Century, I’m telling you folks, it ain’t easy.

You see, to practice truly rotten leadership one needs truly immense power and that’s getting harder and harder to come by.

Popular conceptions of current lousy leaders include all politicians, including dictators, warlords and rebels, by whatever percentage doesn’t agree with them; persons of the cloth, by whatever percentage doesn’t agree with them; and everyone else in major or minor leadership positions by whatever percentage doesn’t agree with them.

Rotten, like pornography, is in the eye of the beholder, but in spite of legal convictions, how many of the current crop will stand the test of time? How many of them really make the historical grade for awfulness?

Business-wise, Skilling and Kozlowski types destroyed thousands financially, but, heck, they didn’t kill them.

Any number of recent/current politicos have been working on the killing angle, but they pale in comparison to guys like Hitler and Stalin.

As to the religious scandals of today, the $585 million dollar fraud of William Pierre Crotts and Thomas Dale Grabinski can’t hold a candle to the acts of yore.

Some of the most famous are from the Papacy, John XXII, mainly for sexual excesses, but he didn’t hold a candle to the Fifteenth Century John XXIII (accused of atheism, among 72 other things) or the Borgia family, that included two Popes and an archbishop. It’s not that Catholics are any worse than other religious people are, but the Papacy has the most power concentrated in its leadership position.

Now we’re getting there. That’s the main reason that the bad guys of the past eclipse more modern villains—they had more power available to misuse.

And, I’m sorry to say, that hasn’t changed. The one thing that stands out about the really rotten leaders of today is that they all amassed significant power before doing their rotten deeds.

Some amassed it through violence, but for many it was all about telling oratory in the quest for money, with a bit of sex thrown in to spice things up.

The nice thing is that many of their convictions go beyond the court of public opinion to the legal courts. Besides those already mentioned, think Saddam Hussein (political), Jimmy Swaggart (religious) and Joseph Nacchio (business)

As you can see from this list, you need to go way outside the rotten leadership box; otherwise, you probably won’t even make it as a footnote, historically speaking. Also, keep in mind that the yardstick for excess is based on the times in which the acts occurred, not the standards of today.

1. Boundless abuse of absolute power.
2. Whimsical killing.
3. Intemperate slaughter
4. Rampant insanity.
5. Unbounded flaunting of sexual mores.
6. Gratuitous forms of torture.
7. Aberrant actions that put the country at risk.
8. Excessive ruthlessness.
9. Profligate sex.

Notice that greed-based actions are missing from the list, that’s because historically correct rotten leaders already controlled most, if not all, of the money.

For those of you who want a better look at really rotten leadership in practice, check out History’s Worst Rulers by Mike Dash, a British historian and terrific writer with a wonderfully irreverent sense of humor.

Mike’s list includes:

• Elagabalus
• John XXIII
• Mustafa I
• Juana the Mad
• Phocas
• Charles VI the Foolish
• Mansur
• Ivan IV the Terrible
• The Twenty–Seven–Day Emperor
• John XII

Another list (supposedly) compiled by Catholic University in 1980 offers

• Adolf Hitler
• Josef Stalin
• Internal Revenue Service
• Nero
• Attila the Hun
• Ivan IV ‘The Terrible’
• Idi Amin
• Caligula
• Catherine de’ Medici

A third list offers these “Villains Of The Millennium”

• Tamerlane
• Ivan the Terrible
• Maximillien Robespierre
• Joseph Stalin
• Mao Zedong
• Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier
• Nicolae Ceausescu.
• Idi Amin
• Pol Pot

Gee, another feather in Ivan’s rotten cap—he’s the only person to make all three lists.

For those of you with less pretentious goals, see Nine Ways to Disengage your Employees for great ways to alienate your employees. They won’t earn you even a footnote in history, but practiced diligently they will earn you kudos in the small frog/small pond version of a rotten ruler.

Finally, feel free to add names or argue about those listed.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 1:05 am and is filed under About Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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