How to Stop a Tyrant

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How to Stop a Tyrant

We have all experienced tyrants in our personal and professional lives and tyrannical leaders throughout history are well known and documented. In this article we’ll examine what aspects of a person and their interactions with others define them as tyrants and how to stop them from controlling and terrorizing us.

We will define a tyrant as someone who is authoritative, autocratic, and abusive to the extreme for the purpose of consolidating power. We will define authoritative as the use of authoritative power to command, control and coerce others into doing what they want. We will define autocratic as a person who requires that most or all things are done their way with little or no room for deviation in objectives, methods, and actions. Finally, we will define abusive as taking any action that causes harm or injury to a person either physically or psychologically.

So, why are people tyrants? That is a complicated question that has been asked and only vaguely answered for millennia. Although labels are not always completely accurate, they can be helpful to paint a picture of what aspects of someone’s personality motivate their behavior. In the case of tyrants, there appears to be three primary drivers. The strong sense of entitlement, grandiose thinking, need for admiration, and lack of empathy found in tyrants can be labelled narcissism. Obsession and delusion about one’s own power is a second characteristic which, in its most severe form is labelled megalomania. Finally, tyrants express some level of cruelty or sadism.

So, how does one deal with a tyrant? The answer depends on the nature of the tyrant. In some cases, it is as simple as severing your relationship with the tyrant or the tyrannical organization. As a child I experienced the church my family attended as tyrannical. Once I was old enough to make my own choice about where I worship I left that church. Although there may be a personal price to pay or sacrifice to make, many tyrants do not have enough control to keep you under their authority without your compliance.

In other cases, the tyrant can be neutralized by removing the institutional authority they rely on. I was teaching a business class at an art and design school and, over the ten years I taught the class, I lost touch with the needs of the students. For various reasons, the nature of the students changed over the ten years I taught there and I became frustrated with the sense of entitlement the new generation of students felt. This caused me to be a bit hard on them. In their eyes, I had become cruel. Well, since it was a small, expensive private college the students had a lot of influence with the administration who was always worried about losing enrollment. The students expressed their dissatisfaction with my treatment of them and I was soon asked to leave. Problem solved; the tyrant was sent packing.

Another solution is to reform the tyrant. As for myself, I became a much better teacher and less of a tyrant after getting fired. I also experience this with my Father who colluded with my elementary school teachers by spanking me when I got home each evening if a note from the teacher told him to do so. He thought he was doing the right thing but when I got to about sixth grade, I started to confront him with the cruel nature of his actions. The spankings stopped and he realized that corporal punishment might actually be harming me rather than helping me focus in school. My younger siblings benefited from the change more than I did because I was the oldest. My dad always felt bad about his part in this and one of the last things he told me before he died was how sorry he was for his cruel treatment of me during that period.

Some situations cannot be resolved, only survived. I live in Ukraine, part of the former Soviet Union, and I can tell you that the Soviet Union was tyranny that very few were able to escape. The people here developed an incredible ability to remain invisible. Even today, 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and an end to the late-night disappearances of those who complained too much, the older generation here doesn’t call attention to themselves if they can avoid it.

Another common strategy to deal with tyrants is to fight them. Many uprisings and revolutions had their beginnings in an organized effort to fight a tyrant or tyrannical organization. Labor unions are a good example of this. When they were first formed, unions took on tyrannical organizations and were very successful at improving the conditions of many industrial and agricultural workers in the last century.

This model of tyranny not only helps people suffering under tyrants to escape but allows people who are behaving as tyrants a way to understand the nature of their behaviors and reform themselves if they wish. Many people are tyrants because they believe it is either the right way or the only way to lead. Leadership modes such as servant leadership and ethical leadership specifically examine practices that allows leaders to achieve extraordinary results in a significantly more humane and democratic way.

At Ethical Leaders in Action we believe that most, if not all people, can develop themselves to play leadership roles in many different spheres both large and small. The foundation of this development process is a short but powerful list of virtues which can be developed and improved through conscious effort. For more information feel free to take the Virtues of Ethical Leadership Self Inventory (VELSI) which breaks these virtues down into features that can be individually developed. The results of the VELSI come with a quick reference guide to help you understand how the virtues and their individual features fit together. https://ethinact.com/velsi/

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