Bumpy Ride

Finally, as Dave Ruf, CEO of Burns & McDonnell, notes, people abandon a tyrant at the first sign of trouble. Leona Helmsley was the queen of New York when her hotel empire was intact, but when she found herself in trouble with the IRS, people were coming out of the woodwork to get even with her. A former maid Helmsley had fired testified that she had said, "Only the little people pay taxes." It was an out-of-context quote that had no direct bearing on the specific legal issue that got Ms. Helmsley incarcerated, but the alleged statement got swirling international press—mainly because it showed the depth of hatred people felt toward her.

More recently, Martha Stewart was implicated in an insider trading scheme. While I have never met Ms. Stewart, books and public reports indicate that there are a lot of people who consider her to be very autocratic, and quite bluntly, many people do not like her. Unsurprisingly, at the very beginning of the scandal—before there was any solid support for allegations that she engaged in insider trading—reports surfaced that many of her friends had dropped her like a hot potato.

Historic figures from Mussolini to Nixon illustrate the same point. Tyrants only have friends while they are in complete control. At the first sign of a crack in the tyrant's organizational structure, everyone abandons him or her. Schadenfreude is a German word for the sinful pleasure people take in seeing high-level people fall from grace. People take a lot more pleasure in seeing tyrants lose their thrones than they do those who have gained their prominence through respect for others.