Leadership: Leaders, Followers, Environments

Negative life themes

Leaders who harm their organizations or social systems tend to have negative life stories. A negative life story reflects a destructive image of the world and a person's role in it.⁴⁷ It can usually be traced to painful childhood experiences. Severe parental discord, low socioeconomic status, paternal criminality, maternal psychiatric disorder, and child abuse are common themes for authoritarian or tyrannical adults.⁴⁸ Childhood adversity is associated with positive lessons for some children who overcome it with the help of supportive adults outside a dysfunctional family (such as teachers, grandparents, or coaches) and their own resilient personalities.⁴⁹ Not all children are so fortunate: some do not have the sparkly or resilient personality needed to attract helpful adults and to make lemonade out of lemons. In addition, some experiences are simply too powerful or recurrent for many children to escape. Josef Stalin's childhood was traumatic: his abusive, alcoholic father beat his mother and young Josef often and cruelly. According to a childhood friend, the beatings made Stalin as cruel as his father.⁵⁰ Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, and Castro, for example, also experienced considerable childhood distress.

Abused children distance themselves from others and compartmentalize (or disassociate from) painful issues.⁵¹ Former U.S. President William Clinton describes the “parallel lives” he lived while dealing with his alcoholic and violent father.⁵² This allowed young ...