I will have to remember that phrase. I once worked for someone like that. It was awful.

• The leader was the sole and absolute authority on everything the team did.

• If a team member came up with an idea of our own, we were not allowed to write a ticket to open it up for discussion. We were expected to have a private discussion with the leader first, and they would decide if it was worth pursuing.

• Heaven help you if you ever wrote a balanced comment citing the pros and cons of any particular approach to a problem. The leader would quote you out of context in a team meeting, reading aloud only the parts of your comment that supported their position.

• Secrecy was important. For major new projects, the leader would convene a private working group with hand-picked team members who would follow their lead, excluding anyone with more experience who might have insights or even disagreement on the development approach.

• If you ever made a mistake that caused problems in production, you would get called out for it in front of the team. If the leader made a mistake and you tried to respectfully help shore up the problem, they would dig in their heels and argue against your fix. The leader does not make mistakes.

• In that latter case where the leader made a mistake that caused problems in production, they would never acknowledge it or apologize for it. Apologies are a sign of weakness.

Never going back there again.

My previous boss did exactly that plus a bunch more psychopathic stuff like:

- Praise someone in public before they leave, then block them from coming back - Promote the incompetent to further solidify their power position - Lie to customer, stakeholders, etc. Everything must present a good "image". The work or actual results were barely relevant - Have scapegoat at every level in case of failure. - Refuse to join status update meetings so that he could claim not to be involved with things that weren't going well and sacrifice a scapegoat