“Be feared” is the single most fundamental, most enduring principle by which every leader must live. There is no more reliable way of obtaining the obedience of your peons.

Humility is a wonderful quality in a peon. Humility correlates strongly with timidity, and timidity with that most precious of all peon qualities: compliance.

These days it is vitally important for leaders to know how their peons feel. If you don’t understand their feelings, how will you ever manipulate their feelings?

It is pointless calling out a peon’s trivial mistakes and flaws. They are generally not actionable in this form. Instead, save them up so you can unleash them all at once. “Shock and awe.”

There is no statute of limitations or double jeopardy in the workplace. Your peon’s missteps and mistakes from the distant past can be brought up time and time again to remind them of their failures.

If peons are in conflict, always always ALWAYS pick a side, but never explicitly say so. Just make sure that one party’s suggestions and initiatives always succeed, and the other party’s never do. Divide and rule.

Inventing some new title that a peon can put on a business card is a very cheap way to buy some loyalty and goodwill. The same goes for “Peon of the Month” awards and all such invented honors.

When a peon complains about being overloaded, increase the frequency of how often they must report their progress. So that you can see where they need “help” of course! They won’t complain again!

Look into complaints against peons very thoroughly. Let investigations take a long time and be as secretive as possible. The eventual finding is irrelevant; the sense of dread and suspicion will break almost anybody.

Active listening is a powerful skill. Paraphrase the peon’s points back to them, then follow with “…but I’m not convinced that’s quite correct.” Show them that you disbelieve them, not that you’ve misunderstood them.

“It’s a meritocracy” instantly trumps every claim of preferential treatment towards the peons most useful to you. You can always find some way to justify the unequal rewards, but most times you won’t even have to.

Never ever include the salary range in a job ad. If you do, you lose the chance to lowball applicants later and risk paying your new peon too much.

Peons who ask for a raise are just showing you they have an inflated opinion of their value to you. Let them go as soon as possible.

Surveillance of peons is essential. Not because you need to know what they’re doing (you really don’t) but so that you can see which ones are willing to submit to that kind of treatment and level of mistrust.

“People don’t leave organizations, they leave bad bosses.” Yes! Good! If they can’t or won’t be controlled, they’re no use to you and should be encouraged to leave as soon as possible. Only the complicit deserve a place in your team. Bye!!!

“Somebody told me…” With these three words you can make the peon think you have taken them into your trust, while sowing the seeds of suspicion against all their teammates. You are their only friend, after all.

Remember that Work From Home benefits you more than it benefits the peons. You don’t actually need to know what they’re doing in order to control them. But now they can’t see you, they have no idea of what you’re up to or what your next move will be.

Listen carefully and attentively when a peon opens up their heart to you. You never know what little detail you will be able to weaponize against them in future if necessary.

Always make peons pay for things with their own cash first, with the promise of reimbursement. Demonstrate how money means so much less to you than it does to them. Most will be too embarrassed to admit any hardship it causes them.

“Ah! What you probably saw was… [insert explanation here]”. Make sure you get your version on record.

Never underestimate the power of gaslighting — HR will find your side of the story plausible and the peon will doubt themselves.