As unhappy as McKenzie Bezos appeared to be with author Brad Stone's unflattering portrait of her husband in the new book The Everything Store -- immediately after its publication, she wrote a stinging review (on Amazon.com, of course) calling the book "lopsided and misleading" for focusing too much on "moments of tension" between staff members -- she might not want to push back too hard. By highlighting the Amazon (AMZN) CEO's propensity to berate his staff, Stone may actually be doing him and his company a favor.

    The temper tantrum has not only become a fixture in corporate America, but it has been central to the management style of many of technology's most successful CEOs -- namely Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Larry Ellison -- and management experts say when handled appropriately, this style can even be beneficial to employees and the company as a whole.

    As Stone reveals, Amazon employees have coined a term to capture the boss' outbursts -- "nutters." Among Bezos's favorites are: "Why are you ruining my life?" "If I hear that idea again, I'm doing to have to kill myself," and "We are going to have to supply some human intelligence to this problem." But while such verbal volleys do have their downside -- namely alienated employees who may jump ship -- they also can help spark spectacular achievements

    This has not always been the case. For most of the second half of the 20th century, a kinder, gentler ethos reigned in America's boardrooms. For example, in the 1980s, both Ford (F) and AT&T (T) hired the late W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality management movement. His credo was that to increase efficiency, companies needed to "drive out fear" in workers. In an era when big companies could count on a given market share year after year, so-called caretaker CEOs, who created congenial workplaces, largely ruled.

    With technological change now constantly upending business models, however, visionary leaders are calling the shots instead. These CEOs are remarkably adept at devising ways to change the world, but along with this creativity often comes a host of personality tics. "Many of today's most successful business leaders have a full-blown personality disorder, particularly those in high-tech firms," says Michael Maccoby, president of Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm the Maccoby Group and author of Narcissistic Leaders. Research conducted by students at Stanford University's business school using a questionnaire developed by Maccoby suggests that as many as nine out of 10 tech CEOs suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, whose defining symptoms are an inflated sense of self, a lack of empathy, and occasional "rage attacks." These leaders, Macoby says, simply don't know how to cope with frustration without losing their cool. But while narcissists often have problems in intimate relationships, they are well suited to running companies.

    The volatile leader, of course, is not an entirely new breed. Bezos and his fellow tech titans are all throwbacks to the robber barons of the late 19th century -- the men who first brought America into the industrial age. One key and often overlooked member of that generation was Henry J. Heinz.

    Born in 1844, Heinz was the founder of the eponymous company now synonymous with ketchup, America's slow-moving national sauce (recently purchased by Warren Buffett for $28 billion). But when it was founded in 1876, the H.J. Heinz Company constituted the latest in high-tech. And like Bezos and Jobs, Heinz -- often called "the pickle king" -- was as prickly and creative as they come.

    麦肯齐•贝佐斯看起来似乎对《万有商店》（The Everything Store）作者布拉德•斯通在书中直言不讳地描绘出她丈夫的形象并不满意。书一出版，她立即写了一封言辞激烈的评论【当然是在亚马逊网站（Amazon.com上）】，声称该书“有倾向且误导读者”，过分关注员工之间的“紧张时刻”——她可能不想过于强硬地回击。强调亚马逊（Amazon）的这位CEO喜欢对下属大发雷霆，实际上可能帮了他和他的公司。

    “炸药包”不仅已经是美国企业文化的固定构成，也成为了很多科技行业最成功CEO的管理风格核心，包括史蒂夫•乔布斯、比尔•盖茨和拉里•埃里森。管理专家认为，如果处置得当，这种风格甚至可能对员工和公司整体有益。

    斯通披露，亚马逊员工用“发飙”来描述老板的暴脾气。贝佐斯最喜欢说的话是：“你为什么要毁掉我的生活？”“如果我再听到这个说法，我会杀了自己，”和“我们必须动用一些人类智慧来看这个问题。”这些言语大炮固然有其不利面，可能疏远员工，最终导致他们跳槽，但也能帮助激发辉煌的成就。

    不过，也不总是这样。20世纪下半叶的大部分时间里，谦逊礼让是美国企业董事会的主流特质。举例来说，20世纪80年代，福特汽车公司（Ford）和美国电话电报公司（AT&T）都聘请了质量管理运动之父、已故的W•爱德华茲•戴明。他的信条是要提高效率，公司需要“驱散员工心中的恐惧”。那个年代，大公司的市场份额基本上已经划定，年复一年，旱涝保收，所谓看管CEO们基本上是主流，他们创造了一团和气的工作环境。

    但随着技术变革不断颠覆商业模式，有远见的领导人开始取而代之，发号施令。这些CEO们特别擅长创新方式来改变世界，但伴随这种创新的通常是许多个性缺点。总部位于华盛顿的咨询公司Maccoby Group的总裁、《孤芳自赏的领袖们》（Narcissistic Leaders）一书的作者迈克•马可比说：“当今许多最成功的商界领导人都具有全面的人格失调症，特别是高科技公司，”斯坦福大学(Stanford University)商学院学生进行的一项研究采用了马可比制订的一份问卷，研究发现，科技公司CEO中10个有9个有自恋型人格失调症，定义症状包括自我膨胀、缺乏同情心以及偶尔的“暴跳如雷”。这些领导人，马可比表示，根本不知道如何能不失冷静地应对沮丧情绪。但自恋者通常会在建立亲密关系方面存在问题，他们适合管理公司。

    当然，暴力领导人并不是什么彻头彻尾的新事物。贝佐斯和他的同类科技暴君们就像19世纪末最初将美国带入工业革命的豪门强盗一样。那一代人中一个往往被忽视的重要成员是亨利•J.•亨氏。

    出生于1844年的亨氏是与同名公司的创始人，亨氏如今也已成为番茄酱的代名词，美国番茄酱这么多年来少有变化(这家公司最近被沃伦•巴菲特以280亿美元收购)。但1876年，这家公司刚刚创立时，亨氏（H.J. Heinz Company）是当时的高科技公司。就像贝佐斯和乔布斯，总是被称为“火暴脾气之王”的亨氏也一样一点就着，但同时也创意十足。

    Heinz worshipped the consumer for whom he created a whole new class of goods, mass-produced food products. Though his post-secondary education consisted of just a few accounting courses, the ingenious workaholic understood that the best way to get a leg up on his competitors was through technological innovation. His state-of-the-art-Pittsburgh plant, which featured an array of the newest gadgets and gizmos -- think mechanized pickle counters -- was a model for industrialists throughout the land. An advertising pioneer, who plowed a then-unheard-of 20% of sales into trumpeting his wares, he relied heavily on the new media of the day such as the billboard and the consumer magazine. Heinz was also one of the first American entrepreneurs to go international. In 1905, over the fierce objections of his own board, he set up his first manufacturing site outside of America, and within a few years, the Brits were gobbling up many of his products; baked beans soon became a national staple. Long before Starbucks (SBUX), McDonald's (MCD), or even Coca-Cola (KO), Heinz achieved brand recognition all over the world. (For more about Heinz, see "Squeezing Heinz.")

    But just like his contemporary tech superstars, he could also terrorize his staff. As Heinz's secretary observed, "He could and did, become stirred to great angers; and no man with one experience of these willingly incurred another." Employees would be reluctant to challenge anything that Heinz said or did, even when he was way off base. Heinz once promised a homeless man that he could have a free meal in the company's cafeteria. Rushing up to an employee, Oscar Smith, Heinz pointed to someone he thought was the panhandler and told Smith to let the guy in. Though the man Heinz indicated was actually the company's sales manager, Smith felt compelled to follow his boss' directive. "Don't make any difference," Smith told the startled Heinz executive who had already eaten. "Mr. Heinz told me to see that you got a good lunch and he's watching."

    Half a century after his death, the company stopped trying to conceal this character flaw. As the author of the official corporate history published in 1994 noted, "Reading between the lines of his diary, one detects a formidable temper. It suggests he [Henry] may have been a bit of a bully." Even some family members were scared of him. After Heinz's wife of 25 years died, an unmarried younger sister, Mary, moved into his Pittsburgh mansion to serve as his housekeeper. According to a family friend, Mary complained that her explosive brother could "never understand the strain upon her" of living with him -- and ended up having two nervous breakdowns.

    Exactly a century after Heinz opened up shop, Harvard dropout Bill Gates teamed up with Paul Allen, his high school buddy from Washington State, to start Microsoft (MSFT). As Allen observed in his memoir, Idea Man, working with Gates was often like "being in hell." Gates's put-down of choice was "That's the stupidest f…ing thing I've ever heard." A tough taskmaster, Gates couldn't understand why all his employees weren't as obsessed with work as he was. After one programmer put in four straight 20-hour days to finish a project, Gates was outraged that he then asked for a day off. Allen stepped down from his role as a co-principal after only six years. In resigning, Gates's friend of 15 years explained that he could "no longer tolerate the brow-beating or 'tirades,'" noting that "the verbal attacks you use have cost many hundreds of hours of lost productivity in my case."         

    亨氏将消费者奉为神灵，为他们创造了全新的商品种类，批量生产的食品产品。虽然他的大专教育只学了几门会计课程，但这位天生的工作狂知道比竞争对手领先一步的最好办法是技术创新。他先进的匹兹堡工厂拥有一系列最新的设备和发明（想象一下机械化的腌菜计数器），堪称全美工业家的典范。一位广告先驱把20%的销售额投入产品宣传，这样高的比例在当时闻所未闻。他高度依赖当时的新媒体，比如广告牌和消费者杂志。亨氏也是第一批走向全球的美国企业家之一。1905年，他不顾公司董事会的激烈反对，设立了首个海外生产厂，几年后英国人就开始大量购买亨氏产品；焗豆很快成为了全国必需品。远远早于星巴克(Starbucks)、麦当劳((McDonald's)、甚至是可口可乐(Coca-Cola)，亨氏品牌就已经在全世界范围内获得了认可。(延伸阅读《Squeezing Heinz》。)

    但就像与他同时代的科技巨星一样，他也会让员工感到害怕。亨氏的秘书有一次曾经说：“他会暴跳如雷，而且确实有过这种事；经历过一次的人们都不愿再经历第二次。”"员工们不愿挑战亨氏所说或所做的任何事，即便他错得离谱。亨氏有一次向一位无家可归的人承诺，他可以在公司的食堂免费吃顿饭。亨氏冲向一位员工奥斯卡•史密斯，指着一个他认为是乞丐的人，告诉史密斯让这个人进去。虽然亨氏指的人事实上是公司的销售经理，史密斯感到必须遵照老板的指示。“不要表现出任何异常，”史密斯告诉这位已吃了饭且被惊呆的亨氏管理人员说。“亨氏先生告诉我，你得好好吃顿午餐，而他现在正看着我们。”

    亨氏去世半个世纪后，这家公司不再掩盖他的这个性格缺陷。正如1994年官方公司史的作者所指出：“他日记的字里行间就可以感受到一股火爆脾气。这说明他（亨利）可能有点颐指气使。”甚至连他的家人也害怕他。亨氏的妻子在他们结婚25年后过世，他终生未嫁的妹妹玛丽搬进了他匹兹堡的大宅做管家。据一位家族朋友称，玛丽抱怨说，这位暴脾气的哥哥“从不会理解与他一起生活给她带来的压力”——她最终有过两次精神失常。

    亨氏创建公司整整100年后，哈佛大学（Harvard）辍学生比尔•盖茨与自己在华盛顿州的高中好友保罗•艾伦创办了微软(Microsoft)。正如艾伦在其回忆录《Idea Man》中所述，与盖茨工作常常如同“身处炼狱”。盖茨总是奚落说：“这是我听到过的最愚蠢、最傻X的事。”盖茨是一位严厉的监工，他不能理解为什么不是所有员工都像他那样对工作如痴如迷。曾经有一位程序员连续工作了4天、每天工作20个小时，终于完成了一个项目后，想请一天假，结果盖茨知道后后暴跳如雷。六年后，艾伦就辞去了联席主管的职务。辞职的时候，盖茨这位15年的老朋友解释道，他再也不能容忍那些吹胡子瞪眼或“长篇大论地斥责”，“你的这些言语攻击让我在很多个小时内都没办法平静下来，安心工作。”        

    Workers with a different constitution from Allen sometimes thrive in the face of similar stresses. In his biography Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson pointed out that the late Apple (AAPL) co-founder's legendary rage attacks often had an upside. "People who were not crushed ended up being stronger," he wrote. "They did better work, out of both fear and an eagerness to please." Like Gates, Jobs didn't necessarily mind employees who fought back, as long as their opinions were thoughtfully formulated. (Gates and his longtime deputy and future successor, Steve Ballmer, often went toe-to-toe in vicious debates; many insiders say this sparring was critical to the company's success.)

    And for his part, while Larry Ellison may well be prone to yelling longer than the other tech luminaries -- according to co-workers, some of the Oracle's (ORCL) CEO tirades have clocked in at nearly an hour -- his invective is astonishingly similar in nature. Hyperbole is the trope of choice. When Ellison does not like how an Oracle executive is conducting a sales meeting, he tends to interject, "This is the worst display of sales organization in the U.S. -- no, correct me, in the world."

    Management experts say that this harsh management style is actually not as terrible as it seems -- if handled correctly. They warn that an excessive reliance on the temper-tantrum can create a toxic workplace. Employees also rarely respond positively when they sense that the boss' outbursts are staged purely for effect. But that's not something the super-successful contemporary techies have ever done. It's always been clear that their intense reactions have been directly related to their emotional wiring. (According to Isaacson's book, Steve Jobs would also fly off the handle when he did not like the way a clerk at Whole Foods (WFM) was preparing his smoothie.)

    Likewise, employees also need to see other sides of the CEO's personality. If they begin to associate him or her solely with rages, they are likely to become either overly passive or rebellious. "Unless the tantrums are balanced with something else, the CEO loses all moral authority," says Kerry Sulkowicz, head of the workplace consulting firm the Boswell Group. "Showing some vulnerability often helps." This is an insight that Larry Ellison has taken to heart. In explaining his love of Japanese art, Ellison, who recently hired the former director of San Francisco's Asian Art Museum to curate his massive personal collection, has described the Japanese as both "the most aggressive culture on Earth and the most polite. There is this incredible arrogance combined with unbelievable humility; a magnificent balance." While Ellison might be alone in believing that he has created that same 50/50 balance in the corridors of Oracle, he is capable of humility. After Ray Lane helped turn around the company in the early 1990s, Ellison wrote a heartfelt letter, effusively praising his new hire for putting "the eagerness back into the eyes of a team turned miserable by cynicism and exhaustion." But by all indications, Ellison doesn't give voice to such tender sentiments all that often.

    Joshua Kendall is the author of America's Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy That Built a Nation.

    与艾伦个性不同的员工们在面对类似压力时，可能表现更好。沃尔特•伊萨克森在《史蒂夫•乔布斯》传记中指出，这位已故的苹果（Apple）共同创始人著名的火爆脾气往往收到了好结果。“那些没有被压垮的人们最终变得更强大，”他写到。“出于恐惧和取悦心态，他们的工作做得更好了。”就像盖茨，乔布斯不一定在意反击的员工，只要他们的意见有道理。(盖茨和他长期的副手、未来的接班人史蒂夫•巴尔默在激烈的讨论中总是针锋相对；许多内部人士表示，这种争论对于公司的成功至关重要。)

    说到甲骨文(Oracle) CEO拉里•埃里森，他大喊大叫的时间可能比其他科技大鳄们更长，有些员工称，他有时发脾气的时间可能长达近1个小时，但他的叫骂在性质上惊人的相似。若论修辞手法，那就是夸张。如果埃里森不喜欢一位甲骨文高管组织销售会议的方式，他会插话，“这是美国最糟的销售组织展示，哦，我要纠正自己，是世界最糟。”

    管理专家们表示，如果处理得当，这种严酷的管理风格事实上没有表面看上去那么可怕。不过，他们警告称，如果过度依赖发脾气，可能造就有害的工作环境。当员工们感觉到老板发脾气完全是为了取得发脾气的效果，他们很少会积极应对。但这不是超级成功的当代科技界CEO们的做法。有一点总是显而易见，他们强烈的反应与他们的情绪极限直接相关。【伊萨克森写的书披露，史蒂夫•乔布斯不喜欢全食超市（Whole Foods）一位员工为他准备Smoothied的做法时，他也会不冷静。】

    类似地，员工们也需要看到CEO人格的其他方面。如果他们只将他或她与暴脾气联系起来，他们可能会非常消极或叛逆。“除非发脾气能与其他什么相平衡，这位CEO会失去所有的道德权威，”工作场所咨询公司Boswell Group的主管凯利•夏可维茨说。“表现出一些脆弱往往会有帮助。”这是拉里•埃里森始终铭记的一个深刻观点。埃里森最近雇佣了旧金山亚洲艺术博物馆（Asian Art Museum）前总监来管理自己庞大的个人收藏。埃里森在解释他对日本艺术的热爱时表示，日本文化是“地球上最好斗，也是最有礼的文化。令人惊异的傲慢与谦卑的融合；极佳的平衡。”或许只有埃里森一个人相信他在甲骨文创造了同样的50/50平衡，但他的确做到了谦卑。20世纪90年代初，雷•莱恩帮助公司扭转颓势后，埃里森写了一份情真意切的信，热情洋溢地称赞莱恩让“因怀疑和疲劳而痛苦的团队眼中重新充满了期待。”但总的来说，埃里森很少说出这么动情的话。（财富中文网）

    本文作者是《美式痴迷：美国的建国原动力》一书的作者。

    译者：早稻米