Avant-garde dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt once said: “Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them,” and it’s clear that Steve Ballmer chose to completely ignore those words as he made his final speech as Microsoft boss at the weekend.
The teary-eyed 57-year-old danced to Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”, and declared in front of more than 13,000 Microsoft employees that the company would “change the world again”.
Known as “Employee 30”, Ballmer had worked for the technology giant for 33 years and was chief executive of the firm from 2000. Due to retire within the next 11 months, but leaving before time was up, Ballmer was subject to cries of “we love you” from the crowd packed into Seattle’s 17,000-capacity Key Arena.
Despite successful launches for the X-Box game console and Windows XP, the 100,000-strong firm has seen its share price whittled by more than half in the past decade, with fierce competition mounting from the likes of Apple and Google. Ultimately, the pressure seems to have tolled on Ballmer, but he didn’t leave without having a quick swipe at Microsoft’s competitors – calling Apple “fashionable” and Amazon “cheap”. Ballmer added that Google was focused on “knowing more”, while Microsoft was about “doing more”.
During Ballmer’s tenure, he was renowned for hyper-enthusiastic presentations and one particular incident in which he jumped up and down in a sweaty and spontaneous outburst – now labelled the “monkey-man” dance.
Leadership and strategy consultant Doug Sundheim once wrote in the Harvard Business Review that being “too emotional in business can create problems. It clouds objective analysis, screws up negotiations, and leads to rash decisions”.
However, he concluded that “showing too much emotion is far less of a problem than the opposite — showing too little.” He argues: “Emotions are critical to everything a leader must do: build trust, strengthen relationships, set a vision, focus energy, get people moving, make tradeoffs, make tough decisions, and learn from failure. Without genuine emotion these things always fall flat and stall.”
Of course, there have been some pretty memorable examples of emotional outbursts scuppering leaders. As Newcastle United manager, Kevin Keegan ranted against Sir Alex Ferguson during the 1995/96 football season on live TV while responding to questions after a match against Leeds United. Keegan got very angry about Fergie’s claim that teams tried harder against Man Utd than they did opposite Newcastle.
“I’ll tell ya,” fumed Keegan, “and you can tell him now, he’ll be watching… we’re still fighting for this title. And I’ll tell you honestly, I will love it if we beat them – LOVE IT!” The rant was widely perceived as a meltdown and an instant gift to Fergie. Despite being 12 points clear at the top of the league at the time of the rant, Newcastle ended up losing the title to Manchester United.
Several years later, US presidential hopeful Howard Dean ruined his chances of bagging the top job with a gravelly and effusive spot of triumphalism in the wake of the 2004 Iowa Democratic primary.
Then there is billionaire entrepreneur Marc Cuban, who as the owner of NBA team the Dallas Mavericks often finds himself in more hot water more than the players. Cuban’s rants at referees and the league itself have led him to rack up fines of more than $1.7 million – with comments including a famous critique of the NBA’s manager of officials, Ed T Rush: “He couldn’t even manage a Dairy Queen.”
Steve Ballmer’s management style in the spotlight
Image of Steve Ballmer courtesy of imagemaker / Shutterstock