- Sam Altman says his researchers are still fighting back at conferences — and that’s a positive for him.
- Altman has previously written that he opposes bureaucracy and supports promoting open communication.
- Experts stress the importance of polite disagreement to maintain team trust and effectiveness.
Sam Altman explain As a high-profile CEO, he distanced himself from some friends and colleagues — with one key exception.
“I spend most of my time with researchers, and I guarantee you, go to a research meeting with me after that and you’ll just see disrespect. It’s awesome,” Altman said in an interview said. Bloomberg Businessweek Published on Sunday.
His comments echoed Startup CEO His leadership style has been discussed previously.
In a 2023 blog post, he wrote: “Every time you see bullshit and bureaucracy, fight it and let others fight it too.” He added, “Don’t Let the org chart prevent people from working together effectively.”
In a 2019 post on his blog, a few months ago he became OpenAI CEOAltman writes, “One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for truly taking care of the people you work with.” Leaders should push employees to “accomplish more than they think they can,” he said. At the same time without burning out.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Altman also talked about government bureaucracy hinder the development of artificial intelligence, return and his work schedule in 2023 after he was briefly fired by the board.
He said his executive team meets every Monday for three hours. He said that during the week of the Bloomberg interview, he also had six one-on-one meetings, a research session and several meetings with engineers over two days to discuss “building computing capabilities” and brainstorming products.
He said he communicates far more internally than with people outside the company.
“I’m not a great inspirational email writer, but I have a lot of one-on-one group meetings and then write a lot through Slack,” Altman said.
The power of polite disagreement
Polite disagreements with co-workers and even top bosses, workplace experts say — are critical to keeping the team running smoothly.
Tech CEOs, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, have stressed the importance of fostering a culture of disagreement at the top sex.
In a 2016 letter to shareholders, Bezos wrote about how employees should embrace his “disagree and commit” strategy, which is a way of saying: “Look, I know we disagree on this. But will you gamble with me on this?
“It’s not one way,” Bezos added. “If you’re the boss, you should do the same. I don’t agree, but always commit.”
Staying silent can have pitfalls, says Joseph Grenny, a corporate trainer and co-author of the workplace strategy book Crucial Conversations.
When interviewed in 2016 Harvard Business Reviewhe recommends considering the “risks of not speaking up” — which could be project meltdowns or losing the team’s trust — and weighing those risks against the consequences of saying something.
One way to do that, Greaney says, is to ask your manager for permission to disagree by saying something like, “I know we appear to be moving toward what we promised in Season 1. I have reasons to think this isn’t going to work.” I want to elaborate. Can you tell me my reasons?
CEO coach Sabina Nawaz, who spent 15 years as senior director of human resources at Microsoft, wrote in a 2023 LinkedIn post postal Avoiding disagreements can do more harm to relationships than speaking them out loud. She recommends finding allies to attend meetings and ask others for their ideas.
“Coworkers may lose trust in you when they realize you asked them to execute a wrong plan or waited until the last minute to raise objections,” Nawaz wrote.