It seems there's more to it than that [1]. Altman did a surprisingly good job of cultivating a "nice guy" image among the tech crowd, but I personally don't buy it.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/what-sam-altman-did-so-bad-h...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/what-sam-altman-did-so-bad-h...
But as an engineer that also never learned this kind of narrative control, I too am struggling at where I can learn this from. Any hints are appreciated actually.
Sam Altman on the other hand has decades more experience is that playing field.
The narrative that works in your head is not necessarily a narrative that works publicly.
And some people can't really understand or perceive other people's intentions and motivations... and some people can do it but not in real time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test
Some people are good at following other people's eye gaze, some are not.
And then there is Machiavellian intelligence, which roughly scales with (real) intelligence -- but some people aren't good at it.
So I think for PR or whatever the same thing would work, simply deciding to become skilled in this area and you will naturally begin to pick up the patterns already present in your reality.
People are people. Virtually anyone can be prickly or have some opinions you might not like. Show me the reality. I can take it because I don’t expect humans to be cardboard comic book caricatures.