Xbox's Sarah Bond Initially 'Clashed' With Phil Spencer When Working Together

Xbox President Sarah Bond has been working at Microsoft HQ for a few years now, and while the current leadership team featuring Sarah is likely more settled these days in terms of working with one another, it sounds like it wasn't always plain sailing at first.

In a huge new Bloomberg profile on Xbox's president, we learn that Sarah and boss Phil Spencer actually butted heads a little bit when they first started working together. Apparently, Sarah's "push the envelope" and "not let something go" approach "was new" to Phil and some of the other execs over at Team Xbox. It was said that Phil and Sarah "clashed" before figuring things out and moving forward.

Here's an excerpt from the article on this:

"At first, Bond’s and Spencer’s personal styles clashed, and the two sought out Microsoft human resources chief Kathleen Hogan for coaching, an unusual step that Hogan found admirable. Bond recalls Spencer and others at Microsoft telling her that her tendency to “push the envelope” and “not let something go” was new to them.

She says she found that Spencer’s communication style sometimes left her unsure of what he actually wanted from her. At one point, she stuck a Post-It note to her computer with some advice about interacting with him. “I’m not being paid to do what he says,” it read. “I’m being paid to do what he meant."

The segment goes on to say that this happening was perhaps understandable — given that Sarah had been brought in to shake up the Xbox business — but it's an interesting tidbit nonetheless. It's been a good seven years since Sarah was brought into the fold now (before eventually becoming president last year), so it's safe to assume things have smoothed out quite a bit since the early days!

While this profile doesn't go into many specifics of what's happening right now at Microsoft, clearly the Xbox team is in another moment of transition with everything going on with multiplatform releases, etc. It'll be interesting to see how Sarah and co. navigate all of this in the coming years, but we do like the sound of the Xbox president's introduction to a next-gen console, so we're still excited about that and its potential.

Anyway, the full feature is definitely worth a read if you're interested in the current Xbox president and her rise and role over at Team Green. There's plenty of Phil talk in there as well, which is always welcome in our book!

Is this something you expected to hear, or is it surprising to you? Drop your thoughts on it down below.

[source bloomberg.com.]