How To Handle Poor Communicators At Work? Meet Nicer!
Continuing on my yesterday’s announcement of the Nicer project, today I want to dive into reasons why Nicer is useful for wellbeing, and we all need it.
Current Situation
As we can read here, people are unsatisfied by their jobs for many reasons. The second on the list is under appreciation, third: lack of communication. Seventh on the list is the boss, eight: the work itself, and ninth: coworkers. Company culture contributes also on the 13th place, micromanagement: 14th place.
All the reasons mentioned can contribute to a toxic, or exhausting workplace, where you don’t like to work. But because we all have to earn money, we are stuck to work in various environments.
Sometimes an environment is so toxic, we have to change work, or take a leave because of mental health. But sometimes there are maybe not so serious, but still stressful situations happening that contribute to our wellbeing.
According to this article, 89% of workers experienced burnout in 2022. It’s a serious issue that’s getting worse with layoffs, the current economic situation, and the things that happened in the last years.
All in all, it puts a lot of pressure on everyone, and takes it toll. Followed by statistics, it means work situations may become worse, or our ability to handle them can get worse.
There are of course some remedies to these problems. Taking a break from work, therapy, effective communication, other activities, changing work etc. are great ways to deal with this.
However, it’s always so far you can go with all of these solutions, and they always come with a cost. Stress takes a toll on health, and solutions take time.
Good communication with boss, clients, coworkers, and generally people is important for a good workplace. With all the issues we’re dealing with now, it may go wrong. Stress, and poor communication leads to more stress, worse productivity team issues, people leaving companies, and a great risk for every business.
So every solution that can contribute to the improvement of communication can lead to better results of a company, team, and wellbeing of people involved.
Why Nicer?
Of course, there are ways to communicate issues with HR, or directly with people. But it doesn’t mean they always work, and not always expected results may be seen. For the reasons mentioned before, and because some people usually don’t change their behavioral patterns even when confronted (even if it usually involves the party to have additional work to be done on themselves).
Usually, what we see if it comes to the communication problems, is teaching recipients of messages, how they can handle messages they find unprofessional, rude, or on a scale of abuse.
It involves being able to use techniques to properly process such messages, and respond to them, proactively take a wide range of actions to improve the communication.
We also see tools, and ideas to employ AI to write messages, so that they follow something we commonly would agree is a well-formed message. It’s really easy to use such tools.
But overall, all the available solutions put an effort on the recipient, and technical solutions make recipient rely on the sender communication skills and using tools available.
The recipient in this situation is left vulnerable to poor communication at the discretion of the sender, and puts the initial responsibility on the recipient to raise attention.
The natural course of action comes with a cost for the recipient, that may deal with his own problems and life in general, and may to face a situation where taking an action is in various way expensive or bad.
It’s not to say action shouldn’t be taken. Actions always should be taken. But sometimes it’s good to have an alternative.
What is Nicer?
So far AFAIK there was no alternative.
Here’s where Nicer comes to play. While we have AI tools for senders, we didn’t have a tool for recipients. Nicer fixes that imbalance and lifts the weight of the communication problems of the sender put on the recipient.
In any circumstance, a recipient can now choose to improve the message sent to him by the sender with the help of AI.
Here are some examples (I made them up):
Before:
I have exams always here. So now, you’ll go from here somewhere else. It’s not a subject for a discussion.
After:
Got exams on repeat here, so how about you shift to a different spot? No hard feelings, just need my study groove. Let’s keep it chill. ✌️
Before:
I need your help with Paint immediately. CONTACT ME ASAP WHEN YOU WILL AVAILABLE!
After:
Hey, quick favor — I need your artsy skills in Paint. Hit me up ASAP when you’re free, yeah? Thanks a bunch! 🎨🚀
Before:
If you think I’ll give you a day off, you are wrong. I don’t care if you’re sick. What we do is more important
After:
Hey, I get you might not be feeling 100%, but we’ve got some important stuff to tackle. Let’s power through it together — your effort means a lot. 🚀💪
Before:
No
After:
Nope, not feeling it right now. Let’s catch up later, cool? ✌️
As you can see, we can get some pretty nice outcomes from using Nicer. I’ve specifically used a gen-Z style for these phrases. But there’ll be possibility to choose any other style adjusted to your personal preferences.
The initial goal for Nicer is to handle all major web e-mail clients like Gmail, Outlook, and messaging platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and all other web communication platforms.
Nicer will be possible to be used without any permission, extremely easy to use, and only you will know you use it (assuming you control your computer, and it’s not under a company surveillance).
Nicer will rephrase messages you receive with the help of popular AI LLM-s. It will also be possible to use your own LLM hosted and used only by you.
Ideally, it will work in all major web browsers. With the help of Nicer, you’ll be able to rephrase messages you receive from poor communicators. That way, it will be easier for you to communicate with them. It will help improve your satisfaction from communication, work, and overall wellbeing in the digital era.
I’ve kicked off the project on Product Hunt! It has 6 upvotes from yesterday. Upvote it! Thanks!
You can join the waiting list for $39/month. Once Nicer will be ready, you’ll get early access to the system. There may be additional perks too!
Cheers!🚀💪
