No More Mr. Nice Guy makes an important argument: some people use niceness as a strategy. They help, accommodate, avoid conflict, and suppress their own needs while carrying an unspoken expectation that this behavior will eventually earn love, appreciation, sex, loyalty, or approval. Robert Glover calls these covert contracts, and recognizing them can be genuinely useful.

But the framework also has a limitation. Not every generous, available, responsive, or highly involved person is trying to create a debt. Sometimes generosity is simply generosity. Sometimes frequent communication comes from genuine interest. Sometimes initiative is part of a person's character. The fact that another person experiences those qualities as pressure does not automatically reveal the motivation behind them.

There is an important difference between saying, "I feel pressure when you do this," and saying, "You are doing this because you expect something from me." The first describes an experience. The second assigns a motive. Both people can be telling the truth about their own experience while still interpreting each other incorrectly.

When Another Person's Reaction Starts Shaping You

This becomes more complicated when the response to someone's presence, initiative, or availability is repeatedly negative.

Imagine that one person naturally communicates often, responds quickly, suggests plans, offers help, and shows enthusiasm. The other person repeatedly reacts with irritation, withdrawal, criticism, tension, or accusations of being pushy. Over time, those reactions become information. The first person learns that certain behaviors lead to conflict.

So the behavior changes.

Messages are delayed even when there is a natural impulse to reply. Initiative is reduced. Enthusiasm is moderated. Plans are approached cautiously. Offers of help disappear. Sometimes ambition, confidence, or even visible happiness is toned down because it appears to create discomfort.

From the outside, this can look like healthy adaptation. Sometimes it is. Relationships require adjustment. But repeated negative reactions can also condition a person into constantly monitoring themselves. Instead of asking, "What do I want to do?", they begin asking, "What reaction will this produce?"

That is a very different psychological state.

The person may eventually become quieter, less spontaneous, less available, and less active, not because these changes reflect genuine growth, but because they have learned that showing more of themselves creates relational tension. This is where adaptation can quietly become self-suppression.

Ironically, this may be closer to the real danger described in No More Mr. Nice Guy than generosity itself. The problem is not necessarily, "I will do nice things so that you reward me." It can become, "I will modify myself so that you do not become upset with me."

Being Nice and Being Good Are Not the Same Thing

A good person can say no, disappoint someone, express preferences, maintain boundaries, and leave a relationship that does not work. Being good does not require constant accommodation.

This creates an important distinction. Generosity without boundaries can become unhealthy, but boundaries do not require becoming less generous. Availability does not require dependency. Initiative does not require control. Wanting closeness does not automatically mean being needy.

The useful question is not simply whether someone is "too nice." It is whether they are still acting according to their own judgment and values, or whether their behavior has become organized around preventing another person's negative reactions.

Not Every Mismatch Is a Pathology

Two people can also simply want different kinds of relationships.

One may enjoy frequent communication and regular time together. Another may need much more distance. One may naturally initiate plans and conversations. Another may prefer low-frequency contact and greater independence. One may experience involvement as affection while another experiences the same involvement as pressure.

There is a temptation to turn these differences into diagnoses. One person becomes needy, pushy, or a Nice Guy. The other becomes avoidant or emotionally unavailable. Sometimes those descriptions are useful. Sometimes they hide a much simpler explanation: the two people are poorly matched.

Compatibility is not only about whether two people can tolerate each other's differences. It is also about whether their natural ways of relating are broadly welcome to each other.

A person should be able to hear, "I need space tonight," and respect it. But if their ordinary level of affection, initiative, availability, or presence is repeatedly treated as a problem, the answer may not be to keep reducing those qualities until the relationship becomes tolerable.

It may be to recognize that the relationship requires too much self-reduction.

Expectations Are Not Covert Contracts

The Nice Guy framework can also blur the difference between expectations and transactions.

"I did this for you, therefore you owe me" is a transaction.

"I want a relationship with affection, initiative, reliability, emotional presence, and mutual effort" is a standard for compatibility.

A person can help their partner without expecting repayment for that particular act while still expecting the relationship as a whole to be reciprocal. They can give freely and later notice that the relationship is consistently one-sided. They can respect another person's need for distance while deciding that the resulting level of closeness is not enough for them.

That is not necessarily entitlement. It is choosing what kind of relationship one wants to participate in.

The Question Behind the Nice Guy Label

The most useful question may therefore be less about becoming "less nice" and more about understanding what is driving the behavior.

Is generosity being used to obtain approval, prevent rejection, or create an invisible debt? If so, the book's criticism is valuable.

But if generosity is genuine and another person consistently reacts badly to the amount of presence, initiative, or closeness being offered, a different question becomes necessary:

Is this behavior actually unhealthy, or is it simply unwelcome in this particular relationship?

And when repeated negative reactions begin shaping behavior, another question matters even more:

Am I learning healthier boundaries, or am I learning to become smaller?

Those questions leave room for both sides of the problem. A person can overwhelm someone without intending manipulation. Another person can genuinely feel pressured without correctly understanding the motive behind the behavior. Both people can have legitimate needs and still be fundamentally incompatible.

The goal is not to stop being nice. It is to become kind without self-abandonment, available without dependency, assertive without aggression, and generous without hidden contracts.

Then the remaining task is not to make those qualities acceptable to everyone.

It is to build relationships in which they have somewhere to land.

I have been thinking about this question more and more.

AI can generate a 20-page document in a minute. I cannot read it in a minute.

If the document matters, I may need an hour to go through it carefully. I need to understand the logic, check whether assumptions make sense, catch inconsistencies, notice missing context, question suspicious claims and make sure that, in the end, I am comfortable putting my name behind it.

And somewhere in that process, something strange happens. I start feeling slow, unproductive, sometimes even stupid.

Not because I suddenly became worse at reading or thinking, but because the speed of the producer has changed dramatically while the speed of the reviewer has not.

AI writes at machine speed. I still understand, judge and take responsibility at human speed.

And I think this discrepancy is becoming one of the more important problems in how we use AI.

Production became cheap. Verification did not.

For a long time, producing a substantial document required substantial effort.

A project plan, strategy document, research report or technical proposal did not simply appear. Someone had to think about it. Someone had to write it. Someone had to structure the argument. The cost of creating the artifact was some sort of a filter.

If you were going to spend two days writing a detailed project plan, you probably had some incentive to think carefully about whether the project deserved a detailed plan in the first place.

AI changes that.

A few sentences can now become twenty pages. A rough idea can become a roadmap. A meeting note can become an implementation plan. A vague strategic direction can become milestones, workstreams, KPIs, risks, timelines and responsibilities.

This is incredibly useful (sometimes).But it also creates an illusion: the amount of text can make it look as if the same amount of thinking has happened. It has not necessarily happened.

Sometimes what we are looking at is simply a very convincing expansion of a small number of assumptions. And those assumptions may be wrong.

The bottleneck is moving

I observe that AI is not removing work, but it is moving work.

The friction does not disappear. It moves downstream. It moves from the person creating the document to the person who has to read it. From the person generating the analysis to the person who has to verify it. From the manager creating the plan to the team that has to execute it. From the person generating ten ideas to the people who have to evaluate which one is worth pursuing.

This creates a disbalance: generation bandwidth is increasing, while verification bandwidth still largely stays the same (human level).

And verification is not just reading. It is understanding, checking, comparing, questioning assumptions, looking for contradictions, knowing which details matter and which details are missing, deciding whether something is good enough, and finally taking responsibility for the result.

That work is still expensive.

“Just summarize it” is not always the answer

The obvious response to information overload is summarization. Summaries are useful, but they only solve certain kinds of problems.

If I am reviewing a contract, architecture decision, compliance document, technical specification, financial model or project plan, the important risk may be hidden in exactly the detail that disappears from the summary.

Sometimes I do not need a shorter document. I need a correct document. I need to know whether every important requirement is represented. Whether two sections contradict each other. Whether a claim is supported by evidence. Whether a recommendation follows logically from the assumptions. Whether the AI quietly invented something because it sounded plausible (aka “AI hallucination”).

There is no compression trick that completely removes this responsibility. Not everything can or should be summarized.

This becomes even more problematic inside organizations

The personal version of this problem is annoying. The organizational version may be much more serious.

Imagine a manager has an idea. The idea is described to AI in a few paragraphs or even sentences. A few moments later, they have a professional-looking project proposal with objectives, phases, timelines, stakeholders, KPIs, risks and implementation steps.

It looks good, mature, and actionable. It may even look like a significant amount of work has already been done.

Then the document gets sent to the execution team: “Here is the plan. Let's implement it!”

Except the AI does not know the organization in the same way the people working inside it do.

It does not necessarily know the technical debt.

It may not know the political constraints.

It may not know which other projects are consuming the same people.

It may not understand why something similar failed two years ago.

It may not know which customer will refuse the change.

It may not know that one apparently simple dependency is actually a six-month problem!

The production cost for the plan may have dropped from days to minutes. The execution cost has not. And now we can create plans faster than organizations can realistically absorb them.

This is where AI productivity can become dangerous. One person saves three hours. Ten people downstream inherit thirty hours of review, clarification and execution work.

Locally, productivity increased. Systemically, it may have decreased.

AI also creates false precision

There is another danger that I think deserves more attention.

AI is EXTREMELY good at turning ambiguity into structure. You give AI a vague idea and it will happily return phases, workstreams, ownership models, metrics and timelines.

Before AI, a half-formed idea often looked like a half-formed idea. Now it can arrive as a polished 15-page document.

Humans are influenced by presentation. A well-structured plan feels more authoritative than a messy paragraph, even when both are based on exactly the same amount of evidence.

The answer cannot be to make AI slower

None of this means we should slow down AI generation.

The real question is: “How do we increase our ability to consume, verify and act on AI-generated information without giving up the speed of production?”

I think this is where a lot of the next generation of AI tools and working practices needs to focus. Not only on helping us create more, but on helping us confidently understand what has been created.

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To not be only negative and critical, here are some ideas.

1. We need verification-first AI, not generation-first AI

Most AI are optimized around the question: “What do you want me to create?”

We also need solutions optimized around: “What do you need to trust?”

Former NotebookLM or now Gemini Notebook is going in this direction, but it is still very limited and needs quite a lot of time to get organized, structured, to deliver expected outcomes. Perplexity and Claude also have similar solutions, but they are mainly focused on the academic and research usecases.

2. We need more “diffs” and fewer complete rewrites

AI loves rewriting entire documents!

Humans are terrible at repeatedly re-reading entire documents.

Software engineers have used diff-based workflows for decades because reviewing changes is much easier than repeatedly reviewing the entire system. Knowledge work may need more of the same.

3. Organizations need to price the downstream cost of generation

This is probably the cultural change I find most important and difficult to execute.

Before generating a large artifact, we may need to ask:

• Who is going to consume this?
• Who needs to verify it?
• Who needs to act on it?
• How much attention will that require?

Because the true cost of an AI-generated document is not the twenty seconds and the tokens required to produce it. The true cost includes all the human attention it creates downstream.

This applies even more strongly to projects. If AI makes it ten times easier to create initiatives, organizations should not automatically run ten times more initiatives.

Execution capacity did not increase tenfold. Neither did change capacity nor the number of hours in everyone's week.

Perhaps organizations will eventually need something like an attention budget (!) alongside their financial and headcount budgets: “Do we have the organizational bandwidth to absorb/execute what we are about to generate?”

4. We should review by risk, not by word count

A 30-page document often means reading 30 pages. That might be the wrong interface. Not every sentence carries the same level of risk. Some paragraphs are explanatory while others contain critical assumptions.

AI could help classify those differences. Instead of summarizing everything, it could create a "review map". This might help the human reviewer to not only read faster, but to allocate attention better. And this is a very different problem.

5. We need better ways to generate incrementally

Perhaps the answer is not always to generate the full 20-page document immediately.

A better workflow might be progressive, iterative. Validate the assumptions, agree on the structure, generate some critical sections, review them.

This might seem like slowing down the process, but it reduces this immense immediate load of information on the downstream consumers. That may reduce the amount of beautifully written material that later nobody reads.

The next productivity problem

The first phase of the AI productivity revolution is obvious.

Create faster.

Write faster.

Code faster.

Analyze faster.

Plan faster.

The next one - how do we UNDERSTAND faster (without becoming careless)?

How do we verify faster without blindly delegating judgment back to the same system that produced the answer?

How do we increase organizational output without overwhelming execution teams?

How do we preserve accountability for something that is produced so effortlessly?

And how do we make sure that the ability to create infinite documents does not simply create infinite work for everyone else?

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AI has made information production almost frictionless, but human attention is still finite.

I imagine that many tools of the next few years will not be the ones that help us generate even more information, but rather the ones that help us decide what deserves our attention, expose what needs verification, preserve context and make machine-generated work easier for humans to trust.

At its core the idea is interesting and makes a lot of sense, but I have noticed that some people are misusing and abusing this principle and I would like to share my observations with you.

This idea of committing should come from those who disagree:

“I am part of the team, I have an opinion but I see that the majority is leaning towards another opinion. Maybe I don’t know something. But as a team player I want my team to succeed so I commit to the common decision and make sure that I do my best to support my team.”

But when those who disagree are reminded of this principle, it is a polite way to silence people and push some decisions. It is not about commitment, it is a new fancy way of forcing people to comply.

When “disagree and commit” becomes “shut up and comply”

The core idea is amazing - debate is encouraged, but once a decision is made, everyone gets behind it. In practice, however, it’s easy for this principle to become a shield for poor leadership.

“Disagree and commit” is used not as a way to build consensus or foster trust, but as a way to shut down opposition quickly. Disagreeing becomes a performance, not a meaningful part of the process.

This is especially visible when leaders:

• Seek minimal input before deciding - then expect blind commitment.
• Use the phrase to cut off uncomfortable conversations.
• Fail to circle back on why decisions were made, creating confusion or resentment.
• Rely on hierarchy instead of rationale when faced with dissent.

The result - a culture of compliance, not commitment

When team members are consistently asked to “commit” without being genuinely heard, they start to disengage. Over time initiative decreases and “commitment” becomes surface-level compliance.

Disagree and commit works if you actually listen.

To use this principle well, leadership must first create real psychological safety:

• Listening with the intent to understand, not just to reply.
• Being open to changing course when new information emerges.
• Acknowledging when a decision is unpopular - and explaining why it still stands.

“Disagree and commit” should never be used as a shortcut to avoid tough conversations. It’s a high-trust tool that demands maturity, humility, and transparency from leadership.

Other noticeable disadvantages of misusing this principle:

• Risk of superficial buy-in. People may pretend to commit but remain disengaged or subtly resistant. That can lead to low morale if used without real dialogue.
• May discourage future input. If disagreements are consistently overruled, employees might stop speaking up, which creates a perception that dissent isn’t truly valued.
• Depends heavily on trust. Requires strong psychological safety - without it, disagreement might be seen as disobedience. In low-trust environments, it can feel authoritarian.
• May hide organizational dysfunction. Over-reliance can mask deeper misalignments in vision or values. People may disengage over time if their views rarely influence outcomes.
• Uneven power dynamics. Junior or marginalized team members may feel unable to disagree in the first place. This creates pressure to conform, especially in hierarchical set-up.

“Disagree and commit” sounds decisive and efficient, but if it’s not built on authentic dialogue and mutual respect, it’s just another way to say: “My way or the highway.”
Message to leaders/managers/bosses: don’t weaponize a good principle. Make sure your team knows their disagreement isn’t just tolerated - it’s valued.

And how many times have you heard this word, and in what context? What were people trying to say (or avoid saying) to you by adding “just”?

This word is so subtle, so almost unnoticeable, yet it carries meaning - an important one. And when you're aware of it, you hear those sentences differently, you see people differently, and you understand yourself better too.

I won’t go into the science or too much bla-bla about this. I’m sure you know what I mean. The goal of this post is to remind you, maybe increase your awareness of this topic, and perhaps help reduce the number of unnecessary “justs” in the world.

How “just” shows up

I’ve noticed that “just” often appears when:

• Someone wants something from you but is trying not to appear pushy: “Just wondering if you had a minute…”
• Someone is minimizing a concern or problem, almost asking others to ignore it: “It’s just a minor issue…”
• There’s a lack of empathy or discomfort with emotion, and the speaker wants to move on quickly: “Just get over it…”

In each of these cases, “just” does subtle damage. It erases urgency, masks emotions, and mutes assertiveness - especially in professional settings where clarity and confidence matter most.

Why it matters

Words shape perceptions. Overusing “just” can:

• Weaken your message – “I just have a question” sounds less important than “I have a question.”
• Signal insecurity – it suggests you're unsure or hesitant about your own request or idea.
• Minimize contributions – “It was just a small thing” downplays value and effort.
• Add clutter – often, it’s simply filler that adds no meaning.

This isn’t about being harsh or robotic. It’s about being intentional.

So next time you find yourself about to type or say “just”, pause. Ask yourself: Am I using this word to add meaning to my speech?
And when I hear you say “just” next time, I’ll think that it’s being used intentionally - that it has meaning, and not just as filler.

When the work is fulfilling, the hours fly, and we feel alive - it feels like we’ve cracked the code.

But what happens when the thing you love becomes the only thing you have time or energy for?

The answer isn’t as romantic.

The hidden cost of passion

It’s easy to spot burnout when it’s caused by stress, overwork, or toxic environments. But there's another, a subtle and quite counter-intuitive form of burnout: the kind that comes from loving something so much that you stop listening to your limits.

We skip meals, postpone sleep, decline social invites, and ignore signals from our body.

All in the name of flow or commitment. Until we cannot any more.

Ask yourself: Are you fueling your energy or exhausting it?

Defining “balance” and “happiness”

These words are used a lot - but what do they actually mean?

Balance isn’t doing everything equally, it’s investing intentionally (!) across the key areas of your life:

• Physical health
• Relationships
• Mental stimulation
• Rest and recovery
• Joy and play
• Meaningful work

And happiness? It’s not a constant high. It’s a long-term sense of alignment - where no one part of life is overfed while the others starve.

If you're thriving at work but disconnected from your body, exhausted, and isolated - the math doesn’t add up.

“Just pause” isn’t always that simple

Advice like “take a break” or “just slow down” can sound unrealistic to people juggling different real-life activities:

• a demanding job
• caregiving
• financial responsibilities
• side hustles out of necessity, not just ambition

Pausing doesn’t have to mean stepping away for a week in the mountains. It can mean interrupting autopilot. Even for five minutes. Even once a day.

Start where you are.

Small breaks matter. Small check-ins matter. Balance isn’t about being perfectly rested - it’s about being aware of where your energy is going.

The trap of mono-channel living

Sometimes focus becomes tunnel vision. You pour everything into your job, your project, your business - and little by little, the rest of life fades.

This isn't an imbalance. It’s mono-channel living.

Your world narrows to one stream: one metric, one identity, one source of feedback. And even when you're “winning,” it starts to feel empty. Why? Because humans are multidimensional. We need more than one channel to feel alive.

Being exceptional at one thing while neglecting everything else isn’t sustainable - it’s quite fragile, especially in the long run.

Reverse Pomodoro: the art of checking in

Most likely you are familiar with the Pomodoro technique - set a timer to focus, then take a break. But what if we flipped it?

Instead of timing your focus, time your awareness.

Set a recurring reminder - not to stop working, but to ask:

• Am I still present in my body?
• Am I physically okay?
• Is my environment supporting me?
• What’s going unnoticed?

This Reverse Pomodoro approach isn’t about forcing breaks - it’s about preventing unintentional neglect.

It helps you stay connected not just to your output, but to your overall well-being.

What if you’re in a sprint season?

Let’s be real: sometimes you need to push. Product launches, deadlines, big transitions - they require intensity. That’s okay.

Balance doesn’t mean avoiding sprints. It means balancing them with recovery.

High performance isn’t about constant output. It’s about rhythm.

Even Olympic athletes train in cycles. Why should your mind and body be different?

Practical micro-pauses

Here are low-friction ways to stay aligned without stepping off the treadmill entirely:

• Micro-Sabbaths: One hour or half-day each week with no output goals. Just space.
• Weekly reflection question: Is this still joyful - or just familiar?
• Add one non-productive activity into your week. Something pointless, playful, and personal.
• Schedule novelty: New inputs (a book, a walk, a conversation) recharge creative energy.

Loving your work is a gift - but when love becomes fixation, everything else starts to wither. Real fulfillment isn’t about choosing one thing over another. It’s about staying whole while you pursue what matters.

Pause - not because you're weak or uncommitted, but because you're wise enough to build longevity into your passion.

Before my master’s studies, I knew little about behaviorism. Now I can’t unsee it. It’s everywhere.

At its core, behaviorism is the study of human actions through observation, without intervention. It’s about noticing how people act in different situations, under varying circumstances.

There is one thought that keeps popping up in my head over and over again.

Imagine the following scenario.

Step 0: People behave a certain way. You observe.

Step 1: You define a goal and make subtle changes to influence the behavior.

Step 2: The behavior changes (you have reached your goal).

Step 3: Now I come in and observe those same people - already influenced by your actions. And we’re back at Step 0.

Where did it begin? Where does it end? How much of our behavior is shaped by people before us - those who observed and adjusted something with a goal in mind? When I observe, am I working in harmony with their intention, or unknowingly against it?

To be clear, when I talk about change, I don’t mean manipulation or malicious intentions. I mean thoughtful, respectful design decisions - reducing friction, resolving frustrations, increasing relevance, and ultimately creating value.

As a Product Manager, this understanding is crucial. It reminds me that I’m not just observing isolated behaviors - I’m seeing the ripple effects of many previous influences, many of which I’ll never fully know. Behavior isn’t born in a vacuum - it’s a sum of experiences, environments, and countless behavioral nudges along the way.

This doesn’t apply only to user research or behavioral studies. It applies to everyday life. Every person in front of you is a complex story - shaped by moments, learnings, and invisible adjustments that brought them to this behavior, here and now.

Recently, our team was discussing a new technology, and one of the team members wasn’t familiar with it. Jokingly, someone said, “Just watch a few YouTube videos!” That escalated into a fun challenge to find the most absurd video title claiming to teach the tech in the least amount of time.

We’ve all seen those videos. They’re everywhere. And I have to admit: sometimes I’ve watched them, only to feel more confused than before.

In a world where we’re bombarded with more content than we can ever possibly consume, it’s no wonder we try to optimize how we learn. Fast, bite-sized, efficient. But here’s the thing: learning takes time. Mastery takes patience, perseverance, and real effort.

Sure, some people have natural talent and can pick things up quickly. But for most of us, becoming good at something requires more than a flashy video and a couple of hours of surface knowledge.

This obsession with quantity over quality shows up in many parts of life, and education is no exception. It’s especially concerning when people list skills on their resumes after watching a couple of videos, and get ahead of those who’ve put in real work. It can feel a lot like the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

I am fascinated by the story of Jiro Ono, the legendary sushi master, who has spent his entire life perfecting his craft. Of course, not every role requires that level of lifelong dedication, but his story is a powerful reminder: real skill doesn’t come from shortcuts.

Now, I don’t want this to sound like just a complaint. If we want to change this trend, we, as consumers, have power too. We can choose quality over quantity (food with less plastic in packaging or less chemicals, clothes out of natural or recycled materials, and so on). Whether it’s supporting creators who produce meaningful, well-researched content or skipping over content that promises the impossible, we can vote with our views. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I often hear colleagues and friends describe their workplaces as “fun” and that’s usually mentioned as a reason they enjoy their jobs and feel engaged. On the flip side, when a workplace isn’t fun, it’s often a reason people start looking elsewhere.

That got me thinking: what do we actually mean by “fun” at work? And is it truly at odds with being professional?

The perception of humor

In many organizations, fun is viewed as frivolous, childish, or even unprofessional. I believe that the ability to bring lightness and humor into serious environments is not a sign of incompetence — it’s a sign of confidence, emotional intelligence, and strong professionalism.

When you hear the word “fun,” what comes to mind? Laughter, jokes, play, spontaneity, smiles.

Now think of “professional.” Competent, reliable, organized, knowledgeable… maybe even strict or serious.

It’s easy to see why these two ideas feel incompatible. But is that perception based on reality — or just some beliefs or fears?

Humor requires maturity and confidence

Using humor at work doesn’t mean being a clown. It means being emotionally intelligent enough to understand:

• The emotional climate of the room
• The timing and tone that fits the moment
• The ability to read others and adjust accordingly

In short, it takes both humility and a healthy ego to use humor well — without turning it into a performance or a distraction. Not everyone is naturally good at this. And that’s okay. I think humor at work should be treated as a skill, not just a personality trait.

Humor is cultural

Humor doesn’t travel equally across borders, industries, or teams. A joke that lands perfectly in a Berlin startup might feel awkward, or even offensive, in a Tokyo headquarters or even among the colleagues from Japan working for that same Berlin startup. Humor is highly cultural, and perceptions of tone and appropriateness vary widely.

Working in an international or multicultural team, it always helps to pause before dropping that punchline and ask yourself:

• Is this joke universally relatable?
• Could it confuse or alienate someone from a different background?
• Would observational or light self-deprecating humor be a safer choice?

Positive and negative humor

Not all humor is equally humorous.

• Positive humor builds trust, encourages inclusion, and helps people manage stress.
• Negative humor — like sarcasm, ridicule, or self-deprecating jokes used to mask discomfort — can erode psychological safety, damage confidence, and strain relationships.

A company influences humor culture too

Humor is often seen as an individual trait, but companies play a big role in shaping the culture around it. Here are some examples from my experience and what I have seen around, of how organizations can help create space for healthy humor:

• Provide trainings on emotional intelligence and inclusive communication
• Support no-blame culture on all levels
• Foster psychological safety so people feel okay speaking up if a joke crosses a line
• Promote more “lightweight” attitudes — through rituals, social spaces, or humor-friendly onboarding

When humor is supported intentionally, it becomes a strength — not a liability.

The pressure to be funny

While humor can be powerful, it’s not always the right tool. And not everyone is comfortable using it. Some pitfalls I have experienced and that felt off:

• Forced humor. Feeling like you always need to “keep it light” can be exhausting
• Avoidance. Using humor to dodge difficult conversations can block real connection
• Misfires. Even good intentions can backfire. What matters is how you handle it — with humility and accountability

Humor should never be mandatory, performative, or a substitute for meaningful dialogue.

What the research says

Even science backs this up. Here few minutes of googling I have found VERY MANY articles, especially in the last decade, which are researching the influence of fun at workplaces and most of those which I have read support the idea that funny teams work better and fun at workplace makes people happier (difficult to argue with this one 🙂).

Professionalism isn’t about being serious all the time. It’s about being effective, respectful, and competent. And sometimes, the most effective way to lead, collaborate, or build trust… is to laugh.

And I am grateful to my current team and the people who I have worked with before, for being fun and making my work journey so much nicer. Thank you! ♥️

What about you? Do you have fun at work?

Another interesting article on this topic: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fun-vs-professional-debate-alexia-stafrace-eznmf/

The more I work with AI models, the more I realize something unexpected: Prompting AI isn't just a technical skill — it's a communication masterclass.

When you write a good AI prompt, you learn to:

• Be clear about your expectations
• Provide context and background
• Anticipate misunderstandings
• Remove ambiguity
• Refine based on feedback

Now imagine applying these same techniques to everyday human conversations.

Think about how often miscommunication happens because we assume the other person knows what we mean — when in reality, we're not being specific enough.

By practicing how to guide an AI to the outcome we want, we can also learn how to better guide conversations with colleagues, clients, friends — anyone.

The bonus? It creates space for empathy. When you focus on clarity and context, you're not just trying to be understood — you're also trying to understand.

So maybe learning to prompt AI well is really just training for what we all want more of: deeper human connection.

What's something AI has taught you about real-world communication?