New to Nice Work? Start here 👋
New to Nice Work? Start here 👋
A human-oriented workplace awaits you.
Welcome to Nice Work! We’ve penned this introductory edition as a digital meet-cute for you to know more about what we’re doing on Substack, understand what you can expect from our newsletter, and get a glimmering of why we care so much about being nice at work (really, so much).
So, what is Nice Work?
Nice Work is a newsletter and place for humans who want to:
Work in a nice environment
Work with (and be) nice people
And do nice work.
While simple, we all know this isn’t easy to find. Toxic workplaces, hustle culture, and unattainable perfectionism pervades work and makes it difficult to show up as a human. But human, nice-to-be workplaces are indeed possible to find. And if you can’t find one, you can create one. 💜
What will we share?
The editions we have planned so far will cover:
Elements of nice workplaces - how to build them or find them (as well as how to deal with not-nice workplaces, bosses, clients and people).
How to do nice work - new approaches to your work that will make you stand out no matter the sector (and how to cope when you make mistakes or don’t deliver your best work).
Being a nice person - how setting boundaries, cultivating independence and getting to know yourself will keep you sane and strengthen your relationships in and out of the workplace (we’ll also cover where you might need to work on being a nicer human - we all have room to grow!)
And more! As we hear from you, we’ll adapt our subjects and topics to reflect the challenges and success stories you’re experiencing.
About the Writers
Rachel Pipan
Official bio
Rachel is a communications expert and strategic advisor for visionary companies and people. In 2020, she co-founded Maneuvre, an Amsterdam-based firm that provides PR/comms advising, growth and operations direction, and CEO coaching. Across her career, including her tenure at Maneuvre, she’s worked with CEOs and globally renowned technologists to make metaverse, AI, crypto, blockchain, Web3, and other inventions more accessible to humans.
In founding Maneuvre, her mission was to create a way of working that could deliver incredible results without requiring the burnout and lack of boundaries endemic to most startups and agencies. She set out with her co-founder to create processes and training that encouraged entrepreneurship, boundaries and independence, cultivating a culture of “nice people, nice work.” As this program continued to expand, Rachel and Jade realized more people, especially outstanding young women, could benefit from the same mentorship. As such, the Nice Work newsletter was born.
Rachel holds degrees in strategic communications and PR from Auburn University and American University. Still, she remains convinced the best education she’s received has been from 1) the humans she works with, 2) the entrepreneur journey, and 3) doing the work (including making IRL mistakes)!
Why did I start Nice Work?
Unsurprising, given my career choice, but I love words! Words create our reality, and how we see the world evolves as our language evolves.
Unfortunately, nice has evolved into an unsweetened-bowl-of-cornflakes-type adjective. It is easily substituted for “good enough,” “passable,” or even “fine.”
And it is no coincidence that it is also an adjective used for and with women, especially young women. “She’s a nice girl,” or “Be nice.” So “nice” also becomes synonymous with “quiet,” “easy-going,” and “unquestioningly obedient.”
If words create our reality, then speaking confidently, taking up space, and asking questions won’t be seen as nice. Instead, it’ll be “confident,” “headstrong,” or “incisive.”
If you are delivering excellent, correct, complete and appealing work, the compliment coming your way will be “strong” or “powerful”, not necessarily “nice.”
These are good descriptors - I am definitely not here to denounce other great words. But “nice” is weakened when you remove its association with these sparkling, complimentary, and positive connotations.
So….if you’ve been socialized to be “nice” above all, what does this mean for you? How can you speak confidently and stand up for yourself if it conflicts directly with being “nice”?
How can you set totally reasonable boundaries (with people and yourself) if “nice” people don’t do that?
And how can you know “nice” is a good trait if it isn’t ever used that way?
The easy answer is - don’t be “nice.”
Leaving aside the impossibility that presents for humans who have been told to be, are expected to be, and punished if they are not, nice - what if you WANT to be nice?
I’m in this camp because I know that “nice,” in a person, can mean warm, patient, understanding, kind, intuitive, empathetic, “treats service staff like humans,” as well as “direct” and “respectful.”
At work, “nice” can be “excellent,” “outstanding,” “strong,” and “capable.”
Nice is admirable. Nice is aspirational. And nice is just a nice way to live.
So, how can you cultivate work-and-self-esteem that embraces who you are and still remain employed and respected as undeniably worthwhile and valuable?
By reclaiming the word nice and redefining it through your actions. Nice can be (respectfully) disagreeing with someone, it can be setting boundaries about when you’ll answer emails, and it can be giving honest and direct feedback to a colleague about something to improve. Just as much as “nice” can be outstanding work, kind and empathetic conversations, and patient phone calls.
When we founded Maneuvre, we first set a rule: we would do Nice Work for Nice People. My co-founder and I had each worked with cruel, impatient, critical, and burnout-inducing people. We wanted to avoid becoming this at all costs. If we could deliver nice work, we would earn a reputation as a standout agency, we could carefully curate who we work with.
[Also, it worked better than just saying, “no assholes.” While that also works, we didn’t want to set the bar THAT low.]
But as we grew, I realized that everyone (from employees to clients to contractors) had a different understanding of nice. To some, nice meant “pushover.” To others, “nice” meant only positivity - so there was no room for accountability when things went wrong.
I could write 1,000 more words on the misunderstanding of “nice,” but the point is: I wanted this newsletter to exist so more people could reclaim, and work to redefine, what nice is.
The hill I will defend to the end is that “nice” is worth protecting because it is one of the best words to describe what we owe to one another as humans.
Our Guest Writers:
Jade
Jade is a senior freelance copywriter, yoga teacher, and personal growth coach facilitating one-on-one and group exploration around self-reflection, integrity, accountability, and presence.
After nearly a decade in corporate marketing, working with some of the leading wellness + beauty brands in the industry, Jade found that the corporate environment remained an especially challenging place to hold healthy boundaries and break long-taught patterning that keeps us in cycles of self-sabotage, burnout, and the unsettling sensation that we aren’t running our own lives.
Through her yogic studies and self-exploration, Jade has developed a deep belief that the way we show up for ourselves reveals a lot about the capacity in which we show up for anything. When we focus on well-being, stoke our own fire, act from authenticity, and communicate our needs, we have the opportunity to build stronger relationships, cultivate mutual respect, champion ourselves and those around us, and produce work with a throughline of integrity that’s vital for sustainable growth in the workplace and all categories of life.
Ultimately, Jade’s work revolves around the internal workings of the human experience. She’s passionate about helping others best show up for themselves by building a collection of tools as unique as each person she works with.