How to be a Nice Coworker

I want to save my energy for life outside of work.

I have a finite amount of time between work ending and needing to sleep and I want that time to be amazing every single day. And I often succeed.

How do I do this? By making work a pleasant place to be.

By ending my workday on a highnote I don’t have to spend any energy getting positive before my real day starts.

But how do you do this if you don’t know where to start?

Follow these tips to see if any of them fit your work style.

I genuinely believe that being kind and appreciative is a learned skill. We all at one point were taught how to say thank you. Or worked in environments where everyone decompresses by saying the worst thing that happened about their day.

It’s a choice, and hopefully this helps you make the choices that keep your energy up - and the energy up of everyone around you. Remember, you having a positive ending to your day can help someone else have a positive end to their day too.

I’ve listed these steps from least to most challenging to implement.

I hope they help you!

It can be on a notebook, notepad, a spreadsheet, or anywhere that you will regularly reference. I use an excel spreadsheet but it’s only because I love spreadsheets and ran out of engineering paper a while ago.

Each day write one good thing that happened. It doesn’t even have to be incredible. You could list that you had fewer emails than usual. Maybe you made a new email forwarding or deletion rule that worked really well for you. It’s a win.

At the end of the week review this list. It may have a trend or pattern, it may not. What it does contain is good stuff that will help you end your week on a high note. What a good way to start your weekend!

Remember that list we made of the best things of the day? Sometimes that good thing happened because of somebody else. Let them know how they helped you by sending a thank you email (bonus points if you cc their boss).

I save my thank you emails to send by 2:45PM to make someone’s day but not make them think that they have end of day work. It’s definitely overthinking it but I don’t like getting emails too late in the day even if it’s to say thank you. You’ll learn different coworker’s styles as you go. The point is to help build a culture of thank you even if it is only coming from you to start.

Rarely does one person do every piece of a project. Even rarer do I see every member of a project team get credited directly to their work. I often hear shoutouts in a presentation, or sometimes a thank you slide, but I like to take this to the next level.

When you make a presentation, use the footnotes to note the name of the person who assisted in that actual slide (ex. Credit to Jane Doe in Data Science for building this dashboard).

Using the footnote strategy means that if the presentation is shared and you aren’t present to talk to it that the person who did the work still gets credit and visibility without needing a shoutout. Maybe they’ll even send you a thank you email after hearing about how you gave them credit!

Tone can be so challenging to convey with an email.

One way to manage this is to use ChatGPT and ask “How would you feel if you received this email?” You could also do what I do and send important emails to yourself first. Something about seeing it in my inbox let’s me read it with fresh eyes to see if the tone is clear. But I spend a huge amount of effort on email and tone and ensuring people feel appreciated and their time is valued when I message them.

I’m not asking you to do that. But I am asking you to not immediately assume negative intent that may not be there. Don’t get me wrong, there are absolutely negative messages, and those should be escalated to HR. But I’m talking about the message that forgets to say “please” or the message asking for something due on your birthday that they didn’t check to see you have off on the calendar.

Assume people have good intentions when asking for help and partner with them to clarify how you can help.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this! I hope any of these tips help you. Please let me know in the comments if there is something you do to be a nice coworker so we can all benefit from eachother’s experiences.

Have the best day =)