Asana

When I was younger, I was more abrasive; being right was more important than being kind. I've been at Asana for 3+ years now, and I think it's been the biggest growth opportunity of my life. Being surrounded by people who are so smart they'd be intimidating, but they're incredibly nice, helpful, and humble? That rubs off on you. You realize that teams genuinely work better when they trust each other to be kind. And it doesn't mean you can't be 100% honest. I've had co-workers give me incredibly constructive feedback, but if they hadn't been as empathetic, I probably would have gotten defensive rather than really learned from it.

I could go on about the mission, about the food, about the distributed responsibility system. But I think that for me, the one more salient factor is a culture that doesn't just pay lip service to kindness and empathy, but practices it, trains it, and hones it. And if studies about the effects of psychological safety on teamwork are to be believed, it might just be our secret weapon.

It becomes really, really hard imagining working somewhere that doesn't have the same passion for inclusive culture and doesn't use Asana to get work done. I don't even know how that would work!

Keep investing in our culture, keep up communication training, and absolutely keep setting the tone for a kinder, mission-driven way of working.

More places could really stand to learn from how you do things.