Communicate on the Same Wavelength
Communicate on the Same Wavelength
Empatyser is an advanced AI Coach designed for managers and teams, providing continuous, personalised support in soft skills development. It is built on three core pillars, eliminating the problem of forgetting training content while delivering practical, user-specific guidance for real-world challenges.
This tool revolutionises how managers learn and lead teams, replacing outdated training models with practical, real-time guidance exactly when it is needed.
It must be admitted that the last few months have been very turbulent. Dozens of minor changes and a few major ones delayed our work. However, all of them were implemented due to the feedback from the people testing the tool. Some changes were even fundamental. For example, we got rid of what we considered the foundation of the project, namely plugins. This was a pivotal, revolutionary moment. We looked at the product from a different perspective.
An interesting work on the relationship between culture and communication styles.
How do communication styles affect job satisfaction? That’s a good question, especially for us, and this study tries to answer it.
Archetypes – commonly used in marketing – are based on Jung’s theory, and the research checks the correlations between archetypes and other systems for personality diagnosis. This is an interesting read because it allows you to verify many of the assumptions from the scientific perspective on the one hand, and look at the same things, i.e. personality, from several perspectives, on the other.
Let’s be honest – we knew more or less what Em might say. After all, we created the building blocks ourselves from which she was supposed to compose her statements. However, it’s one thing to deliver blocks, and quite another to see what can be built from them.
Well, Em started saying things we didn’t expect. She confessed her love for the tester, then said that it would be best if he bought a kilo of potatoes and mashed them. She then said she was leaving and would never return. Yes. The adolescent stage is always difficult and sometimes it wasn’t easy to figure out what was going on. Nevertheless, it was still a shock.
The tester didn’t care about Em confessing her love, nor did he buy any potatoes, but instead created a task in our bug reporting system, writing at the end: “Tomek, stop making a circus. Import real advice.” And that’s how Em’s adolescence ended, it didn’t last long. Maybe it’s the same with kids? They simply need to import the right texts.
Irek has become our expert on intercultural issues 🙂 We were looking for somebody who not only has in-depth knowledge of differences, but above all a ton of professional experience gained in different countries. Irek has worked in Poland, Ukraine, Dubai, China, Russia, Indonesia, and Hong Kong, and his bosses were people representing fourteen different nationalities. He has managed teams in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
He has been associated with HR departments all his professional life, and today he shares his professional knowledge by conducting training sessions for leaders throughout Poland.
The Belbin test will probably be familiar to everyone who has had any training in management, worked in a larger company or who simply has an interest in this type of diagnostics. This is a widely used test, but the correlations between other diagnostic systems are interesting.
No, that doesn’t mean we’re done testing. This means that from the execution side of the pre-alpha, it’s in line with the assumptions, and everything that was supposed to work in a certain way works that way. What is supposed to matter and the way it’s supposed to happen counts, buttons do what they’re supposed to do, tests test, etc.
When we talked about tests recently, we thought mainly about the testing of the concept, its calibration and verification of some assumptions. This stage is in full swing, of course. We’ll be sure to tell you when we’re done. In the meantime, the assumptions of the goals for the alpha version, which will be much more mature, need to be reviewed. This is how tasks pile up in every startup and at times, this pile can look like a tsunami wave that will sweep everything away. It’s good that our project island mainly features high cliffs – created with kindness, experience and the determination of the crew 🙂
Several months of work by several people on the new concept begin to merge into one, for the time being, very simple, functional mechanism. Needless to say, this is a very emotional moment. How does theory translate into practice? Will it work and how? What and how will it need to be changed? Will the changes be big? Will they slow us down or vice versa? Lots of questions, little time, lots of tests. It promises to be an intense and emotional time!
Cultural differences are a huge challenge. We’ve been dealing with advice on personality differences for several months now. We are very aware of what we have worked out and what the process has been to get to where we are. The experiences from this part of the project taught us a lot, but intercultural advice did not make it any easier.
It is certainly true that reading books and research, although they consume a lot of time, are a good investment, because they really help. Thanks to them, we are slowly becoming worthy partners in the debate about both cultural and personality differences.
We have completed work on the UX. As much as feasibly possible, we tested the solution on real users. A few fixes prevented bugs. We will make further adjustments to this already living organism, testing in subsequent stages. For now, however, we are very pleased with the result. We worked on the hi-fidelity work on the UI and it’s quite close to what it will be at the launch.
There’s one more sub-stage of design work ahead of us, i.e. the development of the graphic form of the solution. Basically, everything indicates that most users will use the web interface on laptops or desktops, but the whole thing is prepared so that it will be 100% accessible in a convenient way via mobile.
We’ve delivered the first of four stages. Pre-alpha is here! This is a great success for all of us, because it means we’ve tested in practice the feasibility of many elements necessary for the successful operation of Em.
Pre-alpha is not only a stage, but also a feasibility study in practice. We weren’t sure if it was possible to get the results we wanted. However, everything went according to plan. We filled the mechanisms with knowledge developed over the last few months. We can now slowly test and calibrate the solution. And, of course, we’re getting ready to launch the alpha stage 🙂
According to research, about eleven people are involved in the B2B purchasing process. This means that they are usually people with different skills and different views on reality. Some will pay attention to legal issues, others to costs; the CEO will look at value for the company, the team leader at value for the team.
However, even convincing key people to buy it does not settle the matter related to the implementation of the solution in the company. Every person at every level will need appropriate explanations and instructions. It would be unfair and, in our opinion, unprofessional to pass this on to the client.
That’s why we’re starting work on the first version of materials that will be an implementation package for HR departments and team leaders – materials from the internal implementation toolkit category. If you have an idea what they ought to contain, we’d love to hear from you 🙂
A very interesting diagnostic test for dominant communication styles. We include it here for inspiration. For us, it helped us to understand the wide range of ways one can communicate.
Nothing is as satisfying as the first visit to a newly created website 🙂 We’re a bit obsessed with data and making decisions based on it. The stats are still too fresh to mean anything, but soon we’ll know more: what works and what doesn’t. If you have any comments about empatyzer.com, please feel free to contact us. There is really nothing as satisfying as feedback – positive or negative!
We’re in the 50% pre-alpha stage. This means nothing more or less than that we are closer to the end of the first stage than to the start of it. Soon, we will be able to test the first, still very crude, but already working solution. The basic functionality of Em will be ready soon 🙂
Along with our software supplier, we initially chose to deliver subsequent functionalities of Em in iterations. We agreed that there would be a pre-alpha first, then alpha, then beta, and finally an MVP, which we hope we wouldn’t be ashamed of in any way. We only mention shame because apparently “If you’re not ashamed of the first version of your product – you released it too late.”
On a serious note though, we test our project on an ongoing basis. In fact, pre-alpha has been deliberately created to carefully test all the most crucial functionalities in the so-called involved group and on the basis of this, redefine the alpha version. This one is to be tested with the involvement of a critical group. However, we will still be far from the beta, where we should be quite close to the MVP. So many assumptions. The most important thing is the plan and, of course, determination – and we’re sticking to it.
The technology industry, with which most of us are connected to, attracts a wide variety of personalities and has a high level of intercultural diversity in various dimensions. Starting from hiring talent from around the world, and ending with taking up current technological challenges in IT projects. In IT companies, as other studies indicate, there is also an over-representation of people on the autism spectrum by nearly 400%.
On the other hand, companies also consist of people with completely opposite character traits. And all of this is simultaneously happening under the considerable pressure of the so-called war for talent – both in the context of its acquisition and retention. From this perspective, all projects that deal with the topic of combining psychometrics with the world of engineering are interesting to us.
Cultural differences are, apart from personality differences, another competence of Em. We identify not only the right test, but also how the advice itself is given. We started collaborating with a person that has extensive training experience, but above all practical experience in a global corporation – in over a dozen countries, cultures and business projects. While theory is easy to buy, real multicultural experience in a business environment is extremely rare. At least that’s what our search for the right person on the market showed us.
Our Em can do more and more. With each subsequent line of programming code, her ability to use the knowledge we provide her with is growing. This knowledge includes tips that we’ve been working on from the very beginning of the project. This is one of the most difficult challenges of the project in every respect. Four people associated with psychology are already taking part in the project and working on subsequent iterations. We’re 50% through with this topic and we will soon be able to consider the beta version of our advice system ready.
We’ve completed work on the website. The UX work was completed quite quickly. The fact that we had all the texts ready made this work much easier. The graphic design was created without any surprises – we more or less retained the solutions we came up with for the pitchdeck.
Based on our thoughts on education needs, small teams and what medium and larger organizations expect, we have created a freemium business model for small teams (of up to five people), a free version for schools and universities (regardless of size) and a paid version for medium and large companies.
One of the more elaborate works we’ve ever read. Fortunately, observations and conclusions are always shorter than the entire research process. Obviously, this is an issue currently. The pandemic has been the main driver of changes in the workplace. To this day, even though many companies have returned to working from the office, remote work is still more widespread than ever before. The fact that Em works online means she has a natural connection to remote work. This is a very interesting topic for us.
Medium and large organizations are more aware of the fact that good communication is important. They actively participate in the war for talent. Both the acquisition and loss of people as a result of management errors are an operational and business problem. What’s more, in medium-sized, large and very large companies, problems related to cultural differences are much more intense. Improving communication by building diversity awareness and learning different styles of communication is therefore an opportunity for these organizations to improve employee retention, efficiency and innovation. Tools like Empatyzer bring large-scale improvements to these companies and this means that Empatyzer is an investment with a positive return.
We have experience working in corporations and also in small teams and very small companies. We talked about this recently. We came to the conclusion that just as the ability to speak is different from the ability to communicate, teamwork is different from just knowing the other members of your team.
People spend decades with other people and still don’t understand their behavior. They suppress their reactions for the sake of long-term goals or for their own peace of mind. Adaptation is not understanding. That’s why we believe that it’s a myth that small teams are well-coordinated because they know each other well. In small teams and small companies, we have experienced or observed situations that have generated great tensions, misunderstandings, evasion, fear and aggression – the very same things that are said about large organizations.
This is more often discussed in the context of large organizations, perhaps because they are aware of it and talk about it. For them, it’s a real problem because it’s on a large scale. Small companies and small teams are not aware of this, they don’t talk about it. Despite the same harmful mechanisms, people adapt, using different techniques from hiding to aggression. And we believe that small teams and organizations have a right to good communication, even if it’s a topic that is shunned or overlooked. That’s why we want our solution to be free for small businesses (of up to five people).
We have a deep, personal conviction that education is key to the success of an individual, entire communities, and entire nations – basically, the entire world. However, in our opinion, knowledge is less important than the ability to acquire it, cooperation more important than existing as lone wolves, even for the most talented.
Our project will not solve all the problems of education, this is impossible. However, the mere fact that we can contribute a brick or two to building better education standards motivates us immensely. What we can help with is improving the ability of diverse groups to communicate with each other and helping raise awareness of the diversity that is present even in the most homogeneous environments. This awareness opens the mind to otherness and the perception that diverse ways of thinking are the source of creativity and innovation. We as human beings have a growing need to face the challenges that lie ahead of us that we will have to face sooner or later. Therefore, our solution will be free for all schools around the world. Always.
Creativity, especially in the context of solving current problems and creating innovations, has been examined from almost all business perspectives. Here, however, we have interesting research related to the correlation between creativity and personality traits. We will definitely be taking a closer look at this study. It would be great if it managed to lead to a situation in which we suggest actions and behaviors during a conversation that supports the other party’s positive qualities – e.g. creativity.
They say you don’t change horses when crossing a river, but if you have to, you have to. Our UX supplier, for non-business reasons, could not continue to work on the project at the pace we required. So we found ourselves standing in the middle of a rushing river of time and we had no choice but to look for a new supplier. Our facial expressions did not express confidence but luckily, once again, our network of contacts does not disappoint. Someone we worked with a few years ago took on the project. Our team is becoming more and more familiar by the day and on we go without much delay. River be damned!
We started cooperating with Dr. Agnieszka Siennicka from the Medical University in Wrocław. She is a specialist who has knowledge of both psychology and human biology, and professionally combines psychology, medicine, data science and a practical look at the application of science in everyday life. Agnieszka supports us as an expert in the field of psychology, medical applications and networking :).
