Work & career
Workplace communication is a set of specific conversations most people never rehearse: asking for a raise, disagreeing with your boss, speaking up in a meeting, saying no to more work. Volo has sixteen lessons on those exact moments and AI roleplays where you practise them against a manager character who pushes back the way real managers do.
4.9 ★ App Store · 7-day free trial
What you'll learn
Show up well with managers, peers, and in interviews. Every lesson ends with one small step to try in the real world.
Stay quiet, regret it, repeat. The loop has an exit, and it opens in the first ten minutes.
Lesson · 3 min
Raises rarely arrive unasked. And the ask itself is a skill.
Lesson · 3 min
Companies expect you to negotiate. Not negotiating signals less confidence than negotiating does.
Lesson · 3 min
Three common patterns, a fix for each, and the line where it stops being a people problem.
Lesson · 3 min
What's easy in week one is weird by month six.
Lesson · 3 min
The first 90 seconds of the interview, and the questions you bring to the last five minutes. Interviews are won at the bookends.
Lesson · 4 min
Stop calling it your meeting if you're not willing to actually lead it.
Lesson · 3 min
Reading takes more effort than writing. Make your message easy to scan.
Lesson · 3 min
Your manager can only advocate for what they know about. Most of the work is making it easy for them.
Lesson · 3 min
The power gap doesn't mean don't disagree. It means disagree differently.
Lesson · 3 min
How you take feedback decides whether you'll get more of it, and almost everyone gets less than they should.
Lesson · 3 min
People hold feedback back until it piles up, and the pile is harder to hear than any single piece.
Lesson · 3 min
Every yes felt safe in the moment. The pile of them is how people burn out.
Lesson · 3 min
Politics is just who has influence and how decisions actually get made. Knowing that isn't manipulation; not knowing it is naivety.
Lesson · 3 min
If the only time you contact your network is when you need something, you don't have a network.
Lesson · 3 min
The relationships built at work outlast the job. People who treat the exit as a reset lose years of accumulated trust.
Lesson · 3 min
Early, specific and with an option attached. Managers can only act on what they know, and a problem raised with a proposed fix reads as ownership, not complaint. Volo's Managing Up and Disagreeing With Your Boss lessons give the structure, and the Telling Your Manager You're Overloaded roleplay lets you practise against Sam, a manager who deflects at first and warms up when you stay calm and concrete.
Book the time, bring the evidence, make one clear ask and then stop talking. The ask is a skill and most people have never done it once, let alone practised it. Volo's Asking for a Raise lesson walks through the case, and the roleplay puts you across from Dana, who says "tough quarter" and "let me think about it" until you point to specific contributions. Run it three times and the real meeting will feel familiar.
Speak in the first ten minutes. The longer you wait, the higher the bar feels and the more the loop of staying quiet and regretting it repeats. Volo's Speaking Up in Meetings lesson is free and gives you three low-cost ways in, and the What To Say library has a line for being interrupted mid-point. Correcting Your Boss in Front of the Team is the advanced version.
Practice it out loud
Each roleplay puts you in a scene with a character who pushes back the way real people do. Type or speak your lines. A coach tells you what landed.
Dana, your manager
Hard
Make your case for more
You've been here 18 months. Your last review was strong, you've taken on extra work since a teammate left, and you still haven't had a real raise. You've booked time in your one-on-one with your manager Dana to make the case. You sit down.
AI roleplay · 3 to 5 min
Sam, your manager
Medium
Push back on too much work
Your manager Sam just dropped a third major project on you this month, on top of two you're already stretched to finish. Taking all three on means something gets done badly. You're at his desk to tell him the workload isn't sustainable and to ask him to help prioritize.
AI roleplay · 3 to 5 min
Paul, your manager
Hard
Fix the error, save face
In a team meeting, your manager Paul just confidently told everyone the client deadline is the end of the month. You know it's actually next Friday, two weeks earlier, and the room is about to plan around the wrong date. You need to correct him now, in front of everyone, without making him look foolish.
AI roleplay · 3 to 5 min
Lena, your manager
Easy
Ask for the time you need
You need next Friday off to deal with a personal errand. It's an ordinary week, nothing urgent is due, and you have the leave to spare. You catch your manager Lena at her desk to let her know.
AI roleplay · 3 to 5 min
Alex, your manager
Medium
Make your case to the room
In a team meeting, your manager Alex just said everyone needs to be in the office five days a week starting next month. Hybrid has worked fine for a year, your best focused work happens at home, and a couple of others looked uneasy but said nothing. Alex asks if there are any thoughts.
AI roleplay · 3 to 5 min
What to say
Steal them or make them yours. Every script comes in warm, playful and direct, with a note on why it works.
Free script
They've proposed something you think is wrong, everyone else is nodding, and the cost of speaking up feels very visible while the cost of silence is invisible.
“Can I push back on one piece of that? I might be missing context, but I see a risk there and I'd rather raise it now than in the retro.”
Free script
You were mid-point, someone talked over you, and now the conversation is moving on with your sentence still hanging there unfinished.
“Hold that thought, I want to land my last point first. Then I'm curious where you're going with that.”
Script
You've earned it, the market agrees, and yet scheduling this conversation feels harder than the year of work that justified it.
Three ways to say it (warm, playful, direct) plus why each works. Unlocks in Volo.
Script
You broke it, missed it, or sent it to the wrong person. It's going to surface eventually, and the clock on 'they found out' versus 'you told them' is running.
Three ways to say it (warm, playful, direct) plus why each works. Unlocks in Volo.
Questions
Yes. "Tell Me About Yourself" covers the first 90 seconds and the questions you bring to the end, and Negotiating an Offer covers what happens after the yes.
Each manager character has a persona with specific triggers. Dana gets uncomfortable if you compare yourself to coworkers; Paul needs to save face in front of the team. The AI plays the persona and a coach grades whether you hit each goal.
Professional Networking is in the track, and the What To Say library has a script for running into a senior person at the coffee machine.
Async Communication is one lesson: how to write messages people can scan. The rest of the track is about conversations.
Volo is free to try for 7 days on iPhone. Start with the free lessons, then unlock everything when you are ready.
4.9 ★ on the App Store · iPhone · 7-day free trial