Good-ish

2 min read · Jan 12, 2024
New Power Labs

About five years ago, I sat in the audience at TEDxBCG in Toronto, listening to social psychologist Dr. Dolly Chugh. What Dr. Chugh said continues to resonate with me. 

Research has shown that many of us care deeply about being seen as a good person and feeling like a good person. If someone questions it — perhaps by questioning a joke we shared or calling our workforce homogenous — we go into the red zone. We work really hard to protect our good person identity. 

We often think of doing good as binary, we are good or we are bad. This fixed mindset exists in the social sector, where we don’t often question policies, practices, and outcomes, as we are good people, with good intentions, doing good work.

With this binary mindset, can we get better and do better? Are we setting ourselves up to drive the greatest potential impact? Are we ensuring that our programs create no harm? Can we recognize blind spots and address bias? Or, are we stuck in an approach focused on checking boxes? Our attachment to being good people limits our ability to become better. An either-or definition removes the space to learn.

According to Dr. Dolly Chugh, the first step to being a good person is letting go of being a good person. Instead, we should embrace being a good-ish person. 

A good-ish person still makes mistakes but tries to learn from them. We expect that we will make mistakes, so we become better at catching them – whether they are our blind spots or unconscious biases. Owning up to our mistakes puts us in a vulnerable position, yet, through vulnerability, we learn and grow. 

This has helped me over the last few years — I’ve embraced being a good-ish person and let go of being a “good” person.

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