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But ’tis a common proof
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face.
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE1
The ultimate test of our goodness isn’t whether we do the right thing when our character is in question; it’s whether we do good whenever we have an opportunity to do so. Do you have the courage to embody truth, compassion, and wholeness even when no one is watching? Remember that goodness is a proactive commitment to making yourself and others the fullest versions of who you can be.
You couldn’t have arrived where you are today without the support and graciousness of those people who helped you along the way. As Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar reminds us, do not turn your back on the goodness and generosity that’s helped get you where you are today. Even if you genuinely believe that you’ve received little help from anyone, you have an obligation to take your own success and pay it forward.
When we talk about goodness, and what it means to be good—a good parent, a good mentor, a good friend, a good business leader—core commonalities emerge that speak to a deeper, shared definition of goodness. In the end, to be good is to help ourselves and others become our fullest selves, in a manner that is true to who we are and compassionate to others, and in the service of a quest toward wholeness.
This is the core of our Good People Mantra and Goodness Pyramid. You may want to keep your personal and business personas separate, but as Zappos’s Tony Hsieh once told me, it’s best to eliminate the boundary between our private selves and public roles. “It is way too hard and confusing to try to be two different people,” he explained.2
Ultimately, typecasting ourselves can seriously prevent us from becoming the fullest possible versions of ourselves. When my ZEFER cofounder Kaming was ill and in the hospital, a good friend of ours told me, “Hey, let’s be careful not to define him by his disease—he’s still the same stubborn, witty, and ruthlessly smart Kaming we’ve known all these years.” Whether we’re the parent or the child, the boss or the employee, the mentor or the mentee, we should remember that rigid roles are usually neither useful nor practical. Like Zimbardo’s Stanford prison example so clearly illustrated, we’ll revert to “prisoner” or “guard” roles and become disconnected from who we really are. As Kurt Vonnegut once said: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”3
What binds us together is the simple fact that we are all human. There can be no pretending here. At the most elemental level, there are things like our capacity for humility, self-awareness, integrity, empathy, openness, generosity, love, respect, and wisdom. While we strive for these things, to some extent we already possess them. We can access these values when we break from rigid roles and return to what is most foundational in life. So much of good leadership is seeing our position as an opportunity to serve. For servant leaders, the title is unimportant; what matters is the good we do for the people around us. If leadership truly is about how we interact with other people and imprinting our goodness upon them, then all of us are capable of becoming good leaders.
When we can forget our titles and lower our guards, we can more easily see the common truths that bind us together. While words like “goodness” and “good people” seem at first to lack precision, in truth they precisely capture the most quintessential decision of leadership: whether to treat others as equals deserving of our respect, and in doing so enable them to achieve their goals and move closer to who they want to become.
In this final section, we will discuss what’s possible if we choose this goodness for ourselves and others. What might this change mean for us collectively? What change can we ignite together? We explore practical and tailored ways to increase our goodness in our daily lives, like asking questions that help us become better judges of character. If we devote more time and energy to choosing to surround ourselves with good people, we will multiply the number of opportunities to drive positive change.
This change starts with a commitment to changing ourselves and each other. Perhaps over each of our lifetimes, we’ll be able to help ten people—maybe even more—to realize their potential and the power of goodness. It is this human factor, which resides in each and every one of us, that empowers us to share and collectively grow our goodness. Inside a business, the human factor is manifested in a set of lived values and an enduring culture. If we extend our reach even further and imprint this goodness on the many people in our lives, we will begin to glimpse and feel how truly human leadership can catalyze real and amazing change.