Good People

Good People is a book about business and leadership which explains the importance of focusing on and building integrity in the workplace, including why it’s so vital if you want your company to be successful, how you can get it, and why an emphasis on competencies alone won’t cut it anymore.

The first key point to understand is that goodness comes in two types. You have goodness in competency, which is what most employers focus on when hiring.

But the second, and more crucial to business success, is goodness in values. This refers to the culture of your company, and although it might seem like a soft skill, you have to focus on it if you want to grow.

Growing this vital component of your business requires an understanding of the Goodness Pyramid, which has three pieces:

Truth, which is the foundation Compassion is in the middle Wholeness is the peak

Let’s begin with truth. It’s foundational because without it, everything falls apart. When you set a standard of trust, however, everybody works in unity and harmony.

The author teaches three components of truth, including:

Humility, which means being willing to admit that you don’t know everything. To develop this, you need to have a curious mind for new ideas and a willingness to learn. Self-awareness, or the ability to understand your strengths and weaknesses, which makes you true to yourself. Try meditation, writing, and seeking feedback to grow this quality. Integrity, which refers to how well your actions match what you speak. Expanding your integrity requires carefully analyzing the values you want to have and how well you’ve lived them each week.

Truth is important, but it’s not everything. It can be cold and hard sometimes, and without some additional guiding principles, this can cause problems. That’s where compassion comes in as the middle of the Goodness Pyramid to provide balance. Another word for compassion is selflessness. It means examining how others feel, think, and experience the world. When you practice it, you can see others more clearly and know how to best help them progress. In the cutthroat business world, however, people often see this trait as weak. Traditionally, you have to be ruthless to be professional and do things like weed out the worst people. That doesn’t work if you want to succeed long-term though. Compassion is a catalyst for productivity and motivation as it creates a healthy work environment that people like being in. To develop compassion, utilize these three traits: Openness, or fighting negativity and letting optimism shine. Develop it by using the 24×3 rule which means waiting 24 seconds, minutes, or hours before responding to another person’s idea. Empathy comes next, and this means…