Good vs. Nice – the ethical financier

Young_Mandela — Nelson Mandela might have always been a good person, but when he was young there were a lot of white people who didn’t think he was very nice.

(Originally published in Quartz on May 27, 2013)

Usually, employers rapidly scan the resume of each job applicant looking for relevant education, skills, and work experience. They select 10 candidates for telephone calls, invite three in for interviews, and hire the one they like the best.

This is a bad way to hire because at best it gets you nice people.

You don’t need nice people.

You need good people.

Good and nice are not the same thing. The opposite of good is bad. The opposite of nice is unlikable.

Nice people care if you like them; good people care about you. Nice people stretch the truth; good people don’t. If you tell a nice person to do something evil, they might do it because they do not want to upset you; a good person will refuse to do it.

You might think you are a good person, but you are fallible, so if you want to avoid inadvertently doing something evil you must surround yourself with good people, not nice people.

How do you separate the good from the nice? If you do what I do, it will be a piece of cake. Continue reading How to hire good people instead of nice people

(by John Beck, author of Good vs. Good)

When I was in my early 30s with three young kids at home, I renounced my childhood religion—Mormonism. My father tried to talk me out of it by asking how else my children would learn moral behavior. “How will you reinforce what is right and wrong without going to church? I don’t know how I’d have raised you kids without Sunday school and the youth programs.”

I pointed out to him that we both knew good church-going Mormons with a lot of variation in their moral compasses. I particularly focused on a relative of ours who always held top church positions, but who we knew had swindled and cheated his way through life.

I also told my dad that I believe people learn ethics and how to live their values by example—more so than through any instruction they get in Sunday school or church sermons. What I didn’t say to him, though I was thinking it, was that I had always respected him for his natural honesty. I don’t remember getting a lecture from him on the topic, but I’ve tried to be really truthful my whole life—to be like him.

So when the topic of teaching ethics in business schools arises, I have always demurred Continue reading Someone’s gonna get spanked: teaching ethics