Good People

Can goodness be learned, practiced, and measured—not just admired? In Good People, Anthony Tjan argues that goodness is not moral idealism but a trainable capacity for better leadership and living. He presents a coherent architecture for cultivating good character and results through truth, compassion, and wholeness—the three levels of his Goodness Pyramid. Drawing from business, sports, and personal experience, Tjan turns virtue into a practicable framework you can operationalize in decision-making, hiring, mentoring, and self-development.

The Goodness Pyramid: An Ethical Operating System

At the foundation sits Truth: humility, self-awareness, integrity. Without truth, no durable enterprise or relationship can stand. In the middle is Compassion: openness, empathy, generosity—the relational engine that makes truth humane. At the summit is Wholeness: love, respect, and wisdom—the integration of the previous two layers into sustained fulfillment. Each layer builds upon the one beneath it, much like Maslow’s hierarchy maps needs. (Note: this analogy signals that doing good follows developmental order, not spontaneous inspiration.)

Truth clarifies; compassion connects; wholeness completes. Together they offer a vocabulary for evaluating character and culture with precision rather than vague moralism.

Moving from Ideal to Practice

Tjan transforms these layers into what he calls the Good People Mantra: five principles you can apply daily. They are: (1) be people-first rather than idea-first; (2) help others become fuller versions of themselves; (3) commit to values before competencies; (4) find balance within competing realities; and (5) practice goodness habitually, not episodically. These principles convert aspiration into action—turning character from performance into process.

For instance, WD-40 under Garry Ridge exemplifies people-first culture, mentorship, and enduring performance. Tsun-yan Hsieh’s journals reflect the long-term discipline of helping others grow. Sydney Finkelstein’s "superbosses" illustrate hiring for values, not solely skill. These examples show that goodness pays compound interest across decades.

Navigating Tensions and Building Judgment

Goodness operates within tension rather than purity. The book outlines recurring paradoxes—idealism vs pragmatism, short-term vs long-term, vulnerability vs conviction, idiosyncrasy vs connectedness, grit vs acceptance. To navigate them, Tjan introduces the R.I.S.E. framework (Recognize, Internalize, Share, Execute). You start by recognizing the tension clearly, internalizing its emotional and factual truth, sharing it with trusted advisors for perspective, and executing with conviction while documenting the rationale. This discipline transforms moral uncertainty into repeatable good judgment.

Through R.I.S.E., leaders like Lee Kuan Yew, Warren Buffett, and MiniLuxe’s founders show how long-termist, values-grounded decisions yield enduring results even amid pressure. Recognizing conflicts and playing them forward—then executing with integrity—makes goodness resilient rather than fragile.

Why Wholeness Is the Destination

Wholeness in Tjan’s schema is the difficult but worthy journey toward integrated leadership. It combines self-love and care, respect in relationships, and wisdom in choices. John Wooden’s peace-of-mind success formula, Trader Joe’s cultural coherence, and JFK’s thoughtful crisis management all illustrate wholeness. It’s not perfection but balance—the ability to act true, compassionate, and wise across contexts.

The Book’s Broader Promise

Ultimately, Good People offers a language and framework for diagnosing goodness in individuals, teams, and organizations. It fuses moral clarity with pragmatic tools—daily disciplines, journaling, mentoring, hiring rubrics, and decision processes—so that goodness becomes not just an intention but an executable strategy. (Comparable works: Jim Collins’s Good to Great and Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life? similarly blend purpose with performance, but Tjan centers the moral element.)

By committing to truth, compassion, and wholeness—and practicing the mantra and R.I.S.E.—you make goodness actionable. It’s not about sainthood; it’s about sustainable humanity: work that feels decent, cultures that endure, and leaders who can sleep soundly knowing they led truthfully and well.

Truth underpins all goodness. Anthony Tjan defines it as a compound of humility (mind-set), self-awareness (practice), and integrity (action). This triad transforms abstract honesty into a reliable leadership operating system. You live truth when you see yourself clearly, align actions with values, and remain teachable even at the top.

Humility: The Teacher's Mind

Humility means accurate self-sizing—not denial or false modesty. Jim Collins’s Level 5 leadership exemplifies humility anchored in ambition for the organization, not ego. Tjan’s experience with his dot-com firm ZEFER underscores this: success driven by hubris collapsed during the Nasdaq crash, teaching that humility precedes wisdom. Leaders like Frank Blake during Home Depot’s restructuring showed humility through listening before leading.

Self-Awareness: Seeing Blind Spots

Self-awareness demands disciplined reflection. Tjan offers five practices—mindfulness, written priorities, psychometric testing, peer feedback, and formal reviews. Benjamin Franklin’s daily virtue journal exemplifies such rigor. Ellen Langer’s studies remind us that mindlessness—habit without thought—erodes self-awareness. Good leaders institutionalize honest reflection, turning feedback into culture.

Integrity: Words and Actions Aligned

Integrity translates truth into credibility. It’s less about never erring and more about owning errors publicly. WD-40’s mantra “do the right thing” and David Neeleman’s transparent JetBlue apology demonstrate integrity as operational consistency. To practice it, write down guiding values, communicate openly, and build accountability systems. (Note: Integrity connects inner truth to external trust.)

Core Practice

Train truth daily: pause for humility, journal for awareness, and match behavior with declared values. These habits form the foundation that steadies you when pressures or temptations arise.

Living truthfully isn’t about moral purity; it’s about alignment. When you build with humility, self-awareness, and integrity, your leadership withstands turbulence because your foundation doesn’t crack under pressure.

Compassion translates truth into relational strength. It consists of openness, empathy, and generosity. Far from being soft, compassion accelerates performance and trust when structured intentionally.

Openness: Expanding Perception

Openness means suspending judgment and considering possibilities. Tjan’s “24×3 rule”—wait progressively before critiquing—teaches patience in thinking. Tony Hsieh’s Zappos encouraged radical transparency; Stanley McChrystal’s “team of teams” opened up hierarchical information flow to front-line units. Such openness transforms rigidity into responsiveness.

Empathy: Deep Listening

Empathy demands radical attentiveness. Instead of shallow “How are you?” questions, ask “How are you, really?” Leaders like Mark Tatum of the NBA and Dr. Jack Erban exhibit empathy by listening and responding with care. Empathy takes time but yields loyalty and deeper collaboration—it’s emotional data that informs good decisions.

Generosity: Acting Beyond Self

Generosity operationalizes empathy into tangible acts. Research by Michael Norton shows giving creates more happiness than spending on oneself. From the Giving Pledge to Trader Joe’s snowstorm grocery delivery, generosity sustains morale and meaning. Henry McCance’s cascading help-ten principle shows generosity’s exponential power.

Practical Reminder

Practice the 24×3 rule, ask meaningful questions, and perform one generous act weekly. Compassion is habitual construction, not sporadic sentiment.

When you open your lens, listen beyond comfort, and give without calculation, you convert truth into connection. Compassion builds cultures that outperform precisely because they out-care.

Wholeness is the apex of goodness—the calm coherence of a life and leadership aligned with purpose. Composed of love, respect, and wisdom, it allows you to balance self-care and selflessness, action and reflection.

Love: Service as Leadership

Love in leadership means extending yourself to nurture others’ growth. Kevin Roberts’s “lovemarks” reframed brands as emotional relationships; Tjan adds that true love starts inward with self-respect and purpose before radiating outward. Trader Joe’s and Hermès demonstrate love through value fidelity and consistency that engenders loyal communities.

Respect: Small Habits, Big Trust

Respect manifests through behavior—being punctual, neat, accountable, and fair. John Wooden’s rules for his players and Neeleman’s JetBlue crisis apology show that everyday courtesies create systemic reliability. Respect converts good intention into actionable civility.

Wisdom: Knowing What Matters

Wisdom blends discernment and calm. Tjan invokes the serenity triad—accept, change, and distinguish. Like Herbert Simon’s satisficing concept, choosing "good enough" over endless optimization yields peace and better long-term outcomes. Wisdom enables “the long view” required for enduring decisions—mirrored in Warren Buffett’s patient compounding approach and Tom Brady’s steady discipline.

Daily Practice

Surround yourself with whole people, focus on intrinsic rewards, and pause before reacting. Wholeness grows through repetition and reflection.

Wholeness isn’t perfection—it’s stability born of maturity. Leaders who act with love, respect, and wisdom achieve equilibrium, enabling them to lead consistently and rest easily after hard decisions.

Mentorship and judgment are the human transmission systems of goodness—they determine whether values spread and endure. Tjan redefines mentorship as multidirectional learning and judgment as disciplined discernment.

Five Mentorship Roles

You need different mentors: masters of craft, champions, copilots, anchors, and reverse mentors. Each plays a unique function—from teaching excellence to providing emotional ballast. Tsun-yan Hsieh and Henry McCance exemplify mastery, while younger colleagues offer vital reality checks. Mentorship becomes holistic when you combine these types.

Five Questions for Mentoring Dialogues

Use Tjan’s structured sequence: What are you trying to achieve? What’s working? What’s slowing you? What will change tomorrow? How can I help? This set makes every session purposeful. Clark Terry’s relationship with Justin Kauflin reflects such reciprocal mentoring—wisdom flows both ways, creating dignity and legacy.

Judging People Better

To choose good people wisely, you must neutralize familiarity bias and competency bias. Tjan provides twelve probing questions—ranging from self-awareness and treatment of strangers to the airport test of compatibility. These help you see character beneath credentials. Combine answers with history of struggle and curiosity across fields to gauge authentic goodness.

Actionable Takeaway

Keep a mentorship ledger, ask the five questions regularly, and use the character rubric in hiring and partnerships. Over time, this creates a network of reciprocity and integrity.

Strong mentorship and wise judgment ensure goodness scales. They turn personal virtue into social structure—so the character of one inspires the culture of many.

Leadership unfolds in tension: idealism versus pragmatism, short-term speed versus long-term value, vulnerability versus conviction, idiosyncrasy versus belonging, grit versus acceptance. Tjan urges you to treat these paradoxes not as dilemmas to eliminate but as balances to manage—and offers the R.I.S.E. framework for doing so.

Recognize: Name the Tension

Recognition prevents reactive choices. Rajiv Kumar at ShapeUp saw the trade-off between quick wins with smaller accounts and slower but strategic enterprise clients. Seeing that reality clearly led to wiser investment and eventual merger success. Your first act of judgment is naming what’s real.

Internalize: Reflect and Feel

Internalization means living with the paradox before deciding. MiniLuxe’s founders did this by researching salons, talking to technicians, and testing assumptions. Sitting with tension transforms instinct into insight.

Share: Seek Counsel

Good leaders consult a trusted circle. Lincoln’s Team of Rivals and Mark Zuckerberg’s pairing with Sheryl Sandberg show complementary strengths mitigating blind spots. Sharing expands wisdom without diluting accountability.

Execute: Act with Conviction

Execution closes the loop—committing to a decision, documenting reasoning, and learning forward. James Dyson’s 5,127 prototypes show active vulnerability paired with conviction. Confidence feels good; conviction drives results. Gandhi’s quote reminds that a grounded “no” trumps an agreeable “yes.”

Pragmatic Idealism

Lead with values but design practical steps. Like Lee Kuan Yew combining bold vision with feasible execution, become a pragmatic idealist: principles steady you; realism moves you.

The R.I.S.E. cycle turns paradox into progress. Recognize reality, internalize complexity, share perspective, and execute with conviction. Over time, this rhythm becomes your compass for goodness amid uncertainty.

Enduring leadership demands distinguishing perseverance from stubbornness. Tjan’s reflections on grit and acceptance—and the virtue of long-termism—invite you to measure success through durability rather than speed.

Grit: Responsible Perseverance

Fire Chief Mike McNamee’s decision during the Worcester blaze to stop risking more lives demonstrated moral grit—courage aligned with purpose. Similarly, Steven Callahan’s solo survival at sea showed persistence tempered by adaptability. Grit rooted in truth sustains; grit blind to limits destroys. You strengthen it by sensing, responding, and recalibrating rather than clinging dogmatically.

Acceptance: The Active Pause

Acceptance in this framework means intentional surrender—the ability to stop fighting lost battles. It’s not passivity but strategic restraint. Applying R.I.S.E. helps transform resignation into wisdom: recognizing limits, internalizing lessons, confiding in mentors, and executing a graceful pivot.

The Long View: Time as Teacher

Long-term thinking amplifies both grit and acceptance. Warren Buffett’s steady investing and Tom Brady’s TB12 regimen demonstrate compounded discipline across decades. Amara’s law reminds that we overestimate change short term and underestimate it long term—true for technologies and character alike. Leaders who extend their time horizon beyond quarters or trends build goodness that lasts.

Practical Reflection

Ask: Is this effort serving five-year purpose or one-week appearance? Align persistence with values and patience with wisdom.

When you balance grit, acceptance, and long view, you embody sustainable leadership: firm but flexible, ambitious but patient, devoted yet detached enough to act wisely over time.