Considering the role of the 3Es in promoting racial justice

by Shelby Clark, Lynn Barendsen, and Daniel Mucinskas

To our readers: The Good Project has, for the past 25 years, been interested in finding ways to help individuals reflect on how to do “good work”—work that is excellent, ethical, and engaging. In light of the recent deaths of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, and other Black people in America, we feel that one contribution we can make to the ongoing conversations regarding how to bring about racial justice is to help people think about and reflect upon the connections between what it means to do “good work” and racial justice. In this blog, we discuss some of our current thoughts regarding how The Good Project’s ideas might further issues of equity and racial justice in the world.

However, as we wrote this blog about how to think through the 3Es of good work and businesses' performative virtue signaling of support of the Black Lives Matter movement, we thought about whether this blog is a similar form of virtue signaling; is this an easy way for us, a predominantly white research group, to ease our guilt? We discussed the pros and cons of posting this blog, and ultimately, given our commitment to promoting reflection, felt that encouraging reflective practices towards promoting racial justice was better than remaining silent at this time. We know, though, that this blog is just a beginning in our own work towards supporting racial equity and that we have more work to do. We welcome your feedback, and are here to learn.

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In a recent blogpost, the researchers of The Good Project noted our unequivocal belief that Black Lives Matter.

The recent death of George Floyd has made apparent our own need to continually review our roles in promoting structural racism. Moreover, as we seek to encourage reflection and introspection as strategies to help people to do good in the world, we need to think about how these methods can be used to bring about a more racially just future.

As you consider your own work or profession, think of the 3Es of Good Work-- excellence, ethics, and engagement. How can excellent, ethical, and engaging work facilitate just, equitable, and humane work?

For example, some companies, such as Zillow, Amazon, and Nordstrom, have recently been posting on social media in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Yet now several big name companies have been called out by former employees for using such maneuvers as public relations stunts rather than true indications of company values. 

You might ask yourself whether your own company or workplace is fulfilling the 3Es in an effort to promote racial justice. For example:

Ethics: How can a company best fulfill its responsibilities in this situation? Is signalling support for the Black Lives Matter movement online an important step in the fulfillment of professional responsibility, even if it is not echoed elsewhere in an institution’s values? What are the other important ethical steps a company should take to demonstrate support of this movement, either via its mission, the impact of its work, or beyond? Should individual workers be held responsible/accountable, and if so, how? As one example, was it right for Amy Cooper to be fired from her job for calling the police on a Black man, Christian Cooper, bird watching in New York’s Central Park?

Excellence: Do you consider posting support for BLM online excellent work, done to the best of a company’s ability? If not, how might an organization more excellently signal their support for BLM? What is the relationship between excellence in business and racial justice?

Engagement: Does posting support online for BLM indicate engagement with this issue, or that this is a meaningful area of work for an organization? If not, how might engagement be better expressed? Consider the individual workers in a company and how they may or may not find personal meaning in the company’s actions. How should a business give voice to all of its workers, and if there are dissenting opinions - for example, voices that are skeptical for whatever reason about racial justice - what are the company’s responsibilities?

Certainly many other organizations and workers are encountering questions of how to best fulfill their roles justly and ethically during this moment. For example, some small business owners have had to weigh whether to continue protesting when their own businesses are being looted.

As you think about ways to move forward as a worker or company, consider these suggestions from the Harvard Business Review about how to create inclusivity in the workplace:

• Make sure diversity and inclusion are core values of your institution and hold leaders accountable to these values;

• Hire people of color and provide them with mentors in the workplace who will help advocate for their voices and advancement;

• Create safe workplaces for people of color;

• Recognize bias and have all staff participate in de-biasing trainings; and

• Emphasize the business case for diversity and inclusion.

What are other questions and actions you think are important for you and for companies and organizations to be asking and doing to promote racial justice and equity in the world?

Black Lives Matter

At The Good Project, we seek to help people engage in important but difficult conversations, to enhance their self-awareness, and to reflect on our obligations to one another. For two decades, we have encouraged the idea that good work must be ethical, excellent, and engaging.

While we know that our words and tools are not adequate, we cannot be silent in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. We believe, without qualification, that Black lives matter. Systemic racism has been and continues to be a reality in the United States. For us to do good work, we must all engage in the hard work of reflecting on our relationships with systemic racism.

We know this work can be challenging; good work is often challenging. And we want to help.

First, we encourage you to use the tools we have developed to aid in these conversations. As examples, our ethics of roles and neighborly morality may provide a useful framing for thinking about the current situation; the value sort tool can prompt conversations about your own action or inaction during this time; and our ethical dilemmas can help you think through the ways racism shows up in our schools and local communities.

We have also put together a list of resources for talking about racism and resistance, found below.

Finally, we want to share a thought-provoking excerpt from a message released by Dean Bridget Terry Long of the Harvard Graduate School of Education in response to the recent events:

So much of the discussion related to these recent events is tied up in this notion of what America is.  Simply put, America—or any society or community—is what individuals make it.  Yes, this country was founded on the important ideals of liberty, but we know those rights were narrowly defined by our founders to include only a subset of human beings.  And though we have taken steps forward through laws and policies, it’s crucial to question whether we, as a country, have really interrogated what equality and respect for all means in practice. 

Resources (links in titles):

7 Virtual Mental Health Resources Supporting Black People Right Now

31 Children's books to support conversations on race, racism and resistance

Black Youth Project

A Parent’s Guide to Discussing Racism

What White Parents Must Teach Our Kids About George Floyd, Christian Cooper & Ongoing Racism In America

Do the work: an anti-racist reading list

How to Be an Antiracist Educator

Teaching for Black Lives

Reflecting on George Floyd’s Death and Police Violence Towards Black Americans

Beyond the Hashtag: How to Take Anti-Racist Action in Your Life

May Wrap Up: Virtual Commencements Worth Watching

by Shelby Clark, researcher at The Good Project

As the 2020 academic year comes to a close we at the Good Project, like many across the country, have been thinking about what it is like to graduate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of us have high school seniors of our own who have had to navigate what it means to graduate during a global pandemic, whereas others of us just grieve for those who have to celebrate #fauxmencement with friends. Yet, through it all, virtual commencement speeches still took place, and the annual deluge of advice was given. 

Below are some of virtual commencement speeches we found interesting to watch this year. As you view them, how do you think the speakers view good work? What do they have to say about the ideas of ethics, engagement, and excellence? 

Dr. Fauci’s speech at Johns Hopkins

In his short introductory speech to the 2020 Johns Hopkins graduates, Dr. Fauci reminds the new graduates that as they move into the future they will need to draw on their talent, energy, resolve, and character in order to adapt to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. He urges the graduates to go out and “enhance global society.” 

Oprah Winfrey’s #graduation2020 speech on Facebook

Oprah reminds the class of 2020 that “never has a graduating class been called to step into the future with more purpose, vision, passion, energy, and hope.” She tells the graduates to think about how they want to define success, but reminds that that “inequality is a pre-existing condition” and that graduates have the power to vote for healthier conditions for all. After applauding those offering essential services during the COVID-19 pandemic, she leaves the graduates with the question: “What will your essential service be?”

President Barack Obama’s 2020 commencement speech for #graduatetogether

President Barack Obama wants 2020’s graduates to know that they get to decide what is important to them and what values they want to live by. But, he reminds them, they need to “ground themselves in values that last.” He too urges this year’s graduates to think about how they can make the world better, noting that “If the world’s gonna get better, it’s gonna be up to you.” However, he reminds this year’s graduates that they can do this only through building community: “no one does big things by themselves.” 

Bill and Melinda Gates from I Heart Radio’s Commencement: Speeches for the class of 2020

Bill and Melinda Gates’ commencement speech echoes many themes of President Barack Obama’s. Like the President, they urge 2020’s graduates to remember “If you want to get things done, you need a team.” They too remind this year’s graduates that they “do have a role to play in improving the world… progress didn’t happen by accident.” A main theme of their speech, though, was the creativity and “shared mission” that the world will need in order to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. They tell this year’s graduates that the world will need innovators and “ingenuity as we recover,” and that this years graduates can bring their skills to bare in bringing this future about. 

Mathew McConaughey on Good Morning America 

Matthew McConaughey spoke with a group of graduates from the Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management-- graduates who will immediately be joining the workforce as essential employees during the global pandemic. He shared with them some of his advice for living, noting that “we all have a role to play in making this world a better place.” McConaughey reminded the graduates to “act in ways you’ll respect tomorrow” and to not “be afraid to fail,” noting later “how do we ever know what was right if we didn’t screw up.” In total, he reminds the graduates, “just keep living.” 

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What were some of your favorite commencement speeches this year? Let us know in the comments. 

Are You Practicing “Time Well Spent”?

by Danny Mucinskas, researcher at The Good Project

In 1682, William Penn, founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, wrote, “Time is what we want most, but what, alas! we use worst.”

Penn’s words still ring true today, as little with respect to our use of time seems to have changed in the past several hundred years. For many of us, life is very busy, and there never seem to be enough hours in a day to accomplish everything we want to achieve. We are therefore constantly making judgments and tough choices (or avoiding them) as we weigh options for how we will spend our time to reach our goals and find fulfillment.

Numerous sources confirm that time is a precious commodity: surveys from Pew show that half of Americans feel that they are always trying to do two things at once, while Deloitte reports (perhaps contradictorily) that almost two-thirds of time in a typical weekday is spent just on sleep, work, and watching TV. Allocating time is not just a matter of having more of it, though: as discussed in The Atlantic, there is a fine balance between enjoying free time and having too much of it (which can feel unproductive, lack meaning, and give rise to feelings of purposelessness).

Especially in the unprecedented shutdowns of the COVID pandemic, our relationship with time and productivity is even more fraught. Distinctions between weekends and weekdays, or between “work time” and personal time, are blurred for individuals now working from home. For those considered “essential workers,” time spent on the job may come with a new sense of danger with each passing minute and interaction with others. Families stuck at home together might feel that time is passing agonizingly slowly; those who have lost loved ones to the virus feel that time together was all too short.

The Good Project’s own research into the nature of how individuals define “quality” also found a strong relationship to time: Several thousand participants across seven countries often spoke about “quality time” or “time well spent,” wanting to ensure that their day-to-day experiences were worthwhile.

Amidst the constant hum of daily tasks on our plates, opportunities to step back and reflect are rare, but it is important to ask oneself: Am I spending my time in a rewarding way?

We developed a short activity to guide people through a process of reflecting on how time is spent in a typical week and how that breakdown of time relates (or may not relate) to one’s most important values. This activity has been used in numerous workshops with students and practicing professionals alike. It is a simple and powerful way to focus on the connections and disconnections between what is important to us and how we allocate time.

Watch the video below and try it out yourself! We hope that this exercise will help you set aside time for what matters to you right now—whether that be learning a new skill, playing a game with your children, or achieving a personal or professional milestone.

Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0gUx4ZV3TA

After you complete the activity, consider the following questions:

• Why do my top values matter most to me?

• Do my values match how I am allocating my time? If so, how? If not, why not? Are my activities “time well spent”?

• How can I make life choices that will allow the way I spend my time to better reflect what I most value? How will these decisions affect me and others in my life?

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If you enjoyed this activity, consider also trying our Value Sort, another way to consider and weigh your most important values.

The Good Project and COVID-19

by Howard Gardner, Shelby Clark, and Kirsten McHugh

At this time—unprecedented for almost everyone—it is important for those of us who have so far remained healthy to consider what we might do that is constructive for others. And for those of us who curate this website, the following question arises and looms large: After over two decades of research, can The Good Project offer anything that might address current challenges?  To be sure, in no way can we be as timely and as helpful as researchers who are investigating the disease and/or attempting to find a treatment or vaccine. But we believe that the conceptual toolkit that we have created might be helpful.

On the project we speak about the ethics of roles—the thoughts and behaviors that are appropriate for the role of ‘professional’ or ‘worker’ as well as for the role of citizen.

Take the role of scientific researcher: We believe that the researcher should be well informed—or excellent; given the stakes, we assume that the researcher would be deeply engaged. But it is crucial as well that the researcher be ethical—continuously pondering what’s the better course of action in the current environment.

To list just two issues:

1. Should preliminary promising results be published and promulgated, or should one hold back until proper analyses have been carried out and necessary controls have been implemented?

2. Should one share all of one’s findings with other research laboratories, including ones with which one usually competes; or should one hold back, so that the credit (or the blame) remains squarely within one’s own laboratory?

Turn, next, to the role of citizen—for convenience, let’s assume that you are a citizen of the United States. We hope that you know and obey the laws that govern our form of government. We hope that you also are engaged as a citizen—keeping up with the news, discussing what you are learning, writing letters, voting, perhaps volunteering to help with ongoing restorative efforts in your community. But it’s also important that you confront the ethical dilemmas of a citizen:

For example, should you support efforts to vote by absentee ballot (safe but open to tampering or delays); or, instead, should you push for voting that can occur in a neighborhood but without risking the health of anyone else in the precinct?

In thinking about these issues, it is also useful to consider what we have termed the rings of responsibility. As you ponder “to whom or what do you feel responsible,” try to think beyond yourself and your family. In addition, consider more broadly your trade, the community in which you live, and even the broader geographic regions of our planet.

In addition to the ethics of roles, COVID also raises issues of neighborly morality—the range of situations addressed in the Ten Commandments and in the Golden Rule. We have all observed individuals who wear face masks and maintain social distance, as well as individuals who flaunt one or both of these norms. One does not require professional training or courses in citizenship to understand that by such flaunting, one is putting at risk not only oneself but also all those with whom one comes in contact. Not only does a mask-less mien violate the Golden Rule—it foregrounds particular disrespect to those who are older or have medical conditions and, accordingly, are more vulnerable.

Returning to the area of work, we raise one more timely issue. In our professional roles, each of us faces a personal dilemma: Should we devote all of our efforts to addressing the challenges posed by COVID19? Should we, instead, continue doing our customary work as best we can—noting that our ability to draw on our expertise in this situation is strictly limited? Or should we try to strike some kind of balance?

In recent Good Project blogs. we have taken up these questions and tensions. For example, in “The Financial Fallout of COVID-19: Business as Usual?" our colleague Daniel Mucinskas takes up the tension between a local Boston tenant who has lost his job due to COVID-19 and who has appealed to his apartment landlord for an extension on his rent. In this case, the landlord has to consider both his ethics of roles as a landlord, but also his role as a citizen during these difficult pandemic times.

In another COVID19-related blog entitled, “Remotely Polite and Professional,” Kirsten McHugh discussed how communicating online via Zoom can raise new ethical dilemmas. This blog describes how private chat transcripts between two other colleagues were released after a Zoom call. The transcripts reveal that a woman’s colleagues had ridiculed her weight. The woman then must pit consideration of neighborly morality versus the ethics of roles. To be specific,  she debates whether to approach her colleagues directly about their insensitivity—or instead to put her professional ethics first and report her colleagues directly to the relevant officer of HR (Human Resources). Such situations highlight how the “new normal” of COVID can foreground issues of neighborly morality, ethics of roles, and the role of a citizen.

On The Good Project, we regularly employ a tool—the 5Ds—designed to help individuals or teams determine which course of action to follow. When faced with a difficult decision, we work as a team to:

1. Define the Dilemma: Through conversation (over email, in person, or remote), we explain the overview of the situation and what we currently see as the possible options.

2. Discuss the Dilemma: In as much detail as possible, group members consider alternative viewpoints and scenarios.

3. Debate the Dilemma: We think through the pros and cons of each course of action, including whatever new options emerge. We each try to determine the optimal approach.

4. Deciding: We make a final decision on the best next steps, considering all we have discussed.

5.   Debriefing: No matter what the outcome, after a reasonable amount of time has played out and events unfold following out decision and action, we re-examine our process. We reflect on what we did right and what we could have done better. This step is key in making better decisions in the future.

Once one uses the 5Ds regularly, it becomes second nature to apply this procedure to matters big and small. As an example, we recently heard from a publisher interested in using our materials but concerned about a decades-old funder listed in the acknowledgements of the original work. First, a team member flagged the email and request as a matter that should be considered carefully and shared the communication with the rest of the team. Second, the group met online to discuss the problem space and what we saw as possible next steps. Third, we debated the merits and downfalls of each available option, trying our best to think of any short- and long-term repercussions (both positive and negative). Should we delete the funders name, leave the document “as is”, add an explanation of our termination of the funding relationship, or is there some other alternative scenario? Next, we came back together as a group and agreed upon the appropriate course of action. We reached out to the requester with our final decision. Ultimately, once enough time has passed, we will revisit this scenario and examine how our decisions played out—good or bad.

This is but one recent example—the 5Ds can be applied to any of the dilemmas outlined here.

In Howard’s case as a teacher, researcher, and writer in psychology and education, his own capacity to address COVID is limited; also, as an individual in the second half of his eighth decade, he is more vulnerable to the life-threatening aspects of the disease than most of his colleagues and most other citizens. That said, Howard is redoubling his efforts to carry out his own work in as excellent, engaging, and ethical a way as possible And whenever he feels that he can be helpful to anyone who comes across his path—by mail, over the phone, or in the course of carrying out their challenging responsibilities —he makes an extra effort to serve, and serve well.

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Howard Gardner is the long-time senior director of The Good Project. Shelby Clark and Kirsten McHugh are project managers at Harvard Project Zero.