Narrator: Imagine waking up to the news of a horrific tragedy that targets a core part of your identity. For Rachel Hurnyak, a queer woman, the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting was exactly that. But as she processed her shock and terror, another feeling crept in: dread. Not just for her safety, but for the conversations she would have to face at work the next day. She knew her well-intentioned straight colleagues would offer sympathy, but she also knew their words would be more for them than for her. They would need her to validate their identity as "good people," forcing her to set aside her own grief to manage their need for affirmation.

This painful paradox—where good intentions can cause unintended harm—sits at the heart of Dolly Chugh’s book, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias. Chugh, a social psychologist, argues that most of us want to be good, ethical people who stand for equality. Yet, we all have blind spots and unconscious biases that create a gap between the person we mean to be and the person we actually are. This book provides a guide for closing that gap, moving from being a passive believer in equality to an active builder of it.

Narrator: Most people operate under the assumption that they are fundamentally "good." This identity is so central to our self-worth that when it’s challenged—for instance, when someone points out a biased comment we’ve made—we experience a "self-threat." Our immediate reaction is often defensive. We want to prove our goodness rather than examine our behavior. This is what Rachel Hurnyak dreaded after the Orlando shooting. Her colleagues, in their desire to show they were allies, would likely focus on actions that affirmed their own goodness—mentioning donations or sharing stories of their gay friends. In doing so, they would inadvertently center their own need for validation, placing an emotional burden on the very person they sought to support.

Dolly Chugh argues that this fixed identity of being a "good person" is a trap. It leaves no room for error or growth. Instead, she proposes a more flexible and realistic identity: being "good-ish." A good-ish person accepts that they are a work-in-progress. They know they will make mistakes, stumble, and sometimes fail to live up to their own values. This mindset replaces the paralyzing fear of being "bad" with the motivating possibility of becoming better. It allows us to move past defensiveness and engage with our biases, not as a reflection of a flawed character, but as an opportunity for learning and growth.

Narrator: To become "good-ish," one must first adopt a growth mindset—the belief that abilities and understanding can be developed through dedication and hard work. This contrasts with a fixed mindset, which assumes our qualities are static. The story of Hollywood executive Perrin Chiles and Project Greenlight serves as a powerful illustration. When Chiles revived the filmmaking competition, the goal was to discover talent from anywhere. The team believed that by simply creating an open gateway, diversity would follow. They were wrong. Despite thousands of entries, the applicant pool remained overwhelmingly white and male.

The project culminated in a now-infamous on-air exchange where actor Matt Damon dismissed the concerns of Effie Brown, a Black producer and judge, about the lack of diversity among the finalists. The project was a high-profile failure in achieving its diversity goals. A fixed mindset response would be to get defensive and blame external factors. But Chiles and his team chose a growth mindset. They took a step back, listened to the criticism without defensiveness, and reflected on their own blind spots. They realized that simply believing in diversity wasn't enough; they had to actively learn how to build it. This shift created psychological safety within their team, allowing for open dialogues about race and gender that were previously impossible, and transforming a public failure into a profound learning experience.

Narrator: One of the biggest barriers to fighting bias is that privilege is often invisible to those who have it. Chugh uses the metaphor of headwinds and tailwinds to explain this. Some people face systemic headwinds—obstacles like racism, sexism, and discrimination—that make their journey harder. Others benefit from systemic tailwinds—unearned advantages that propel them forward, often without their awareness. Because we feel our own struggles (the headwinds) so acutely, we often fail to notice the tailwinds at our back.

This is explored through the story of Colleen, a white woman from a middle-class family who believed deeply in the "bootstrap narrative"—the idea that her family's success was due solely to hard work. It was only when she began a thought experiment, imagining her family’s history if they had been Black, that she saw the tailwinds. She realized that while her immigrant grandparents faced hardship, they were able to access things like the GI Bill for housing and education in ways that Black families at the time could not. These systemic advantages were the invisible tailwinds that helped her family build wealth and security across generations. Acknowledging these tailwinds didn't negate her family's hard work, but it revealed that their success was not achieved in a vacuum. It was aided by systems that simultaneously held others back.

Narrator: Even with the best intentions, we can inadvertently create distance and "otherize" the very people we want to support. Chugh identifies four common behavioral modes that prevent genuine connection. The story of Mel Wymore, a transgender man and community organizer, helps illustrate these pitfalls.

First is the savior mode, where we center our own heroism instead of the needs of others. Mel avoided this when he began helping his neighbors in a public housing complex. Instead of swooping in with his own solutions, he listened to what they needed and empowered them to form their own tenants' association. Second is the sympathy mode, which can create a power imbalance of pity. Third is the tolerance mode, which Mel critiques sharply. To "tolerate" someone, he argues, is to treat them as a foreign object that must be endured rather than embraced. Finally, there is the typecasting mode, where we rely on stereotypes. This includes "color-blindness," the idea that not seeing race is a virtue. As one of Karen Crowley's Black classmates told her, "If you don’t see my color, you deny who I am." These four modes prevent us from seeing people as complex individuals and instead reduce them to categories.

Narrator: The journey from believer to builder requires moving beyond abstract values and taking concrete action. Chugh distinguishes between diversity and inclusion. Diversity is about the "gateways"—getting representative numbers of people into an organization. Inclusion is about the "pathways"—the thousands of small, everyday moments that determine whether those people feel valued and have the opportunity to succeed.

The career of renowned business school professor Max Bazerman is a case study in building inclusive pathways. When invited to present his research, he consistently makes it a condition that the PhD student who co-authored the work is included. During the presentation, he doesn't just give them a token mention; he actively redirects questions to them, positions them as the expert, and ensures they receive credit. These are not grand, one-time gestures. They are small, consistent acts of inclusion that, over decades, have had a stunning impact on the careers of his students, particularly women and others from marginalized groups. Bazerman’s actions show that being a builder isn't about saving the world, but about intentionally creating and clearing the pathways for others, one small act at a time.

Narrator: Builders understand the power of narratives in shaping our world. They actively work to "steer the conversation" away from biased assumptions and toward more inclusive perspectives. This can happen on a grand scale, like the musical Hamilton using color-conscious casting to reframe the story of America's founding. But it can also happen in our own social circles.

After the 2016 election, a leadership coach named Jeana Marinelli felt that her white Christian friends were not engaging with issues of racial injustice. Rather than stay silent, she organized a pre-Thanksgiving gathering in her apartment. She invited twenty of her white Christian female friends, asking them to read articles on white privilege beforehand. She created a safe, structured space for them to share their reflections and listen to one another. The conversation was difficult and uncomfortable, but it was also transformative. It prompted her friends to examine the lack of diversity in their own lives and gave Jeana the confidence to challenge biases in her church and community. She didn't preach; she created a space for collective learning and steered the conversation toward willful awareness.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from The Person You Mean to Be is that becoming a better, more ethical person is not a destination you arrive at, but a continuous practice. It requires letting go of the need to be seen as a perfect "good person" and embracing the messy, ongoing work of being "good-ish." The shift from a passive believer to an active builder is not about grand, heroic acts, but about the accumulation of small, intentional choices we make every day.

The book's most challenging idea is that our ordinary privilege—whether it’s being white, male, straight, or able-bodied—is not something to feel guilty about, but a tool to be used. The real question the book leaves us with is this: How will you use the tailwinds at your back to fight the headwinds faced by others? The work of a builder begins with that question.