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To err is human, to forgive divine. - Alexander Pope
When I started at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise 18 years ago, I had a bit of an ego problem (maybe I still do). I had a resume filled with experiences that helped me land a permanent job with the wildland fire service after 15 seasons of temporary employment and a career as an educator. Along with the resume came for perfection and the need to please. My identity was tied closely to the work I produced. Find an error in the work I did and you take a hit at my character.
Enter a coworker who would "knock me off my high horse" and expose my faults/bias. I wasn't perfect and would rarely catch every mistake. That person humbled and changed the way I would interact with others for the rest of my career. We humans are not perfect. Sometimes in our ability to do a good job, we lose sight of doing a better job and bringing out the best in ourselves and our organizations. Being our best may mean forgiving those who err, especially ourself.
How about we open the door a little wider and consider how our limitations relate to the type of person we are. In her TED Talk "How to Let Go of Being a 'Good' Person—and Become a Better Person," Dolly Chugh shares her thoughts on the concept of "bounded ethicality."
As you watch Dolly's talk, look at it from the lens of how her thoughts might influence the way you react to incidents and accidents within the wildland fire community. Could we be better people/organizations if we let go the thought of being a good people/organizations?
On the other hand, somebody might challenge our identity, or, upon reflection, we may be challenging it ourselves. So the ethical implications of our decisions become really salient, and in those cases, we spiral towards more and more good person behavior, or, to be more precise, towards more and more behavior that makes us feel like a good person, which isn't always the same, of course. The idea with bounded ethicality is that we are perhaps overestimating the importance our inner compass is playing in our ethical decisions.We perhaps are overestimating how much our self-interest is driving our decisions, and perhaps we don't realize how much our self-view as a good person is affecting our behavior, that in fact, we're working so hard to protect that good person identity, to keep out of that red zone, that we're not actually giving ourselves space to learn from our mistakes and actually be better people.
Wildland Fire Leadership Challenge - Digging a Little Deeper
- Is your attachment to being a good person getting in the way of being a better person?
- Do you need to forgive yourself? Check out "How to Forgive Yourself" by Sara Lindberg.
About the Author: Pam McDonald is a writer/editor for BLM Wildland Fire Training and Workforce Development and member of the NWCG Leadership Subcommittee. The expressions are those of the author.
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