“Niceness is not morality; it is social control,” says Amira Barger, author of The Price of Nice
We asked Amira Barger a few questions about her book, which will be released tomorrow, October 28. Her answers are sharp, thoughtful, and full of insight. This isn’t just a Q&A that makes you want to read the book (though you definitely will); it actually leaves you with something real to think about.
Barger has worked with us several times before, and it’s an honor to talk with her just before this book reaches, hopefully, many people for whom being “nice” has been both an expectation and a burden.
1) Was there a moment when you realized you were being “nice” instead of fair, or how did this book come about?
As a child, probably like most of us, I was taught that “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I came to learn that this also applied even at the expense of truth, and, even as a child, that did not sit right with me. But, as far as the seeds of what would one day become my book, I trace it back to the night I watched the news of Trayvon Martin’s death. I remember the quiet whispers after and how people debated tone instead of injustice, civility instead of consequence. In that moment, something clicked, and all those uneasy feelings I’d grown up with came together and exposed something I’d felt for years but never found the words for: niceness is not morality; it is social control. It’s the polite enforcement mechanism that keeps power comfortable and dissent contained. Later, I recognized that same pattern in the workplace: in the way women and Black people were told to “wait your turn” or “stay grateful to be in the room.” Niceness was being used to domesticate ambition and dilute truth. The Price of Nice was born from that collision between national tragedy and institutional etiquette, and from my need to name niceness as a pacifying structure that sustains inequity while masquerading as virtue.
2) Why four steps? What’s the reasoning behind that structure?
This is a framework drawn from social psychology, built to explain how people and organizations actually move from awareness to action. The Think–Feel–Do–Revisit model isn’t just a catchy four-step process—it’s patterned after the way social movements take root, gain momentum, and create transformation that lasts. We start with Think, because every real shift begins with understanding power. Who benefits from the way things are? Who pays the cost? Thinking is not about accumulating facts; it’s about analyzing systems and surfacing the incentives that keep inequity in place. Then comes Feel. In social psychology, emotion is the bridge between cognition and action. People rarely change because they’re convinced; they change because they’re moved. “Feel” reminds us that information alone doesn’t transform behavior; empathy, discomfort, and connection do. It’s about staying in the room with someone else’s truth long enough for it to change us. Do is where that internal shift becomes external. Here, intentions meet infrastructure: policies change, budgets realign, behaviors evolve. It’s the stage where our values are tested against real-world decisions. Finally, Revisit keeps us from declaring victory too soon. It’s the mechanism of accountability, asking whether the burden of harm has truly shifted or if we’ve simply renamed the problem. Revisit turns a linear process into a loop, ensuring that growth and correction never stop. This framework is intentionally cyclical. Liberation isn’t a box to check; it’s a continuous practice of iteration, repair, and learning. Each time we move through these four steps, we get closer to a culture where justice is not a project or a performance, it’s muscle memory.
3) How does this book speak to the current global climate?
We’re living through a collapse of legitimacy, institutions that once promised stability now trade in slogans. In that vacuum, “niceness” has become the preferred survival strategy: stay neutral, stay employable, stay liked. But neutrality is not neutral when the stakes are human lives. Niceness becomes a way to delay reckoning, to center tone over truth. The Price of Nice enters this moment as both diagnosis and toolkit. It gives readers language for what they likely already feel, that civility has been weaponized to maintain inequity, and a process for resisting it. Around the world, we are watching people trade politeness for purpose, recognizing that justice work will never be tidy. This book argues that our moral imagination must outgrow our addiction to comfort.
4) What was the hardest part to write?
The hardest section to write was the one that forced me to examine what we call “violence” and who gets to define it. I wrote it after the death of the UnitedHealth Group CEO, a man who presided over one of the most profitable health systems in the world while people died rationing insulin and battling insurance denials. The faux outrage and public mourning that followed struck me: headlines calling it a tragedy, executives lauded as visionaries, while the everyday structural violence of the system he oversaw went unnamed. That tension, between individual loss and collective harm, demanded that I confront something uncomfortable: that the oppressed are constantly told to choose “peace” in response to systems that have never stopped waging war on us. We sanitize structural harm and criminalize resistance. We condemn property damage but not poverty. We call disruption “violence” but deny the brutality of denial itself, of care withheld, wages suppressed, neighborhoods poisoned, and dignity eroded.
I’m not of the mind that violence is never the answer. I believe we must interrogate what we label as violence, and to whom that word is applied. The actions of the oppressed are not random; they are course corrections for original violence that has never been repaired. To tell the truth about that requires an honesty many systems can’t bear: that civility often protects cruelty, and that what we call order is too often the quiet continuation of harm. If we refuse to name structural violence, we will forever mistake comfort for morality and mistake the oppressed for the aggressor. It was the hardest section because of what that redefinition represented—a rupture in the moral vocabulary we’ve been taught to protect. Writing it meant admitting that comfort and conscience are often at odds, and that naming violence truthfully might cost us the illusion of innocence we’ve mistaken for peace.
That reckoning, that redefinition of harm and response, was the most challenging, and necessary, part of writing The Price of Nice.
5) What do we lose—individually and collectively—when we choose comfort over truth?
We lose capacity, credibility, and community. Comfort sedates the conscience; it converts urgency into inaction. As a quick “for example,” I once worked for a beloved and thereby untouchable CEO who prided himself on his charm. Everyone tiptoed around his ego. In a pivotal meeting with Congresswoman Jackie Speier, he made a casual joke, his signature catch phrase, about “drinking the Kool-Aid,” unaware that she is a survivor of the Jonestown massacre, where over 900 people were murdered. The relationship we sought evaporated instantly. But the real failure happened months before, when we swallowed our discomfort instead of telling him the phrase was offensive. That’s what I call the “price of nice”, the unseen tax of silence. Each time we prioritize peace over progress, we mortgage trust and integrity. Injustice doesn’t persist because people are evil; it persists because “good” people want to stay comfortable.
6) What does courage in leadership look like in practice?
Courageous leadership is not about personality; it’s about consequence. It means redistributing who gets to decide, who gets to dissent, and who pays the cost of mistakes. It looks like creating systems where truth is survivable. I’ve worked with leaders who think psychological safety is a feeling. It’s not. Psychological safety is a set of conditions we must engineer, including transparent processes, visible repair, protection for truth-tellers, and accountability that can’t be negotiated away. In every meeting I lead, I end with the same question: “What truth feels costly to name right now?” And when someone answers, the only correct response is, “Thank you for saying that.” That single sentence can do more to build trust than any strategic plan. Liberation isn’t a someday event; it’s practiced in how we handle the truth today.
Order The Price of Nice: Why Comfort Keeps Us Stuck and 4 Actions for Real Change
*Amira K.S. Barger, MBA, CVA, CFRE, is a nationally recognized executive, educator, and author who has spent over two decades advancing equity and strengthening communications at some of the world’s most complex organizations. She serves as Executive Vice President of Communications & DEI Advisory at Edelman, where she counsels Fortune 500 companies on embedding inclusion and trust into the DNA of their strategies. A sought-after professor, Amira teaches marketing, communications, and change management at California State University East Bay, preparing the next generation of leaders to navigate organizational transformation with courage and clarity.