Could Being Nice be Ruining Your Life? Here’s the Brutal Truth

When Amira Barger logs on to teach in Cal State East Bay's online Nonprofit Management Certificate program, she's not just leading discussions - she's sparking reflection. Her virtual classroom is a space where future nonprofit leaders learn to look beyond "best practices" and examine the deeper dynamics of power, purpose and communication. That same spirit fuels her debut book, The Price of Nice: Why Comfort Keeps Us Stuck - and 4 Actions for Real Change (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2025).

Part memoir, part manifesto, The Price of Nice explores what happens when we value being liked over being honest. Drawing from decades of experience in organizational communications and equity work, along with her own experiences as a biracial Black and Chamoru woman navigating corporate America and the nonprofit world, Barger examines how "niceness" can silence truth, dilute advocacy and preserve inequity - especially in spaces devoted to doing good.

"It's the story of how I unlearned nice," Barger explains. "For most of my life, I thought niceness was my superpower - that if I smiled wide enough, worked hard enough and stayed agreeable, I could outperform bias and out-earn doubt. But niceness is a clever little con artist. It teaches us to trade truth for approval."

Barger offers readers a four-part framework - Think, Feel, Do, Revisit - that encourages ongoing reflection and action. Each stage pairs her personal stories with what she calls "Promising Practices," flexible tools meant to inspire real, sustained change rather than simple checklists.

That same ethos shapes her teaching at Cal State East Bay.

"CSUEB is where academic rigor meets real-world purpose; it's the perfect environment for people who want to do good - but also do it well," says Barger.

Her reflections in the book are deeply relevant for anyone working in mission-driven organizations. "In nonprofits, niceness often masquerades as mission alignment," she explains. "We avoid conflict for the greater good, we underpay staff in the name of sacrifice and we let inequitable systems persist because addressing them might upset donors or board members… The price is burnout, disillusionment and missed opportunities for transformation."

Since joining the faculty in 2019, Barger has made the classroom her "laboratory" for ideas. The stories, questions and tensions her students bring to class have directly influenced the "Promising Practices" featured in her book. In turn, the book reflects the kind of leadership she works to cultivate in her students.

"Progress doesn't require cruelty," Barger says, "but it does require courage." Barger hopes her book encourages readers to move beyond performative harmony and toward genuine, sometimes uncomfortable, dialogue. She invites us to ask ourselves hard questions: Who benefits from my silence? What am I pretending not to know today?

"The path to real equity, whether in nonprofits or anywhere else, starts with naming the systems we've been taught not to see," Barger says.

Beyond her work in the classroom, Barger has also written extensively on leadership and equity for outlets like MSNBC, Fast Company and Nonprofit Quarterly, with many of those ideas shaping her debut book. The Price of Nice is available wherever books are sold. Learn more at amirabarger.com.