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Teaching & development

Coaches & mentors

How potential is seen, standards are held, feedback lands, losses teach, and developmental relationships end.

12 questions, 203 answers on the record, from 163 members. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.

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Worth reading

What are you best at that nobody watching would notice?

Jamie Dimon

Chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase from 2005

Curiosity is a form of humility — acknowledging that you don't know everything. Responding to curiosity allows other people to speak freely.

Recorded · JPMorgan Chase & Co. · 2024

Edmund Hillary

Mountaineer and explorer; first ascent of Everest, 1953

I always have, in my expeditions, people who are academically far cleverer than I am, and even technically, far more competent.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement

Fei-Fei Li

Professor of computer science at Stanford University; creator of ImageNet

Being a scientist is about resilience because science is exploring the unknown, just as an immigrant is exploring the unknown.

Recorded · Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (Stanford HAI)

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Every question in this questionnaire

  1. What do you notice in a person before they can see that ability in themselves? —
  2. What are you best at that nobody watching would notice? 26
  3. How do you deliver a hard truth at a moment when somebody can still use it? —
  4. How do you build confidence without protecting somebody from honest standards? —
  5. What do you owe the person who is not selected, promoted, or put into the game? —
  6. How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? 69
  7. What can a loss teach that a win usually conceals? —
  8. What makes you want to keep learning? 9
  9. When you need counsel, who is the first person you call? 12
  10. What are you unwilling to optimise? 30
  11. How do you know when your role in somebody's development is finished? —
  12. Which teacher, parent, coach, or friend most made you who you are, and what did you learn from them? 57

Who has answered

Members with enough answers in this questionnaire to be worth arriving at — listed A–Z, not ranked by count.

  • Barack Obama

    44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008

    2 answers United States b. 1961

  • Bill Clinton

    42nd President of the United States, 1993–2001

    2 answers United States b. 1946

  • Charlie Munger

    Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023

    2 answers United States b. 1924

  • Chris Hoy

    British track cyclist, 1994–2013

    2 answers United Kingdom b. 1976

  • DS
    Derek Sivers

    Founder of CD Baby; author of Anything You Want

    2 answers United States

  • Desmond Tutu

    Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984

    2 answers South Africa 1931–2021

  • Edmund Hillary

    Mountaineer and explorer; first ascent of Everest, 1953

    3 answers New Zealand 1919–2008

  • FC
    Francis Collins

    American physician-scientist

    2 answers United States b. 1950

  • FC
    Francis Ford Coppola

    Film director, producer and screenwriter; director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now

    2 answers United States b. 1939

  • Frederick W. Smith

    Founder and long-serving chairman of FedEx Corporation

    2 answers United States 1944–2025

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