Stem cell biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2012
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 2012
Working at the hospital, I found that my surgical skills were not as good as I expected.
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.
Worth reading
How has a setback or failure set you up for later success?
Biochemist; twice a Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1958 and 1980
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 2000
They’re not failures, you try something and it doesn’t work, and some people, you know, get fed up with this, and I’ve known some of my friends and colleagues who have just decided to give…
Chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, 1970–2025
Recorded · Berkshire Hathaway Inc. · 1990
My first mistake, of course, was in buying control of Berkshire. Though I knew its business - textile manufacturing - to be unpromising, I was enticed to buy because the price looked cheap.
Every question in this questionnaire
- What do you notice in a person before they can see that ability in themselves? —
- What are you best at that nobody watching would notice? 26
- How do you deliver a hard truth at a moment when somebody can still use it? —
- How do you build confidence without protecting somebody from honest standards? —
- What do you owe the person who is not selected, promoted, or put into the game? —
- How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? 69
- What can a loss teach that a win usually conceals? —
- What makes you want to keep learning? 9
- When you need counsel, who is the first person you call? 12
- What are you unwilling to optimise? 30
- How do you know when your role in somebody's development is finished? —
- 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.
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AS
2 answers
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Barack Obama44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008
2 answers United States b. 1961
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Bill Clinton42nd President of the United States, 1993–2001
2 answers United States b. 1946
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Charlie MungerVice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023
2 answers United States b. 1924
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Chris HoyBritish track cyclist, 1994–2013
2 answers United Kingdom b. 1976
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Christiane Nüsslein-VolhardDevelopmental biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1995
4 answers Germany b. 1942
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DSDerek Sivers
Founder of CD Baby; author of Anything You Want
2 answers United States
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Desmond TutuAnglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
2 answers South Africa 1931–2021
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Edmund HillaryMountaineer and explorer; first ascent of Everest, 1953
3 answers New Zealand 1919–2008
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FCFrancis Collins
American physician-scientist
2 answers United States b. 1950
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FCFrancis Ford Coppola
Film director, producer and screenwriter; director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now
2 answers United States b. 1939
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Frederick W. SmithFounder and long-serving chairman of FedEx Corporation
2 answers United States 1944–2025
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