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Public & community service

Public leadership & stewardship

Comparable answers about power, disagreement, accountability, institutional stewardship, and measurable public results.

12 questions, 196 answers on the record, from 170 members. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.

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Worth reading

Which teacher, parent, coach, or friend most made you who you are, and what did you learn from them?

Henry R. Kravis

Financier; co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.

Recorded · Academy of Achievement

I had a teacher who was a great influence on me, when I was in boarding school at Loomis, Jim Wilson. He was my economics teacher and he was also my dorm head.
James Cameron

Filmmaker and deep-sea explorer

Recorded · Academy of Achievement

There was. The critical moment for me was in the 11th grade. My biology teacher, Mr. McKenzie, decided that what our school needed was a theater arts program and we didn’t have it.
John Grisham

American writer and lawyer

Recorded · Academy of Achievement

I had the benefit of some very good high school English teachers. One in particular when I was a senior in high school. I was a jock, okay. I was not a student.
Read all 57 →

Every question in this questionnaire

  1. What responsibility of public office matters most to you when nobody is watching? —
  2. What is a lawful use of power that you would still refuse as wrong? —
  3. How should a public leader explain a necessary choice whose costs fall unfairly on some people? —
  4. When constituents strongly disagree with your judgment, what should make you hold your position and what should make you change it? —
  5. When did you last change your mind about something important? 28
  6. Which result should the public use to decide whether your service was effective? —
  7. When you put your name on something, how thoroughly should you have checked it first — and when have you signed off without checking enough? —
  8. When you need counsel, who is the first person you call? 12
  9. How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? 69
  10. What are you unwilling to optimise? 30
  11. What should be stronger in the institution after you leave, even if nobody credits you for it? —
  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.

  • Charlie Munger

    Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023

    2 answers United States b. 1924

  • 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

    2 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

  • Joyce Carol Oates

    Novelist, short story writer and essayist

    2 answers United States b. 1938

  • Mario Molina

    Atmospheric chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1995

    3 answers Mexico 1943–2020

  • Maya Angelou

    Poet, memoirist and civil rights activist

    2 answers United States 1928–2014

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General

The general questionnaire

Twelve questions in FLAPSS wording — taste, daily life, craft, failure, and who formed you. The place to start if you have no idea where to start.