Jeffery is the founder of Professional Development Forum, and a regular host on 10 Lessons it Took Me 50 Years to Learn. Jeff tells us why we should "Run towards the fire", why "Finding fulfilment is more important than happiness", that "Nobody is thinking about you" and other important lessons. Hosted by Robert Hossary

Jeffery is the founder of Professional Development Forum, an organisation dedicated to help young professionals find fulfilment in the modern Australian workplace for more than 13 years. Since its inception, the forum has hosted multitudes of successful, remarkable, and inspiring leaders. Through this journey, Jeffery developed a passion for empowering culturally diverse talent and unlocking their leadership potential. Jeffery is a passionate advocate of genuine diversity, servant leadership and mentorship and engages actively both as a mentor and mentee. Jeffery has almost 20 years of experience working as a sales and strategy professional in the IT Industry looking after enterprise and government customers. He has lived in Taiwan and New Zealand before migrating to Sydney where he currently lives with his wife and two boys.

Lesson 1: Nobody is thinking about you. 04m 36s

Lesson 2: See the good in everything. 08m 05s

Lesson 3: Run towards the fire 12m 58s

Lesson 4: Don't lie to yourself. 17m 27s

Lesson 5: Finding fulfilment is more important than happiness. 24m 17s

Lesson 6: If you can’t argue from the other side, you haven’t understood the issue. 30m 15s

Lesson 7: Seek the truth and make it persuasive. 36m 37s

Lesson 8: Listen for context and meaning. 42m 01s

Lesson 9: Perfectionism is a Prison. 44m 10s

Lesson 10: Gratitude is the key to happiness.48m 58s

Conrad Taylor grew up in Guyana, South America. Now a retired executive. Conrad has over thirty-five years of hands-on experience leading change in the United States. He shares his story with us. Listen to learn why "`Nothing Beats Perseverance" and how " A Set Back Can Be A Set Up for Better" along with other great lessons. Hosted by Siebe Van Der Zee.

Conrad Taylor grew up in Guyana, South America. Now a retired executive, he started his career there as a military officer. Taylor has over thirty-five years of hands-on experience leading change at plant, division, and corporate levels in the United States. He has held strategy and operations positions - including as a CEO - at 3 multinationals, 2 mid-sized companies, and 2 start-ups. His wide-ranging background, which spans the Healthcare, Industrial, Consumer Products, Consulting, and Non-Profit industries, allows him to contribute actionable insights to most situations. Conrad currently serves as a sounding board on matters of governance, strategy, and implementation on the Council of Senior Advisors for Cicero Group, a management consulting firm. He loves making a difference.

Conrad holds a master’s degree from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and a Bachelor’s in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He also studied Executive Management at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. He is a lifelong soccer fan.

Conrad ventured into the unknown when he wrote award-winning memoir, PATH to FREEDOM: My Story of Perseverance. It is an historically accurate, coming-of-age story about survival. The Smithsonian Institute displays the book in its Anacostia Museum Library.

Lesson 1.               Nothing Beats Perseverance 05m 14s

Lesson 2.               Dealing with Uncertain Situations Hones A “Figure-it-out” Mindset 15m 58s

Lesson 3.               A Set Back Can Be A Set Up for Better 16m 23s

Lesson 4.               Don’t Be Afraid to Pursue Seemingly Career-ending Opportunities 21m 34s

Lesson 5.               Make Lemonade When Served Lemons 26m46s

Lesson 6.               The Working World Is A Game of Thrones 28m 09s

Well we made it to 50 Episodes! That's 500 lessons that we have shared with the world. In this episode we share some of your feedback and comments. Thank you for supporting us and making this possible. Hosted by Diana White, Siebe Van Der Zee, Jeffery Wang and Robert Hossary

Special thanks goes out to Dr Duff Watkins, Rider Antwi, Yi Wang, Joshua Ntanu.

Thank you to our season supporter The Professional Development Forum. Your support and resources have helped make this happen. Please visit PDF at https://professionaldevelopmentforum.org/.

And a very big thank you to all our guests. Your wisdom is helping to make the world a wiser place lesson by lesson.

Barry Nalebuff is Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale SOM where for thirty years he has taught negotiation, innovation, strategy, and game theory. He speaks with us on why "Important projects are often easier than trivial ones", why "Be prepared for others to screw up" and why you should "Feel free to bend the rules". Hosted by Duff Watkins.

Barry Nalebuff is Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale SOM where for thirty years he has taught negotiation, innovation, strategy, and game theory. 

He is the co-author of six books and an online course. Thinking Strategically and The Art of Strategy are two crossover books on game theory with over 400,000 copies in print. Co-opetition looks beyond zero-sum games to emphasize the potential for cooperating while competing. Why Not? offers a framework for problem solving and ingenuity. Lifecycle Investing provides a new strategy for retirement investing. Mission in a Bottle tells the story of Honest Tea. His Negotiation course (available for free on Coursera) has 67,000 active learners and the second-highest net promoter score on the Coursera platform.

In 1998, Barry together with his former student Seth Goldman cofounded Honest Tea, a company that sells ready-to-drink iced tea that tastes like tea. One of Inc. Magazine’s fastest-growing companies, Honest Tea has now sold its second billionth bottle of tea. In 2011, the company was purchased by Coca-Cola. His second venture, Kombrewcha, is a slightly alcoholic version of kombucha. The company was acquired in 2016 by AB-Inbev. He is currently working with Quaker Oats to help create Maker Oats, an unusually thoughtful overnight oats product.

He works with many entrepreneurial firms. He serves on the board of Q Drinks (started by his former student Jordan Silbert), Calicraft Beer, and AGP Glass. Alongside startups, he has extensive experience consulting with over fifty multinational firms. He advised the NBA in their prior negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association and served on the board of Nationwide Insurance. A graduate of MIT, Rhodes Scholar, and Junior Fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows, Nalebuff earned his doctorate at Oxford University.

Lesson 1: Imagine that you have 10x more money than you presently have. What would you do differently in your life? 02m 52s

Lesson 2: Important projects are often easier than trivial ones 05m 33s.

Lesson 3: You have to be fundamentally different and better to get noticed. 08m 18s

Lesson 4: If you think A is the right solution but you know others favor B, then make an impassioned case for B before explaining why A is the correct solution. 14m 24s.

Lesson 5: GOOD people are led to act poorly by BAD incentives. 18m 50s.

Lesson 6: For each action you take think about it from 3 perspectives.24m 25s.

Lesson 7: It isn’t enough to be right. You have to persuade others that you are right. 29m 45s.

Lesson 8: Be prepared for others to screw up. 31m 14s.

Lesson 9: Feel free to bend the rules 38m 27s.

Lesson 10: ?.

Dr Robert Lustig has fostered a global discussion of metabolic health and nutrition. He speaks with us abut why you should "speak to the ventriloquist and not the dummy", how "pleasure is not happiness", how "90% of the work is done in 10% of the time" and more. Hosted by Duff Watkins.

Dr. Robert Lustig is Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Lustig has become a leading public health authority on the impact sugar has on fueling the diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome epidemics, and on addressing changes in the food environment to reverse these chronic diseases.

In his New York Times bestselling book Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processes Food, Obesity, and Disease, Robert documents both the science and the politics that have led to the current pandemic of obesity and chronic disease. In the Fat Chance Cookbook (available for free), Robert provides practical examples for applying healthy eating principles with recipes by Cindy Gershen.

Robert has fostered a global discussion of metabolic health and nutrition, exposing some of the leading myths that underlie the current pandemic of diet-related disease. He believes the food business, by pushing processed food loaded with sugar, has hacked our bodies and minds to pursue pleasure instead of happiness; fostering today’s epidemics of addiction and depression. Yet by focusing on real food, we can beat the odds against sugar, processed food, obesity, and disease. His latest book Metabolical weaves the interconnected strands of nutrition, health/disease, medicine, environment, and society into a completely new fabric by proving on a scientific basis a series of iconoclastic revelations.

Lesson 1: Self-soothing is required, since no one else will 10m 29s.

Lesson 2: Pleasure is not happiness — the more pleasure you seek, the more unhappy you get 13m 04s.

Lesson 3: Anxiety is excitement about the future; but the future never comes 19m 25s.

Lesson 4: You know more than everybody else, so be humbler than everybody else 24m 56s.

Lesson 5: Institutions don’t love you back 33m 11s.

Lesson 6: First-class people hire first-class people; second-class people hire third-class people35m 53s.

Lesson 7: Speak to the ventriloquist, not the dummy 37m 38s.

Lesson 8: 90% of the work gets done in 10% of the time 39m 14s.

Lesson 9: Marketing uses information to espouse your point of view; propaganda uses disinformation to espouse your point of view 40m 39s.

Lesson 10: There is only one dogma, and that is, there is no dogma 43m 08s.

Jim Carroll is one of Australia’s most experienced media executives. Jim shares why it's important to "Be decisive and organized", why you should "Listen widely" and the importance of "Being a decent person". Hosted by Jeffery Wang.

Jim Carroll is one of Australia’s most experienced media executives having been the long serving Director of News and Current Affairs at both SBS and Network Ten and he also held senior roles at the Nine and Seven Networks.

He has led editorial strategy and news teams for more than 30 years and travelled extensively to cover major international stories, including a period heading Seven’s European Bureau.

Jim has worked across all platforms starting his career in newspapers, moving to radio and then television and digital.

He left journalism for several years to work as a senior advisor to the NSW Premier. Jim is a Director of the Australian Science Media Centre and a former member of the Australia Day Council (NSW).

Jim holds a degree in economics and is a graduate and member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Show notes Jim Carroll

Lesson 1: Play to your strengths and know your limitations 01m 51s

Lesson 2: Building Alliances and Maintaining Relationships. 06m 64s

Lesson 3: Be decisive and organized 11m 42s

Lesson 4: Present strategic options and argue for your preferred position. 16m 54s

Lesson 5: Don’t tell me how good you are – Show me 22m 11s

Lesson 6: Identify talent, promote quickly, be alert to the quiet achievers 28m 57s

Lesson 7: Your best career path may not be what you think. 31m 21s

Lesson 8: Listen widely 33m 32s

Lesson 9: Beware the noisy, self-absorbed few 37m 08s

Lesson 10: Be a decent person 43m 24s

Tommy Tomlinson is a Journalist, Author and Podcaster and tells us why "you should keep your word"; how "life is like baseball" and why shouldn't "spend time with jerks". Hosted by Duff Watkins

Tommy Tomlinson spent 15 years as a prize-winning local columnist for the Charlotte Observer. He writes for magazines including Sports Illustrated, Reader’s Digest, ESPN the Magazine, Southern Living, Our State and many others. He has also written for websites including Sports on Earth and ESPN.com.

His stories were chosen for the books “Best American Sports Writing 2012” and “America’s Best Newspaper Writing.” In 2005, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. He has also taught writing at Queens University in Charlotte and at workshops across the country.

He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and was a 2008-09 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

Tommy hosts a podcast called SouthBound, which he started in fall 2017 in collaboration with WFAE, the NPR station in Charlotte. It’s an interview show where he talks to notable Southerners about how this part of the world shapes who they are and what they do.

Lesson 1: Keep your word.  Do what you're say you're going to do. Be where you say you're going to be 09m 38s.

Lesson 2: Life is baseball. You'll take some losses 12m 40s.

Lesson 3: What works in the short term rarely works in the long term 15m 48s.

Lesson 4: Endings are more important than beginnings 18m 13s.

Lesson 5: Look up at the world, not down at your phone 21m 06s.

Lesson 6: The easiest way to get out of a rut is to change your routines 25m 45s.

Lesson 7: When you can choose, don't spend time with jerks 30m 42s.

Lesson 8: Nobody dies wishing they'd worked more36m 00s.

Lesson 9: Call home on your sister's birthday (h/t Jason Isbell) 38m 46s.

Lesson 10: Nobody does great work alone 41m 27s.

Bas Boorsma has been specialising in smart cities for over 20 years. He shares with us "The magic of conflict resolution", why we should learn to "Be comfortable with being uncomfortable" and how "Passion and intelligence goes a long way" along with seven other valuable lessons. Hosted by Siebe Van Der Zee.

Bas Boorsma is a leading urban innovation and digitalization specialist & executive with 20 years of experience in the 'smart city' space. Bas serves as the (external) CDO to the City of Rotterdam. In this capacity Bas is lead orchestrator, facilitator and ambassador to the city and its innovation ecosystem. Bas also serves as Professor of Practice at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. Bas is also Vice President EMEA of the Cities Today Institute, and also serves as Chief Innovation Officer at Change, a fast-growing Living as a Service company. He also serves as Member of the Board, at the Smart City Association Italy (TSCAI). Bas is the author of the well acclaimed book "A New Digital Deal".

Lesson 1: The Magic Of Conflict Resolution. 04m 32s

Lesson 2: Learn To Be Comfortable With Being uncomfortable. 07m 44s

Lesson 3: Social Innovation Can Never Be A Project Run By One Group Of People For The Benefit Of Another. 10m 36s

Lesson 4: How Grand Designs Fail When It Comes To The Betterment Of Citizens. 14m 27s

Lesson 5: Passion And Basic Intelligence Goes A Long Way. 16m 24s

Lesson 6: The Current Paradigm Shift. The Network Paradigm. 18m 52s

Lesson 7: The Magic Of Teams Synchronicity. 24m 02s

Lesson 8: It's Tough To Beat One's Demons. 26m 05s

Lesson 9: The Importance Of Walking. 28m 58s

Lesson 10: Love Comes In Many Colours. 32m 21s

Ellen Langer is a professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University and she speaks with us about how "Certainty is a mindless illusion" why " 1 + 1 doesn't always equal 2" and that if you want "To feel differently, you need to view it differently" along with more great lessons. Hosted by Duff Watkins.

Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University where she was the first woman to be tenured in the department. She has been described as the “mother of mindfulness” and has written extensively on the illusion of control, mindful aging, stress, decision-making, and health. She is the founder of The Langer Mindfulness Institute and consults with organizations to foster mindful leadership, innovation, strategy and work/life integration.

Her books, written for general and academic readers, include Mindfulness, The Power of Mindful Learning, On Becoming An Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity, and Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility. Her most recent book The Handbook of Mindfulness is an anthology that brings together the latest multi-disciplinary research on mindfulness.

A passionate and compelling lecturer who presents at organizations worldwide, Langer has authored over 200 research articles and six academic books. Her work has led to numerous academic honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the recipient of four Distinguished Scientist Awards and the Liberty Science Genius Award.

Her website is https://ellenlanger.com/

Episode Notes:

Lesson 1: Behavior always makes sense from the actor’s perspective 06m 49s.

Lesson 2: Certainty is a mindless illusion 08m 24s.

Lesson 3: 1+1 doesn’t always equal 2 13m 04s.

Lesson 4: Everyone doesn’t know something but everyone knows something else 19m 49s.

Lesson 5: Inconsistent is flexible 23m 12s.

Lesson 6: Outcomes are neither good nor bad 25m 52s.

Lesson 7: To feel differently, view it differently 27m 20s.

Lesson 8: Every activity can be done mindlessly or mindfully 33m 31s.

Lesson 9: Mindfulness is simply noticing new things 35m 20s.

Lesson 10: Life is a people game 45m 19s.

Mark is the partner of a PR Agency Reputation Edge. Mark tells us why it's important that we "Listen and don't talk", how we should ask ourselves "What would others do in this situation", how we should all "Mine for gold" and more. Hosted by Jeffery Wang. 

Mark is the partner of a PR Agency Reputation Edge. Mark has advised CEOs, Boards and Heads of State for almost 40 years. He has run strategy, policy and stakeholder management teams in government and Australia’s biggest publicly listed corporations.

He has led the development of company strategic plans and policy with green and white papers and associated legislation formulation, corporate restructuring, organisational repositioning and product development. He has sat on a number of corporate boards as well as industry representative and not-for-profit organisations.

Schooled in the application of property rights, Mark is a believer in freedom of speech and expression as the corner stone of strong democracies.

Lesson 1: Know yourself and your limitations 03m 12s

Lesson 2: Mine for gold 08m 04s

Lesson 3: Listen don’t talk 14m 56s

Lesson 4: Don’t believe everything you have heard 17m 35s

Lesson 5: Ask questions and then ask more 27m 07s

Lesson 6: Go to the first sources 34m 27s

Lesson 7: What would others do in this situation 38m 38s

Lesson 8: Stay Calm 36m 48s

Lesson 9: Ask for help when you need it 38m 59s

Lesson 10: Challenge and debate, don’t order 40m 11s