Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais

This week’s conversation is with Dr. Ranjay Gulati, the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor and the former Unit Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. 

Until recently, he chaired the Advanced Management Program, the flagship senior leader executive program, at the school. 

Ranjay studies how “resilient” organizations—those that prosper when it’s smooth sailing - and when the seas are wild —drive growth and profitability. 

His work bridges strategy (establishing clear strategic pillars for growth), organizational design (reimagining purposeful and collaborative organizational systems), and leadership (fostering inspired, courageous and caring execution).

The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit have listed him as among the top handful of business school scholars whose work is most relevant to management practice. 

I’ve known Ranjay for a few years, and I’m thrilled to introduce you to him. He’s got a deep understanding of how great companies work. We dive into the ongoing process that leaders drive to ensure that purpose is at the foundation of the entire organization – as well as – it being a strategic compass for decision making.

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This week’s conversation is with Jay Glazer, best known as a National Football League insider and TV host for FOX Sports’ award-winning NFL pregame studio show, FOX NFL Sunday. 

The entire cast, including Jay, became the first sports show inducted into the Television Hall Of Fame in 2019. He is also part of FOX’s Thursday Night Football. 

Jay was one of the first ever minute by minute breaking online news reporters in the NFL. 

In 2014, he co-founded the Unbreakable Performance Center, a private training facility frequented by Wiz Khalifa, Chris Pratt, and Demi Lovato, as well as numerous NFL, NHL and MMA athletes.

And in 2015, Jay and former U.S. Army Green Beret Nate Boyer (a previous Finding Mastery guest) founded the charitable organization MVP (Merging Vets and Players) to assist combat veterans and former professional athletes, who often faced a tough road adjusting to civilian life. 

Jay has a new book out called Unbreakable, where he offers insights gleaned from his fight through depression and anxiety. It’s a relentless, unapologetic, and no-nonsense approach to overcoming self-doubts, fears, and getting to the truth - and that sets the tone for this conversation.

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This week’s conversation is with Dr. Laura Stokes-Greene, one of the best equine sports medicine doctors in the world.

Laura is also an avid entrepreneur, focusing on the intersection of medicine, technology, and creativity. 

She’s utilizing cutting edge biotech to help competing jumper and dressage horses maximize their performance.  

Creating innovative therapeutic programs to optimize strength and mobility, Laura emphasizes regenerative medicine with bio-logics such as PRP and stem cells.  

An active lecturer and veterinary mentor, she enjoys educating about the human-animal connection and drawing parallels between horses and ourselves.  

So that’s why I wanted to have Laura on the podcast - to better understand the human-animal connection and dive deeper into her innovative medical practices that are relevant for humans as well.

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This week’s conversation is with Conrad Anker, an absolute legend who has been pushing the limits of mountaineering for the last 30 years, evolving into one of America’s best alpinists. 

At age 56, Conrad’s resume continues to grow, having notched the long-awaited first ascent of the Meru Shark’s Fin in India with partners Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk in 2011, which led to the Sundance-winning documentary, Meru. 

Conrad has climbed Everest three times, including a 2012 trip with National Geographic to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first American ascent of the mountain. 

Though true alpine routes have been his forte, his résumé also includes big wall first ascents on El Capitan and first free ascents in Zion National Park. 

In 1997 alone, he completed first ascents in Antarctica, Pakistan’s Karakorum and on Yosemite’s El Capitan.

So Conrad operates in high consequence environments, places where the luxury of a mistake is often not afforded. Like so many explorers of nature and human nature, he doesn’t consider himself a risk-taker, but someone who works in high risk environments. It’s a forcing function, like none other than I know – to get to the truth and the purity of thought and action. 

It forces best judgment, and the rewards and consequences of such. And because of that, he’s come to have a deep relationship with life - with people and mother nature – his experience, with experience.

I hope that for all of us – to know oneself, others, to know mother nature – and to have a meaningful relationship with experience. To be able to work well with feelings, emotions, thoughts and the unfolding world outside of you.  

Mark his movie right now - you’ll definitely want to watch it – it’s called “Torn” (available on Disney+).

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This week’s conversation is with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where in 1995, he founded the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society and in 1979, its world-renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic.  

Jon’s research between 1979 and 2002 focused on mind/body interactions for healing, on various clinical applications of mindfulness meditation training for people with chronic pain and/or stress-related disorders, on the effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on the brain and how it processes emotions, particularly under stress.

He is the author of 14 books, including the bestsellers Full Catastrophe Living, Wherever You Go, There You Are, and Mindfulness for Beginners. 

His books and guided meditation programs describe meditation practice in such commonsensical, relevant, and compelling terms that mindfulness meditation practice has become a way of life for thousands of people. 

Jon’s work has contributed to a growing movement of mindfulness into mainstream institutions such as medicine, psychology, health care, neuroscience, schools, higher education, business, social justice, criminal justice, prisons, the law, technology, government, and professional sports. Over 700 hospitals and medical centers around the world now offer MBSR. 

Jon lectures and leads mindfulness workshops and retreats around the world. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend several of them, and I can’t even begin to express the impact Jon has had on my life.

Not only does he teach and guide in a special way, he is a special human being. I’m excited for you all to hear what he has to share.

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This week’s conversation is with Shalane Flanagan, an American endurance legend, being one of the few distance runners to earn first-name recognition rights. 

Shalane's remarkable career spans nearly 20 years… she’s a 4x Olympian (Athens, Beijing, London and Rio), becoming an Olympic medalist in Beijing.

She’s a New York City Marathon champion, where she was the first American woman to win it since 1977.

After retiring from professional running in 2019, Shalane underwent two knee reconstruction surgeries, started a new coaching career and became a mom, all while navigating the realities of a global pandemic. 

In 2021, she undertook a personal mission: Project Eclipse – to run six major marathons in a span of six weeks - as a way to reclaim her love for the sport of running and to bolster her mental and physical health.

Shalane also took on the challenge as a way to inspire others to rise up in the face of their own struggles. She completed all six, including the major races Berlin, London, Chicago, Boston and New York City, in a time of under 2:50, with the fastest and final New York City marathon in only 2:33.

Shalane’s career has been extraordinary so far, and is still far from over. After hearing this conversation, I think you’ll be inspired to go and “do the hard things” in your life as well.

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This week’s conversation is with Dr. Eric Johnson, a Norman Eig Professor of Business, and Director of the Center for Decision Sciences at the Columbia Business School. 

He has been the President of the Society for Judgment and Decision-Making and the Society for Neuroeconomics. 

His academic awards include the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award of the Society for Consumer Psychology, Fellow of the Association of Consumer Research, and an honorary doctorate in behavioral economics from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

Eric’s research examines the interface between Behavioral Decision Research, Economics and the decisions made by consumers, managers, and their implications for public policy, markets and marketing.

Among other topics, Eric has explored how the way options are presented to decision-makers affect their choices in areas such as organ donation, the choice of environmentally friendly products, and investments. 

I wanted to have Eric on because I read his latest book, “The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters” – Decisions and microdecisions are one of our greatest human privileges. It is our choices that ultimately reveal who we are. Eric has spent his life understanding the frameworks for decision making – how we set conditions, and how conditions influence us. 

You’ll be fascinated by what Eric has to share about decision making.

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This week’s conversation is with Dr. Chris Mattmann, the Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also known as JPL.

His work has helped NASA explore space, and helped journalists and governments track international financial crime amongst the world’s elite across the globe.

Chris is best known for a 20 year career inventing the most downloaded software on the planet culminating from his membership on the Apache Software Foundation Board of Directors (2013-18), creating technology that powers all the data systems in industry including his pioneering work building the Tika library. 

Tika, the “digital babel fish” is the key technology that solved the Panama Papers and won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 2017. 

Chris is a frequent keynote speaker in government, academia and industry and his work helped to define the field of data science.

At its core, this conversation is an exploration of what it means to innovate - it's about deep learning (one of the core tenets of growth) and the duality of technological progression in the modern world.

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This week’s conversation is with Angela Duckworth, the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. 

She is also the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative, and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics.

A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Angela has advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs.

Angela completed her undergraduate degree in Advanced Studies Neurobiology at Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. With the support of a Marshall Scholarship, she completed an MSc with Distinction in Neuroscience from Oxford University. She completed her PhD in Psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

We all know Angela from her book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” the #1 New York Times best seller, which was the impetus for our first Finding Mastery conversation back in 2016… that’s Episode 029 if you’re looking for it.

I wanted to have Angela back on to discuss her new research on character, and how character development can be actioned to benefit others (and oneself). 

As Angela says, the term “character” is used far too vaguely most of the time. She shares the 3 dimensions of character – and – ways to train them.

She is incredibly grounded in the scientific evidence on how character strengths like self-control, curiosity, and gratitude are critically important to social and emotional well-being, physical health, and achievement.

Angela is amazing. Her work is a gift to us all. This conversation, and our friendship for that matter, is a breath of fresh air - life-giving and life-lifting.

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This week’s conversation is with Doug Abrams, an author and truth hunter.

Doug is committed to helping catalyze the next evolutionary stage of our global culture – and he’s worked with some incredible human beings along the way.

He co-wrote The Book of Joy with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, he’s worked with Stephen Hawking on his last book, the global bestseller Brief Answers to the Big Questions, and has had the privilege of working with other Nobel Laureates including Nelson Mandela, Jody Williams, and Elizabeth Blackburn.  

Doug is also devoted to spreading the importance of conservation and fighting climate change.

He co-wrote his newest book, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, with Jane Goodall. In this urgent book they explore, through intimate and thought-provoking dialogue, one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. 

What we hope that you take from this conversation is a recalibration - to reconnect with that part inside of you that sees the good, hopes for a better future, and works towards it every day.

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