Ep. 86 Leading Like Mandela: Storytelling, Presence & Authentic Leadership with Ingrid Gavshon

What do documentary filmmaking, executive leadership, and Nelson Mandela have in common? According to Ingrid Gavshon — everything.

This week on Shrinks Rap, Dr. James H. Bramson sits down with Ingrid Gavshon — leadership communications expert, executive coach, award-winning filmmaker, and faculty member at University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business — for a conversation about storytelling, human connection, and the kind of leadership people actually want to follow.

Ingrid has spent her career helping leaders find their authentic voice — whether behind a camera, in a boardroom, or standing in front of a terrified MBA class trying not to die during a presentation. Drawing from her work producing a thirteen-part documentary series on Mandela, she shares the leadership qualities that made him transformational: presence, humility, deep listening, moral courage, and the ability to make people feel seen even in conflict.

Together, Jim and Ingrid explore: 

• What modern leaders misunderstand about charisma

• Why storytelling is more powerful than authority

• How empathy changes workplace culture

• The surprising overlap between filmmaking and executive coaching

They also discuss how Ingrid uses filmmaking techniques, experiential learning, and coaching to help aspiring leaders at Haas develop confidence, emotional intelligence, and authentic executive presence — without sounding like corporate robots reading from LinkedIn posts.

Part leadership masterclass, part creative exploration, part value clarification for overachieving professionals, this episode asks a timely question:

In a world full of noise, what does it mean to truly connect?