EP57: How To Find Work-Life Balance, from a B-School Professor

Interview with Stew Friedman / Director of The Wharton Work/Life Integration Project

HOSTED BY PAUL SULLIVAN

When his first child was born, Stew Friedman, then a young professor, started researching how companies could think differently about their employees' work and home lives. His colleagues thought he was sabotaging a promising career. Instead, Ford Motor Company hired him and that stint spawned Total Leadership, a Wharton Business School course and a consulting company. Listen to why he's optimistic about companies "opening up so much experimentation and innovation - out of necessity!"

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Transcript

00;00;04;28 - 00;00;25;10
Paul Sullivan
Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, sublime, strange and silly aspects of being a dad in a world where men often feel they have to hide, or at least not talk about their parenting world. One thing I know from personal experience is being a lead that is not a traditional role for men. Whether you work full time, part time, devote all your time to your family.

00;00;25;12 - 00;00;50;12
Paul Sullivan
Parenting is so often left to mothers are paid caregivers. But here in the Company of Dads, our goal is to shake all that off and create a community for fathers who lead dads, and to welcome other dads who want to learn more from them. I'm your host, Paul Sullivan, and today my guest is Stew Friedman, Practice professor of management emeritus at the Wharton Business School and the director of Warren's Work Life Integration Project.

00;00;50;14 - 00;01;19;05
Paul Sullivan
Stew is best known for a program called Total Leadership, which he developed after taking a leave from Penn to work for the Ford Motor Company in 1999. When he returned, what he learned not only became a popular course at Wharton, but spawned a consulting company of the same name. Stu is the author of many books, but the most relevant for us are Baby Bus, work and family, and parents who lead his PhD is not in economics, finance or business, but in organizational psychology.

00;01;19;07 - 00;01;22;13
Paul Sullivan
Stew, Welcome to the Company of Dads podcast.

00;01;22;15 - 00;01;24;11
Stew Friedman
So great to be here. Thanks for having me, Paul.

00;01;24;18 - 00;01;46;08
Paul Sullivan
You started the Work Life Integration project in 1991, shortly after you became a father yourself. But that was pretty early on to to think about, the things we would consider all commonplace now, but but that was really early back in 91. What prompted it and what was the reception like early on?

00;01;46;11 - 00;02;28;26
Stew Friedman
Well, when my first child was born in 1987. I, was a few years into my, professor life at, Wharton. I was doing research on leadership development and chief executive officer, succession and talent management, and I was writing about that, doing, you know, lectures and workshops on on that subject. But I had also studied at the University of Michigan, adult development role theory and the early, ideas about how the different roles that we play in life affect each other.

00;02;28;26 - 00;02;29;25
Stew Friedman
So I was interested.

00;02;29;27 - 00;02;35;24
Paul Sullivan
In what do you say the roles meaning, like the gender roles or the expectation that the role of roles that people will play?

00;02;35;26 - 00;03;16;10
Stew Friedman
Well, how being, in a family affects who you are at work and vice versa in, in your community. So, you know, social roles that you take up as a father or as, a work worker as, a friend. So role theory was an aspect of social psychology and sociology, that really started to take hold in the 60s that, you know, started that was developing these ideas about role conflict, and how how those are managed in, in institutions, in society and for each of us individually.

00;03;16;12 - 00;03;47;08
Stew Friedman
So I was always interested in that subject, but it wasn't what I was mainly focused on. But then when my first child was born and I was, just transformed, in my own role, identities as I, you know, took on this new, aspect of life as a father. I was just consumed with the question of how how I was going to, make the world a safe one for this, this precious, helpless little being, to grow up in.

00;03;47;08 - 00;04;18;29
Stew Friedman
And I couldn't get that question out of my head or in all the conversations I was having immediately after his arrival, including, in my Wharton MBA classroom, when I asked students, what are you going to do to help, create a world that's going to be, a safe and nurturing one for not just the next generation of talent in your business, but for, you know, people in the world.

00;04;19;02 - 00;04;21;15
Stew Friedman
Yeah. What does that mean for you personally?

00;04;21;18 - 00;04;33;16
Paul Sullivan
And and this is in the late, late 80s. So I'm going to guess this is 87. Not a lot of people said, going to ESG or something green. They probably said, we're going to make a lot of money. Or what was the response you got?

00;04;33;16 - 00;04;55;17
Stew Friedman
Well, that that was the era of, you know, greed is good. Yeah. And I remember that that that conversation in that classroom now was 36 years ago, quite vividly because it it changed everything for me. When, I raised that question, there were people who were quite angry, that I.

00;04;55;17 - 00;04;58;17
Paul Sullivan
Was say that you that angry that you had asked them that question.

00;04;58;20 - 00;05;15;08
Stew Friedman
Yeah. Like, what are we talking about here? And what does that have to do with business? I mean, why are you wasting our time on this, professor? Nobody cares about your family, by the way. And also, this is not the topic that we have prepared for class today, so you know why. What? Why are you doing this?

00;05;15;08 - 00;05;44;12
Stew Friedman
Yeah. But there were others in the room who had, you know, never been asked this question in a in a working class, let alone, you know, in conversations in their companies. And they were quite, enthused about the idea of, wow. Yeah. I've been thinking about this. Men and women. Yeah. I'm glad you're raising this, and one, one student said, well, you know, you're the professor.

00;05;44;12 - 00;05;50;22
Stew Friedman
You tell us what we should be doing. And that's when I realized, maybe there's something I can do.

00;05;50;24 - 00;05;53;27
Paul Sullivan
Right? Because to be honest, you didn't really have an answer yourself. You had to. I only.

00;05;53;27 - 00;05;54;08
Stew Friedman
Had the.

00;05;54;08 - 00;05;56;01
Paul Sullivan
Question. And the question. Yeah, yeah.

00;05;56;01 - 00;06;35;01
Stew Friedman
And that's, you know, for 40 plus years, that's, you know, how I've made my living is by asking annoying questions. People, and, you know, that's I think it's my superpower. I like to ask questions, that, that provoke, and, and and in response to, you know, to that student, I realized, well, maybe there are some ways that I can develop using, you know, the training that I've had, the opportunity that I have to do research and to experiment, with, with some new ideas that I could develop a body of knowledge or try to start to do that, that would be helpful to these people and others like them.

00;06;35;04 - 00;06;57;13
Stew Friedman
Yeah. And that's what I started to do. And so I turned my attention to trying to understand how can people find harmony among the different parts of their lives so that they can be the people that they want to be in all parts of their lives, including especially as as parents, but beyond that as well. Yeah. So that's what led me to shift the direction of my, my career.

00;06;57;15 - 00;07;16;14
Paul Sullivan
Well, let me ask you this, because we gotta take a step back and frame it as to, you know, who you were in the late 80s and who you were was, you know, what assistant Professor Freedman did, yet you didn't have tenure. You're sure now, you young guy, young family. This is risky stuff for you. Now, it's one thing to raise a question in the class.

00;07;16;14 - 00;07;30;24
Paul Sullivan
It's another thing, maybe to create a single class about it. But you then go ahead and start this, you know, work life integration project. How do you pitch that to, you know, your your superiors at at Wharton?

00;07;30;26 - 00;07;56;23
Stew Friedman
You know, with, with, naive hope that this was going to be something that people would see is, useful and important. Unfortunately, some did, but there were certainly some that didn't. I can recall quite well, one of the senior members of my department at that time who, when I, when I told him, you know, this is what I'm, I'm doing now.

00;07;56;26 - 00;08;18;20
Stew Friedman
And he said, Stu, why why are you what why are you, like, ruining your career, right? Trying to focus on something. You know, this women's issue that nobody really cares about. And I said, well, I think this is going to become a bigger issue over time for all, all companies of people, in our society, because it's just you can see.

00;08;18;22 - 00;08;40;07
Stew Friedman
Yeah, I could see quite, you know, it just was so obvious to me that as women grew in power and authority and influence in society and, you know, business, society and as men were changing and thinking about how they didn't want to live the same lives that their fathers did, that you know, that we were going to need some models, some tools to help people to adjust to a new kind of social reality.

00;08;40;07 - 00;09;01;14
Stew Friedman
And and that is certainly what has happened. Yeah. And so I, I, I got resistance, but I also, you know, found corners of support, including, from the dean of the Wharton School at that time, Tom Garrity, who said, yeah, this is good. We'll we'll get you some money to get this thing going. And they did.

00;09;01;16 - 00;09;30;27
Paul Sullivan
That's wonderful. And when you look back on this, this project that is now, you know, 30 years old, 30 plus years old, what were the markers when you knew it was, you know, working when you look back, when when you knew that it was you were you were sort of fighting these headwinds. And you know, what you were teaching these these MBA students was working and having an impact on on the way companies function.

00;09;30;29 - 00;09;55;04
Stew Friedman
It's it's really only recently that, I can now, you know, look back over the course of three decades and realize, oh, this is now normal. As you said in the introduction, the issues that we were addressing, asking people to look at their lives from the point of view of the different roles that they're in and how those interact.

00;09;55;07 - 00;10;12;28
Stew Friedman
You know, when I, when I went to Ford Motor Company in 99, after having started the, the Wharton Leadership Program in the same year that I started the work Life Integration project. So those happened. Those were both born at the same time. And it was really through the 90s that I was focusing on both of these issues.

00;10;13;01 - 00;10;50;17
Stew Friedman
And at at Ford, I was able to kind of, marry the two of them to create a model for growth in leadership capacity that was about creating harmony among the different parts of your life to improve performance in all of them. And because of the opportunity that I had there to create a practical method for helping people to to learn these ideas based on research that we've been doing through the, work life integration project in the, in the 90s, studying, you know, what does it take to find harmony, to create integration among the different parts of life?

00;10;50;19 - 00;11;26;27
Stew Friedman
It was only when we started to enact the early versions of this model on a pretty broad scale at Ford, and to iterate, iterate, iterate. There that I began to see, oh, this is something that people really want to do. They're hungry for, an opportunity to help themselves and the people around them figure out how to make adjustments in their lives so that they could live in a way that was more true to their values and to serve the interest beyond, beyond just their work lives.

00;11;27;00 - 00;11;58;09
Stew Friedman
And when I saw that that was working, and I came back to Wharton now 20 years ago, I thought, oh, my gosh, I've got something here that everybody's going to love. But of course, very few people did, because as I now had to adapt to a different environment and figure out how to, you know, design an experience that would fit within the either the, the structure of our curriculum.

00;11;58;11 - 00;12;22;22
Stew Friedman
Yeah. So that took a number of iterations. But once I started getting it right, a few years in, the student reaction, mainly again, born of a real hunger of a new generation to, to be exploring these questions. And it wasn't happening. You know, it wasn't normal to be talking about these questions even 20 years ago.

00;12;22;24 - 00;12;55;18
Stew Friedman
So it was still fighting against, you know, the, the, the, the tide. But it's certainly now in the last 5 to 10 years where there's just so many different people doing work in this arena. And, it's, it's now normal to be addressing these questions that I've come to see. This is, this is, this is now part of what, is mainstream practice and indeed the pandemic just accelerated that.

00;12;55;23 - 00;13;17;25
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. Let's back up a second, because I want to talk about 1999, when you took a break, took a leave from from Warren to go to Ford. You know, classic chicken and egg. Question was it how did that come about? Did you have some theories that you wanted to to, to put in practice? Did somebody at Ford, you know, reach out to you and say, Stu, you are you in doing can you help me out?

00;13;17;25 - 00;13;28;15
Paul Sullivan
How did that happen? And what did you hope to achieve when you went into, you know, this gigantic, iconic, American company being Ford Model.

00;13;28;17 - 00;14;11;11
Stew Friedman
One of my, mentors from my Michigan days in, in the early 80s was, naughty and he had been working. He was he was the first head of, General Electric's Burtonsville, executive Ed Center with Jack Welch in the mid 80s, which became the the model for, you know, just so many companies throughout the, our country and around the world, a real visible, serious dedication to investing in people in the growth of leaders.

00;14;11;14 - 00;14;40;11
Stew Friedman
And he and I continued to do work together, in corporate learning institutes that were now popping up all over the place. And I was I was very much involved in that through the through the 90s. And he was doing a project at Ford, and we're the new CEO of said to him, hey, I need somebody to help me do something like what you did, you know, 15 years ago, at General Electric and, and all said, oh, I got just the guy for you.

00;14;40;11 - 00;14;57;15
Stew Friedman
And so that was me, and that's that's how I got there. Yeah. Now getting there and and then figuring out how to, you know, create value in that role was, was quite a journey. But that was that's the short answer to how I got there.

00;14;57;15 - 00;15;03;10
Paul Sullivan
Yeah, but did you pick up sticks at your family and moved from Philadelphia to to Detroit for a couple years?

00;15;03;12 - 00;15;15;23
Stew Friedman
Well, yes. They were the kids were 12, nine and six at the time. They only lived in this one home where I'm currently sitting right now. And they were deeply rooted in that community.

00;15;15;25 - 00;15;17;23
Paul Sullivan
They must have loved you for that, Dad?

00;15;17;25 - 00;15;44;02
Stew Friedman
Well, you know, my wife and I were both graduate students in the early 80s at the University of Michigan, and so we we loved that town, and Ann Arbor, where we regret, you know, we had no money. And, we we had a great life there, being in an extremely rich, learning environment, as graduate students, so we were happy to return there.

00;15;44;02 - 00;16;12;10
Stew Friedman
But of course, that meant pulling up stakes here. But what we did was to rent our home here, and then build, you know, in Ann Arbor. So, you know, the idea was, let's see how this goes. Yeah. And maybe, maybe we'll come back to Philadelphia. Maybe we won't. Because the University of Michigan also said, well, when you're done with Ford, you can join us.

00;16;12;12 - 00;16;37;12
Stew Friedman
So there was that option as well. So we didn't really know it was, it was one grand experiment. And as you can infer, you know, we returned but it was, it was only after, quite a lot of turmoil because when we, when we got there, it was, it was not easy for them.

00;16;37;15 - 00;16;46;07
Stew Friedman
And after about a half a year or so, they the three kids were in unison saying, okay, we let's go home now.

00;16;46;10 - 00;16;50;22
Paul Sullivan
You brought them together. You brought in a squabbling siblings together to stage time.

00;16;50;26 - 00;17;21;13
Stew Friedman
Not exactly. It's I'm portraying it in a way. There's a lot more, you know, smooth and systematic than it actually was. But it became clear that moving back was something that was going to be really important for them. So what happened in this in the second year there was they moved back here. We sold that house in in Ann Arbor, which we had built, and and I then rented an apartment, around the corner from my office in Dearborn.

00;17;21;16 - 00;17;45;23
Stew Friedman
Yeah. And then commuted from Dearborn to Philadelphia once or twice a week to come home. So that second year was really quite interesting, and involved all kinds of, well, you know, negotiations and a lot of, it was, but it was it was an extremely productive time.

00;17;45;26 - 00;18;02;09
Paul Sullivan
But what comes out of it? Did I answer your question? You did? Yeah. But what comes out of that? What comes out of that time is this program that you created as a company called Total Leadership. And so in a couple of sentences for the listeners, explain, you know, what total leadership is?

00;18;02;11 - 00;18;42;07
Stew Friedman
Total leadership is about improving performance and results at work and at home and in the community. And for yourself personally, your mind, your body, your spirit. Yeah. But finding greater harmony among those different parts of life and it involves three basic principles to be real, to be whole, to be innovative. So to be real is to act with authenticity by clarifying what's most important to you, your values, your vision, and you tell the stories of where you've come from, the the events in your life that have shaped your values.

00;18;42;10 - 00;19;17;10
Stew Friedman
You define what your vision looks like, what a a day in your life looks like 15 years from now. And what you're doing and what impact you're having, you look at your current life and describe the three or 4 or 5 values that are most important to you and where you invest your attention, across the different domains, those four different parts and, and do other assessments, that help you to articulate for yourself and people around you what you care about most.

00;19;17;10 - 00;19;47;20
Stew Friedman
So it begins with that. And that's the core of your growth as a leader, and what it means to integrate the different parts of life, knowing what matters most and most people don't do that. Yeah, they don't do it enough. The second piece to be whole involves recognizing and respecting the whole person, and that means identifying the most important people in the different parts of your life, and then thinking about why they matter to you and your future and what you expect and need from each other, and how well you're doing, and meeting those needs and expectations.

00;19;47;21 - 00;20;32;05
Stew Friedman
And and then looking at your set of most important relationships in the different parts of your life, and to see how they affect each other and how you're your social world, is, is one that you can affect. You can influence. And so this is, you know, set of exercises that helps you to do that and to prepare then for conversations with these people, dialogs with key stakeholders, as we call them, people who have a stake in your future to help to clarify those expectations and what most people discover in those conversations is that they have more trust, and more, support surrounding them than they had thought, that other people expect less

00;20;32;05 - 00;20;37;13
Stew Friedman
of them and something different than what they were thinking about. And that is quite liberating.

00;20;37;13 - 00;20;42;01
Paul Sullivan
When do we get to lower the bar? I love this when people are expecting less of us. This this is.

00;20;42;04 - 00;21;00;24
Stew Friedman
Right. Well, that's that's what happens in 80% of the cases is that when you ask people, hey, this is what I think is most important to you, do I have it right? These 3 or 4 things, what what they hear in response, if they're doing these conversations well and practicing the skill of getting other people to be honest with them.

00;21;00;27 - 00;21;18;05
Stew Friedman
And of course, every one of those conversations is different. And so it's an intensive clinic on how do you get people, to tell you the truth, and to feel confident in, you know, in expressing yours, what you learn is that what other people expect of you is a little less and a little different than what you thought.

00;21;18;05 - 00;21;38;17
Stew Friedman
So you're right. It results in less pressure, less stress, and more confidence in your ability to try new things. And so that's the third principle to be innovative, to experiment continually with how you get things done in a way that, is intended to pursue what I call four way wins. And that is, again, improved performance in all the different parts.

00;21;38;24 - 00;22;07;10
Stew Friedman
And so people then do experiments in the laboratory of their lives and, and they learn all kinds of practical knowledge about how you create change. That's indeed sustainable because it works not just for you, not just for your family, not just for your professional or business life, not just for your community, but you're thinking actively, consciously, mindfully, and acting on pursuing positive change that works for all those different parts.

00;22;07;12 - 00;22;20;27
Stew Friedman
And that's what people do. And then they reflect on what they discover from these experiments and generate new ideas for those and just continue to practice that set of, principles and tools.

00;22;20;29 - 00;22;36;26
Paul Sullivan
You know, if we're having this, this conversation and if I say that The New York Times is a story about this or even for this part, and you said you had just come up with this in the past two years, I would say yes to that. That's amazing. This is great. You came up with this 20 years ago and it's been building for 20 years.

00;22;36;26 - 00;22;51;27
Paul Sullivan
And I have to ask, like what Covid changed the way people look at total leadership or I guess I should say, how people are receptive to total leadership. Has this been an amazing boon of people embracing. Oh yeah. These concepts. Yeah.

00;22;52;00 - 00;23;23;23
Stew Friedman
Well, they had been growing, you know, with the, demographic changes in our society and the way that men and women think about their roles in society and what business was businesses were coming to realize as, you know, it's important to invest in the development of your people. This was not an obvious idea to many companies when I got my PhD in 1984, in organizational psychology, but but has grown over the course of, you know, my life as something that is now normal.

00;23;23;26 - 00;24;01;23
Stew Friedman
So there have been a lot of changes, you know, macro social changes that have changed, you know, the game in terms of how companies think about, and how individuals are demanding, you know, a different, a different way of living, a different way of working. But the pandemic had a kind of, jolting accelerant, you know, into this, into the mix, as you know, every everyone who could or or who had to begin to, you know, just radically shift, the time and places that they were doing their work.

00;24;01;23 - 00;24;27;17
Stew Friedman
And the whole issue of how you manage the boundaries, both both physical and psychological, among and between the different, you know, roles that you play in life, particularly work and family, became one that everyone was dealing with. In, in a, in a new way, requiring, you know, a rethinking of, the relationships among and between the, you know, the, the different parts of life.

00;24;27;19 - 00;24;52;15
Stew Friedman
And so the, the need for, proven models, you know, and we've done a lot of research now on what works and what doesn't. In our, delivery of this total leadership program in many, many different formats in different countries around the world. The book is in a dozen different languages. You know, we had we had something that that that could help.

00;24;52;17 - 00;25;06;29
Stew Friedman
And so, there's been, yeah, there's been an increased demand, in models like this. And now, of course, you know, there are many others out there, which is a great thing.

00;25;07;01 - 00;25;22;15
Paul Sullivan
You know, surely over the past 20 years, in a certain companies have been buying into total leadership, certain managers have been buying into it, but now it's really in stark relief, as we see, you know, a few companies have tried to put and try to, you know, draw a line in the sand and say, we're certainly going to work like it's still, 2019.

00;25;22;15 - 00;25;48;13
Paul Sullivan
You're going to come in the office, you can do this. And they're getting a lot of pushback from it. And the majority companies seem to be, I guess to say, doing the right thing or at least being quiet about, you know, whatever they're doing. But at least from the people I talked with, the company that and, you know, the, the, the dads, working dads and working moms, you know, those groups, those people in their 20s and throughout their 30s, maybe early 40s, they got to be home.

00;25;48;13 - 00;26;06;22
Paul Sullivan
They got to see the pandemic. And they are thinking completely differently about the way they want to work going forward. They can be highly productive, very smart, well-educated, but they're not going in five days a week. But then you have some of these, you know, super senior managers, who are still trying to figure out, this massive change, you know, in the world.

00;26;06;25 - 00;26;15;23
Paul Sullivan
How do you reconcile those, you know, two groups? How do you, you know, make this work? Because I don't, you know, we're not going back to 2019.

00;26;15;25 - 00;26;51;23
Stew Friedman
Know, that's for sure. And, no one's figured out, you know, what the right path is. And I think it's going to be different in different industries, you know, depending on the kinds of technologies that are used to to do work and what's required in terms of interdependence among people getting work done together. But the expectations of, you know, so many people as to, you know, the, the and organizations, claim to their physical, presence are now very, very different.

00;26;51;23 - 00;27;19;14
Stew Friedman
Like, hey, I've proven that I can deliver what I need to do, you know, working remotely from my mountain retreat or working wherever I am. And so why would I be commuting? And just how does that help? And so how do I reconcile it? Well, partly it's generational differences. You know, when I was your age or back in my day, and, you know, that's the way it is.

00;27;19;14 - 00;27;55;25
Stew Friedman
And in your institutions, organizations that are deeply rooted in tradition and, you know, you see that in medicine. You see that in law, especially, you know, those those professions where, you know, the people who are running those, organizations grew up in a just a radically different, environment. And, you know, not just in those professions, but, you know, the expectations for for what, you know, an ideal employee look like, are rooted in a pre-pandemic, pre-digital era.

00;27;55;28 - 00;28;24;11
Stew Friedman
The smart companies are experimenting, and, and don't claim to have an answer, but are clearly and genuinely interested in innovating to try to find new solutions that work and that work for all parties. And I think that's, you know, that's the only sensible approach here is let's try let's try some form of hybrid or let's try, you know, everybody's got to get back in the office.

00;28;24;11 - 00;28;43;25
Stew Friedman
Let's see what that looks like. Let's get data on what's working and what's not from, you know, the constituents who matter, especially with respect to our performance. And let's keep adjusting. But to make, you know, across the board claims of we work better when we're all together. So everybody's got to be in the office now that is just bound to fail.

00;28;43;25 - 00;28;56;12
Stew Friedman
Unless you're in a labor market where you don't care if people are leaving or if they're, you know, quiet. Quitting is the term of art is used today. So, I think it's important to be experimenting.

00;28;56;14 - 00;29;18;12
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. I, you know, I hear that and a couple of many things come to mind, but one is, you know, one of the companies, you Goldman Sachs, is that comes out of a very, you know, for the about getting people back in the office. And I know from what my wife does, I know from other people I talked to, top performers are leaving, top female performers are leaving because they have lots of other options.

00;29;18;12 - 00;29;34;29
Paul Sullivan
And I look at this and I say to myself, well, your bottom 30% are never going to leave no matter what you tell them to do. Because where do they go? Nobody wants them. But that top, you know, 20%, you know, they have they have options. And I wonder, you know, I know now you're not teaching undergraduates.

00;29;34;29 - 00;29;49;27
Paul Sullivan
Might be, but you are still teaching in the executive MBA program. And so for me, yes, you know, there's an executive MBA program for listeners is a program where people have experience, working and oftentimes they're working and, going back to school at the same time and.

00;29;49;27 - 00;29;50;22
Stew Friedman
Almost all are.

00;29;50;25 - 00;30;18;22
Paul Sullivan
Yeah. And so those are people who are literally applying what they're learning, in your class to their jobs, pretty, pretty quickly. When you think of the classes of executive MBAs, you've had, you know, 2019, 20, 20, 21, 22, and now today, how has, I mean, has their outlook, how has their outlook changed, as you know, coming, you know, pre-COVID and now, you know, some people call what we're in now the next normal.

00;30;18;22 - 00;30;30;12
Paul Sullivan
But this this kind of, you know, post-Covid lockdown world. How have you know their outlooks changed as as students or the questions are asking, how are those questions changed?

00;30;30;14 - 00;30;55;13
Stew Friedman
Well, I started teaching this course in 2003, in our executive MBA programs and and in both Philadelphia and San Francisco, where we have, campuses. So the, you know, the San Francisco group tends to be, a little different than the East Coast group, the people in San Francisco, many of them are in, you know, the tech world or media.

00;30;55;16 - 00;31;24;26
Stew Friedman
Whereas in the East Coast, it's, you know, more financial services, consulting. And so it's somewhat different, you know, industries. But, what we briefly talked about earlier is, is certainly something that I have observed and that is that, there's, a more genuine questioning of, well, is this how I want to be living now?

00;31;24;26 - 00;31;32;09
Stew Friedman
And, you know, I, I liked being around, you know, for breakfast with my kids. So.

00;31;32;09 - 00;31;47;27
Paul Sullivan
Let me let me interrupt you there, because a lot of these people coming into the executive MBA programs are managers. They're they're, you know, what might have one. Yeah. One point been called middle managers. And by emerging leaders is a better term for them. So they're actually not just responsible for themselves, but they're responsible for people who report to them.

00;31;47;27 - 00;31;59;06
Paul Sullivan
So how has that introspection about their own situation? How has that impacted or been reflected upon, their management styles, the way that they're treating the people who report to them?

00;31;59;08 - 00;32;43;09
Stew Friedman
Well, it's there is a range, you know, they're they're entrepreneurs. They're, you know, they're inventors. They're lots of physicians on the East Coast in our class. So, but yes, these are people in their mid 30s on average, who have, you know, advanced in terms of, supervisory management responsibility and, and have been successful, in that and what I hear, from them is that, you know, part of why they are interested in learning this model and practicing it is so that they can help their people who are, you know, who are making new kinds of, you know, claims to their own time and attention and, and where they invest.

00;32;43;09 - 00;33;09;20
Stew Friedman
And so they, they want to be more facile and more, you know, effective in, in being able to help their people to experiment in ways that are, you know, mutually enriching. And, you know, part of the the long standing problem with the whole work life movement, which I saw, you know, 30 plus years ago when I first got into it and I think still exists, but to a lesser degree.

00;33;09;20 - 00;33;36;09
Stew Friedman
And, and it's certainly something that that I've been working, on, you know, this whole time is, is to get beyond zero sum thinking and to instead look for ways to create value in all the different parts, but just being smarter about how you, how you invest your attention and, and, and look systematically at whose interests you're serving.

00;33;36;09 - 00;34;02;22
Stew Friedman
So, you know, a lot of the work life conversation is about, I need something from you. Right? Dear boss, you need to give it to me. Yeah. As opposed to here's something that is going to be helpful to us. Can we try it? Yeah. If I am, you know, working at home three days a week and coming into the office to let's just try that for, you know, some period of time and see if that works for you.

00;34;02;22 - 00;34;15;21
Paul Sullivan
It's a simple reframing of it's a simple reframing of it to sort of, you know, behavioral, finance 101. And it's, you know, I can see there be a lot more, effective. This is going to be better for the company if we work this way. This.

00;34;15;22 - 00;34;18;11
Stew Friedman
More let's just try it. Right. Exactly.

00;34;18;11 - 00;34;18;19
Paul Sullivan
Yeah.

00;34;18;19 - 00;34;30;01
Stew Friedman
And frame to frame change as an experiment rather than a, you know, lifelong demand. You are never going to see me on Fridays from now on. If you don't like that Goldman Sachs I'm going to JP Morgan. Okay.

00;34;30;03 - 00;34;33;02
Paul Sullivan
That's and I have it in my contract right here. No Fridays.

00;34;33;05 - 00;34;54;22
Stew Friedman
Yeah. And if that just doesn't work because, every situation is different what you want to be doing. And I would encourage listeners to, to think about this and to, to try it themselves is if you want to make a change that is that you need, you know, to keep your your family life intact or keep yourself sane, you know, by taking the piano lessons that you need to take or whatever it is.

00;34;54;22 - 00;35;14;00
Stew Friedman
Yeah. Or, you know, invest in working on climate change, you know, as part of your, you know, portfolio of activities, whatever matters to be thinking about, as you say, to, to frame it in terms of how by doing this, you become a more valuable asset to the company. When you ask yourself that question, which most people don't.

00;35;14;02 - 00;35;43;04
Stew Friedman
Yeah, you are bound to find an answer if that activity or that initiative really matters to you. So you start to find, you know, those, ways in which what you're doing in one part of your life can, can be a value to the other parts. And that's a big part of what we train people to, to, to do, to shift their mindset so that they're seeing where, they're, you know, being a better father makes them a better manager, for example.

00;35;43;06 - 00;36;00;09
Paul Sullivan
But this is so interesting because, you know, it's a two way street. And a good friend of mine sold his his business to a larger company. And the and he's on the senior leadership team there. But that company is mandating, the people be in the office four days a week, but you can pick the four days. Well, nobody picked Friday.

00;36;00;09 - 00;36;17;10
Paul Sullivan
So essentially you're mandating that they come in four days a week. Nobody comes in Friday. And people barely work on Fridays because they're so disgruntled and burned out. They they go and do so and so that way or this has been awesome. We're coming toward the end of the time, but I don't want to leave without talking about, least your most recent book.

00;36;17;10 - 00;36;35;29
Paul Sullivan
But as I think about, you know, I don't want to read too much into it, but in, you know, 20 years, it seems like you're getting a little at least once. And the titles of these books a little bit more, optimistic because the first book is, you know, work and family, allies or enemies. What happens when business professionals confront life choices?

00;36;36;02 - 00;36;57;23
Paul Sullivan
That's a little daunting. Next one baby bust. New choices for men and women in work and family that's, you know, showing a little softer. And then but the most recent one, parents who lead the leadership approach you need to parent with purpose for your career and create a richer life. I mean, is it fair to say they represent an evolution of your research?

00;36;57;25 - 00;37;07;08
Paul Sullivan
On this this topic? They're they're certainly getting to be, kinder, gentler, titles as, as we go through the years.

00;37;07;10 - 00;37;32;12
Stew Friedman
Yes, I think so. And you know what has. But it's also, you know, transpired over the course of this years is, is the development of this total leadership approach, which is a very optimistic one. It basically asserts that if you're smart about it, you can find ways to create more freedom in your life to to live how you want to live and to and to thrive.

00;37;32;15 - 00;38;02;01
Stew Friedman
And it's using leadership principles that we know are important. You know, having a clear sense of, of what matters to you, knowing who matters to you, investing in those relationships, developing support, you know, actively and then trying new ways of getting things done that are not just about you. That's what leaders do, and that's what's necessary for us as a as business professionals, but also as as families.

00;38;02;01 - 00;38;33;20
Stew Friedman
And so, you know, the early research was was really more focused on documenting, you know, how people are thinking, how they're acting, how they feel about these issues across generations, how those issues are, you know, are playing out differently for people at different life stages and offering a set of, you know, ideas for action that could be undertaken to, you know, to address the questions that we face as a society in our businesses, in our families and communities.

00;38;33;23 - 00;38;57;20
Stew Friedman
That with what we've done with the total leadership approach, which we then adopted for families. So we we took what we we knew about this total leadership model for individuals, and largely based on what I was hearing from students and clients who were saying, you know, I'm reading this book along with my spouse, you really should write a book for, you know, for families doing this stuff together because we're doing that.

00;38;57;24 - 00;39;31;27
Stew Friedman
Yeah. And my, my publisher, Harvard Business Press, saying, you know, we need a book for parents, please write it. And I said, you know, no, I'm done. Writing books is way too hard. I don't think I want to do this anymore. They said, no, no, you got to do this. Okay. I'll do that if you if you if you agree that I can do this with, a writing partner who is a person who I've been doing research with for, you know, 20 years, who is herself, you know, a mother of young children and a professor and research scholar, Elissa West.

00;39;32;04 - 00;40;15;22
Stew Friedman
So we we partnered on this, and we took the total leadership approach, and we went into the lab with families for people parenting together. And we we took those same tools and we made it for them to do together as a unit and to do the work of, you know, describing their, their individual and collective vision for the future, their values as a, as a unit, as a family and individually, and how those come together and, and doing the work of peer to peer coaching throughout all this, you know, identifying the most important people, what their mutual needs and interests are, having conversations with them and doing experiments, is all about,

00;40;15;26 - 00;40;40;27
Stew Friedman
you know, making things better, helping to develop your capacity to bring others along with you to a better tomorrow. And with parents who lead, you know, that is the the you know, that is the main purpose of that book. And and I think it is more focused on that action. So I, I, I agree, it is a kind of, we're actively optimistic, approach that is very practical.

00;40;41;00 - 00;41;03;20
Stew Friedman
You know, people are often skeptical, because, you know, so many people have been reared on the concept of you've got to sacrifice in order to be successful. And of course, that is at some level true. I'm not, you know, a Pollyanna. This is all, you know, rooted in research and quite, practical as a model for.

00;41;03;22 - 00;41;24;21
Stew Friedman
Well, what if you didn't assume trade off among the different parts of life? What if you instead assumed where is there a possibility for me to take action within my purview? You know, that I can actually do that. Might make things better all the way around. If I think in those terms, then I'm a lot more likely to to achieve those ends.

00;41;24;21 - 00;41;31;18
Stew Friedman
And that's what families do with with parents elite status. It's pretty exciting and a lot of fun.

00;41;31;20 - 00;41;37;28
Paul Sullivan
Stew Friedman, thank you so much for being my guest on the Company of Dads podcast. It's been a great conversation.

00;41;38;01 - 00;41;41;08
Stew Friedman
Well, thank you so much, Paul. It's been great, to be with you, I appreciate it.