Work and Life with Stew Friedman

Erin Owen, author of Refuel Recharge and Re-energize: Your Guide to Taking Back Control of Your Time and Energy, joined Total Leadership’s client services team in 2005. She earned her MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and her graduate certificate in International Studies from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in Nanjing, China. She holds a B.A. in Chinese Studies from Grinnell and certification in Health Coaching from the internationally recognized Institute for Integrative Nutrition in Manhattan, where Drs. Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil, and Neil Barnard are faculty members. Drawing on over two decades of experience ranging from organizational change management consulting to leadership coaching, Erin has consulted with and coached hundreds of entrepreneurs, business leaders, C-suite teams, and private individuals from more than 15 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. She takes a unique East-meets-West approach to helping clients more effectively manage their professional lives, grow their leadership capacity and resilience, and lead healthier, happier, more productive lives. Erin is working mother and avid traveler who regularly leads learning groups to Asia. She is passionate about teaching a more sustainable way of living and working—a simpler, more harmonious way that allows us to thrive while preserving what is most precious and important. Erin and Stew discuss how she helps people grow as leaders. She describes her easily accessible method for identifying what a person needs to change and how they can change it while cultivating healthy relationships. To illustrate, Stew and Erin talk to someone who called the radio show about how he can improve the management of his priorities in his professional life and his family life.

Shaun Francis is Chair and CEO of Medcan and he’s author of a recently released book entitled Eat, Move, Think: The Path to a Healthier, Stronger, Happier You. He was a student in Stew’s very first Total Leadership class for Executive MBAs at Wharton. Medcan is a global leader in assessing their clients’ overall well-being and inspiring them to live well for life. It’s routinely recognized for as one of Canada’s Best Managed Companies. Shaun graduated from the United States Naval Academy after he was nominated by President Reagan to attend as a Canadian. He received the military’s highest recognition for a civilian, The Canadian Forces medallion for Distinguished Service, for his work on behalf of veterans. He’s received an honorary doctorate and countless other awards. Shaun co-led an expedition to the summit of Island Peak, adjacent to Mount Everest, with 12 injured Canadian, soldiers raising funds the True Patriot Love Foundation, which Shaun chairs. Stew and Shaun talk about the importance of our physical health for longevity, quality of life, and work performance. They drill down on the best diet (the Mediterranean ) and how it’s a sustainable one, not a fad. They talk about cardio as a way to prolong life and muscle strengthening as a way to improve the quality of one’s life over time. They discuss how the mind, and the way we exercise our choices, is central to prolonged health. They delve into the pernicious impact of the stigma of mental health care. Shaun uses the example of wounded warriors, the most fit among us, succumbing to mental health problems as an illustration how we are all of vulnerable to mental strain. They also talk about the importance of being role models for our children.

Ben Feder is President of International Partnerships for the U. S. for Tencent, the Chinese internet titan that owns WeChat. Previously, Ben was CEO of Take Two Interactive, publisher of Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto. He’s the author of Take Off Your Shoes: One Man’s Journey from the Boardroom to Bali and Back, a tale of his journey of self-discovery when he left corporate America, unplugged, and took his family to live in Bali for a year. Stew and Ben talk about priorities in our lives and how to keep them foremost in our minds. They talk about legacy and what that might mean for how we live our lives every day. They discuss the importance of realizing, hard as it may be to see, that we all have choices -- even if we don’t have the option to chuck it all and move to a Pacific island for a long stretch -- and that it’s essential to make conscious, deliberate decisions about what we do with our precious time on earth. Ben describes the benefits of mindfulness, yoga, and a practice of inquiry, or challenging assumptions, especially about ourselves, for freeing ourselves to live in a way that’s more closely aligned with our values.

Sally Thornton is founder and CEO of Forshay, a company that focuses on how people can do their best work through executivhttp://forshay.com/e recruiting, project-based work, and improving the system of work through increased diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Sally launched WorkLab in 2015, a design thinking community of action committed to making work better, based on her work with Stanford's "Redesigning and Redefining Work" project. She lectures regularly at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business as well as UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She also serves on the Advisory Council of Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Sally and Stew discuss the future of work, which will be more fluid, less focused on a job and more on both the work itself and on results. They discuss the importance of social support at work for enabling people to thrive in all parts of their lives. Sally offers valuable tips on how to harness technology so that it is not a distracting and intrusive force in our lives but, rather, so that it helps to limit and focus our time on the people and projects that matter.

Johann Berlin, CEO of TLEX Institute (which stands for Transformational Leadership for Excellence) specializes in working with CEOs, companies and corporate teams to improve their connections to each other through techniques that promote mental clarity — some that you’ll recognize if you practice yoga. He says better mental clarity — it’s often called mindfulness — is needed to process the constant flow of information we receive, to navigate challenges, and to handle stress. Johann focuses on adaptive leadership and stress management. He works with organizations to transform their cultures, starting with the individual. Stew and Johann talk about proven methods for managing the stress of our 24/7 technologically-connected world and how his organization brings these ideas and tools to companies around the world. Johann talks about how he learned these methods in his childhood and he describes research on the many psychological and physiological benefits of conscious breathing, mindfulness, connecting with nature, and meaningful open relations with other people.

Erica Dhawan is Founder and CEO of Cotential, an organization that works to maximize the power of connection in the workplace and beyond. Their services include training programs, speakers, and tools for businesses to leverage their potential connections. Erica attended the Wharton School as well as MIT and Harvard University. She was named by Thinkers50 as “The Oprah of Management Ideas” and co-authored the bestseller Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence. Erica thinks workplaces should be more connected. In this conversation with Stew she provides examples of millennials who have used social media to connect and improve productivity. Millennials have shown great leadership in creating informal networks online. Erica describes how this new way of working has disrupted some traditional industries. She discusses the rise of informal networks and social movements as a result of our growing connectivity and how these interactions spur innovative thinking and inspire courageous change

Francesca Gino is a behavioral scientist and the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. She’s been honored as one of the world’s Top 40 Business Professors under 40 and one of the world’s 50 most influential management thinkers. She’s the author of the Sidetracked and Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life. Francesca and Stew discuss the five key talents of rebels -- they demonstrate novelty, curiosity, perspective-taking, authenticity and diversity. Stew and Francesca talk about overcoming resistance to embracing rebelliousness, some common misconceptions about rebels, and how to cultivate rebelliousness in your children. Francesca reviews her research on how rebels’ questioning and curiosity is good for business, productivity, and engagement. She responds to a couple of great questions from listeners who called in to the radio show.

Nigel Travis is Executive Chairman of Dunkin' Brands. His new book is The Challenge Culture: Why the Most Successful Organizations Run on Pushback. Nigel served as CEO of Dunkin' Brands from 2009 through July 2018. His distinctive human-centered perspective on leadership and management, now viewed as essential in today’s complex and diverse global organizations, took root early in his career when he was a human resources manager. Prior to Dunkin Brands, he served as President and COO at Blockbuster, and President and CEO at Papa John’s. In 2017, he became owner of Leyton Orient Football, a troubled professional soccer team that presents a unique opportunity to implement his challenge culture strategy. Stew and Nigel discuss how organizations and employees thrive in today’s hyper-competitive world when there’s a culture that supports questioning everything without disrespecting anyone. That means everyone -- from new recruit to senior executive -- must be given the freedom to speak up and question the status quo. And they talk about Nigel’s unique perspective on how communication and crises at work affect people in other parts of their lives.

Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. Her work on teaming, psychological safety, and leadership influences corporate and academic audiences around the world. In November Wiley will publish her latest book, which is called The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace For Learning, Innovation and Growth. Her other books include Extreme Teaming: Lessons in Complex, Cross-Sector Leadership, which provides new insight into the effective management of global enterprises and teaming across boundaries. She is also the author of Building the Future: Big Teaming for Audacious Innovation, Teaming to Innovate. Amy has published numerous articles in the Harvard Business Review and in leading academic journals . She has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011 and was honored with the Talent Award in 2017. Stew and Amy talk about the importance of psychological safety at work in today’s knowledge-driven economy. Fresh, bold, and perhaps outrageous ideas need to be able to bubble up for organizations to be learning and innovating successfully. Amy describes the recipe for how managers can create a psychologically safe environment: set the stage by reminding people of the mission and their place in achieving it; invite people to contribute their thoughts, suggestions and questions; and respond productively and with curiosity about even the wackiest ideas. She provides tips for producing change in workplace culture, to make it less fearful, from the bottom up. Stew and Amy also talk about the impact of fear at work on life at home.

Laura Vanderkam is the author of Off The Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done as well as several other time management and productivity books, including such as I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. She co-hosts, with Sarah Hart-Unger, the podcast Best of Both Worlds. Her TED talk, How to Gain Control of Your Free Time, has been viewed more than six million times. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and four children. Stew and Laura talk about how we perceive the amount of time we have, how spending time with friends and family affects our perception of time, the importance of scheduling in daily “vacations,” and ways to savor the good moments in order to expand time. Laura describes what she’s observed from her research on people who keep time logs and she provides practical tips for how we can use time not only to be more productive, but also to help us enjoy life more.

Nancy Rothstein, a proud Penn alum, is known as The Sleep Ambassador. She is also Director of Corporate Sleep Programs at CIRCADIAN, a global company that provides 24/7 workforce performance and safety solutions for businesses that operate around the clock. Nancy, who earned her MBA from from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, helps people make lasting shifts to optimize their sleep quality and quantity. As Director of CIRCADIAN® Corporate Sleep Programs, she consults to Fortune 500 corporations awakening leadership to the value of a good night’s sleep for their workforce and providing sleep education for employees at all levels. She also lectures on sleep to the medical and dental communities to encourage integrating relevant sleep information into their practice. Nancy is the author of My Daddy Snores. Stew and Nancy talk about the well-documented sequelae of sleep deprivation, which is now rampant in our society -- individual problems such as depression, weight gain, and heart disease; the ripple effects on our family members; and, for businesses, reduced productivity and workplace accidents -- to name a few. Nancy provides evidence-based tips for how to get better sleep in our lives and, in the second part of this episode, she talks to listeners of the radio show about their sleep. And Stew gets some advice about his napping strategy. More resources from The Sleep Ambassador.

Guy Spier is an investor based in Zurich. In June 2007 he made headlines by bidding US $650,100 with Mohnish Pabrai for a charity lunch with Warren Buffett. Since 1997 he has managed Aquamarine Fund, an investment partnership inspired by, and styled after, the original 1950’s Buffett partnerships. Previously, Guy Spier worked as an investment banker in New York and as a management consultant in London and Paris. Spier is co-host of TEDxZurich and wrote The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom and Enlightenment. In this episode, Guy and Stew talk about finding the courage to be honest at work and in one’s life. Guy discusses how the virtues of candor and how people are attracted to one’s ability to speak honestly about personal strengths and weaknesses. Drawing on a host of inspirations in his life, from ancient Greek literature to Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, Guy describes his journey to self-discovery. For him, true success derives from our ability to reflect and learn from our backgrounds -- the real story of failures and achievements. Through introspection, we enable ourselves to traverse the long chain of incremental steps that lead to achieving goals that truly matter. Here is a transcript of Stew and Guy’s conversation.

Morra Aarons-Mele is founder of the award-winning social impact agency Women Online and The Mission List, a social change influencer database. She is an Internet marketer who has been working with women online since 1999, when she helped Hillary Clinton log on for her first Internet chat. Morra has launched online campaigns for President Obama, Malala Yousafzai, the United Nations, and many other leading figures and organizations. She’s the host of the popular podcast Hiding in the Bathroom and her book is Hiding in the Bathroom: A Roadmap to Getting Out There (When You'd Rather Stay Home). Stew and Morra talk about the narrow view of success that persists in our society and its costs, both financial and human, which have taken their toll on her. Morra rails against the false glorification displayed in what she calls “entrepreneurship porn.” They explore middle-ground alternatives, such as giving ourselves time to breath; the importance of accepting, acknowledging, and embracing anxiety; and how anxiety can actually be an asset at work because it helps attune us to others’ sensitivities and needs. Stew and Morra discuss the stigma of of mental illness, how to be successful on one’s own terms, and the value in telling your true story.

Herminia Ibarra is the Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School. Before that she was on the faculty at INSEAD and the Harvard Business School. She is a judge for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network, and recognized by Thinkers 50 among the most influential management thinkers in the world. Her book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader explains how to step up to a bigger leadership role. Her best-selling Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career describes how people reinvent their careers. Ibarra, who received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, where she was a National Science Fellow, is a master educator and world-renowned scholar whose advice is sought by many organizations. Stew and Herminia, who go way back to grad school days, discuss the essentials in Act Like a Leader and the many ways one can cultivate and use a broad and diverse network to enhance one’s career. Ibarra contrasts this with what she calls the tendency many of us have to be narcissistic and lazy when it comes to growing the ongoing social support everyone needs to succeed as a leader. They talk about practical matters, like how to make bite- sized requests commensurate with the status of the relationship and how to expand your network outside of your immediate circle -- even if it’s uncomfortable to do so.

Neil Blumenthal is co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker, a lifestyle brand that offers designer eyewear at a low price with a focus on being socially conscious. Prior to launching Warby Parker in 2010, Neil served as director of VisionSpring, a nonprofit social enterprise that trains low-income women to start their own businesses selling affordable eyeglasses to individuals living on less than $4 per day in developing countries. In 2015, Fast Company named Warby Parker the most innovative company in the world. He was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. Neil received his BA from Tufts University and his MBA here at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Stew and Neil have a wide-ranging talk about his time at Wharton, the importance of honest conversations to build trust, why continual learning by employees is essential to a thriving company, and the ways in which parenthood changes our relationship to time and work.