Work And Life With Stew Friedman

Christine Beckman is The Price Family Chair in Social Innovation and Professor of Public Policy at the Price Center for Social Innovation in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, and the author of Dreams of the Overworked: Living, Working and Parenting in the Digital Age.  Before joining the Price School in 2018, she was a Professor in the Department of Management and Organization at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. She also taught at UC Irvine. Christine is a widely-known and highly visible scholar in the field of Management and Organization. She is a native Californian and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University. In this episode, Stew and Christine talk about the pluses and minuses of technology for working families, especially during these pandemic times, when so many are working from home for the first time and when parents are attempting to manage remote school work for their children

Doug Conant is an expert on leadership.  He began his career at General Mills and held leadership positions in marketing and strategy at Kraft before becoming CEO and President of Campbell Soup Company. During his career he also served as President of Nabisco Foods Company, and Chairman of Avon Products. Over the course of his ten years as CEO at Campbell, employee engagement skyrocketed from being among the worst in the Fortune 500 to being world-class as measured by Gallup. After retiring from Campbell Soup Company, Doug founded ConantLeadership: a mission-driven community of leaders and learners who are championing leadership that works. As CEO of ConantLeadership, he takes no salary, and all profits (after covering operating costs) are donated to charitable organizations at the forefront of championing the kind of leadership that can move society forward.  He’s now put all of the lessons he learned into a new book -- The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights -- that

Dr. David Smith is co-author of the forthcoming book Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace. David is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the College of Leadership and Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College. His previous book, Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women, was named one of 25 books everyone should read by Inc. Magazine and TED Speakers when it was published in 2016. A former Navy pilot, Dr. Smith led diverse organizations of women and men culminating in command of a squadron in combat and flew more than 3,000 hours over 30 years including combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a sociologist trained in military sociology and social psychology, he focuses his research in gender, work, and family issues including gender bias in performance evaluations, dual career families, military families, women in the military, and retention of women. In this episode, Stew and David talk about the various ways men can, and must, step up to help make our workplaces

Bruce Daisley is European Vice President of Twitter, based in London, and his new book is called Eat Sleep Work Repeat: 30 Hacks for Bringing Joy to Your Job. Bruce joined Twitter in 2012, having previously run YouTube UK at Google. He has also worked in the magazine publishing and radio industries, having got his first break by mailing a cartoon resume of his life to prospective employers. Bruce's passion for improving work led to him creating the podcast “Eat Sleep Work Repeat” which became a number 1 smash in the UK (also hitting the business top 10 in the US).In this episode, Stew and Bruce talk about the pandemic’s impact on how we are managing the blurred lines between work and home, where social media fits into this brave new world, and how we can all keep our energy, enthusiasm, and creativity going in these difficult times.  Bruce shares some of his favorite hacks from among the 30 he offers in Eat Sleep Work Repeat for how to bring more joy to work.  Here’s an invitation, a challenge,

Chester Elton is one of today’s most influential voices in workplace trends and is the co-author of Leading with Gratitude: Eight Leadership Practices for Extraordinary Business Results. Chester is the co-founder of The Culture Works, a global training company, and a board member of Camp Corral, a non-profit for the children of wounded and fallen military heroes. He serves as a leadership consultant to firms such as American Express, AT&T, Avis Budget Group and Procter & Gamble. In 2018 Global Gurus research organization ranked him as #13 in the world’s top leadership experts and #5 in the world’s top organizational culture experts; and he is a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches pay it forward project. In this episode, Stew and Chester discuss the pandemic’s impact on workplace culture and on how leaders -- of all sorts and in all social environments, including the family -- can express gratitude and appreciation for their people and reap great benefits from doing so.  Chester offers

Jennifer Goldman-Wetzler is a leading expert on conflict and organizational psychology. She’s also the founder and CEO of Alignment Strategies Group, and author of Optimal Outcomes: Free Yourself from Conflict at Work, at Home and in Life, which was selected as a Financial Times Book of the Month. For two decades, Jennifer has advised senior leaders at global corporations as well as at large non-profit and governmental institutions. A former counterterrorism research fellow with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, she received her B.A. with honors from Tufts University and holds a Ph.D. in Social-Organizational Psychology from Columbia University. She currently writes the Achieving Conflict Freedom column at Psychology Today, and serves as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Columbia University, where she teaches a popular course on conflict freedom. In this episode, Stew and Jennifer discuss conflict, how to recognize your typical response patterns, and ways to ca

Michelle Travis is a law professor at the University of San Francisco’s School of Law, where she serves as a Director of USF’s Labor and Employment Law Program. She is an expert on employment discrimination law and serves as the Co-Director of USF’s Labor and Employment Law Program. Her research focuses on sex discrimination, gender stereotypes, work/family conflict, and disability discrimination in the workplace. She teaches courses on employment law and civil litigation, and she has won multiple teaching awards. She has a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.A. in psychology from Cornell University, and is also the author of an award-winning children’s picture book, My Mom Has Two Jobs, which celebrates working moms. She has a new book out,  Dads For Daughters: How Fathers Can Give their Daughters a Better, Brighter, Fairer Future. In this episode, Stew and Michelle talk about the ways by which men can help empower women. In spite of the progress that’s been made, we still live in a world that’s

Laura Huang is the author of Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage. Laura is the MBA Class of 1954 Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Prior to her position at Harvard, she was a highly regarded assistant professor of management at Wharton.  Her research examines interpersonal relationships and implicit bias in entrepreneurship and in the workplace. Laura is the creator of #FindYourEdge, an initiative dedicated to addressing inequality and disadvantage through personal empowerment. Her award-winning research has been featured in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, and Nature, and she was named one of the 40 Best Business School Professors Under the Age of 40 by Poets & Quants. Laura holds an MS and BSE in electrical engineering, both from Duke University, an MBA from INSEAD, and a PhD from the University of California, Irvine. In this episode, Stew and Laura talk about how hard work actually doesn’t speak for itself, a

This is a special edition of the Work and Life show. Stew Friedman’s new book, Parents Who Lead: The Leadership Approach You Need to Parent with Purpose, Fuel Your Career, and Create a Richer Life, co-authored with Alyssa Westring, has just been published, it reached Amazon’s #1 Bestseller in Work Life, and is a nominee for Dan Pink, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Next Big Idea Club. This episode  features four working parents who were in the Parents Who Lead lab as subjects in the research for the book.  They talk about their experience in the workshop and what they took away from it. If you’re a working parent, or know of and care about mothers or fathers who work, you’ll find this evidence-based guide for action to be not only practical, but fun.  Stew’s guests in the first half of the show are Daniel Chen who was Head of Business Development at Quicken, and now leads Business Development at a tech startup called Brightside in San Francisco, and Adrienne Demory, who has

Bestselling author Tom Rath has a new book, Life’s Great Question: Discover How You Contribute to the World. He is a researcher who has spent the past two decades studying how work can improve human health and well-being. His 10 books have sold more than 10 million copies, making him the #1 bestselling author of non-fiction books in history. Tom’s first book, How Full Is Your Bucket?, was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller and led to a series of books and activities for kids that are used in classrooms around the world. His StrengthsFinder 2.0 is Amazon’s top selling non-fiction book of all time. Tom’s other bestsellers include Strengths Based Leadership, Wellbeing, Eat Move Sleep, and Are You Fully Charged? Each copy of Life’s Great Question has a unique access code to Contribify.com, and after taking the online inventory, readers discover the top three areas where they have the most potential for contribution.In this episode, Stew and Tom discuss the importance for one’s own health and well-being on be

Cali Williams Yost is Founder and CEO of the Flex+Strategy Group, an organization of experts in flexible workplace strategy, change management, leadership, instructional design and communications. Cali  is an internationally-recognized workplace strategist and futurist. For more than two decades, she has predicted many early work transformation trends and used those insights to develop innovative strategies that help organizations build dynamic, future-ready work cultures that attract and retain an engaged, diverse workforce; increase productivity and innovation; and enhance employee well-being. A former commercial banker, Cali is an honors graduate of Columbia Business School and noted as an alumnus “Changing the World.” In 2018 she was named one of the global management thinkers “on the radar” by Thinkers50, and she has been cited as one of Forbes’s 40 Women to Watch Over 40.In this episode, Stew and Cali talk about what it takes to make flexible work arrangements a reality in organizations of all kind

Dr. Suvrat Bhargave is the author of a new book called Moment of Insight: Universal Lessons Learned from a Psychiatrist's Couch.  Dr. Bhargave is a board-certified psychiatrist, specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. Employing empathy, education, and empowerment he has been able to relate to a multi-demographic audience. Affectionately known for his “relatable expertise”, Dr. Bhargave is highly sought after to lecture locally and nationally on a broad range of topics pertaining to personal growth, effective parenting, relationship satisfaction, and mental health conditions. After completing his residency training and specialty fellowship from Duke University, Dr. B (as he is known by his patients) continued his practice in hospitals, community health, and private practice settings.  In this episode, Stew and Dr. Bhargave discuss how shame and its opposite, feelings of self-worth, shape our capacity to be successful in all parts of our lives.  They talk about what it takes to addr

Maggie Jackson is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, fellowships, and prizes as an author and journalist whose essays, commentary, and books have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New Philosopher, on National Public Radio, and elsewhere. A graduate of Yale and the London School of Economics, her book Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention has been described as “groundbreaking” and “essential” and a new, updated edition has just been released that continues to warn that the fragmentation of attention in today’s world is eroding our abilities to problem-solve, innovate, and care for one another. She’s the author of another book, What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, which was the first to explore the fate of home in the digital age, a time when private life is permeable and portable.In this episode, Stew and Maggie talk about distraction in the digital age and a new project she’s working

David Fajgenbaum is Assistant Professor of Medicine, Translational Medicine & Human Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of a memoir called Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope Into Action. David is the co-founder and executive director of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network (CDCN) and an NIH-funded physician-scientist.  Diagnosed with Castleman’s disease while in medical school, David  has dedicated his life to discovering new treatments and cures for deadly disorders like Castleman disease. For this inspirational work he’s been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 healthcare list, as a top healthcare leader by Becker's Hospital Review, and one of the youngest people ever elected as a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the nation's oldest medical society. He was one of three recipients—including Vice President Joe Biden—of a 2016 Atlas Award from the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia. David earned a BS from Georgetown University magna

Joel Brockner is the Phillip Hettleman Professor of Business at Columbia University Business School, Academic Director of Columbia CaseWorks, author of The Process Matters: Engaging and Equipping People for Success, and a leading authority on a variety of psychological issues in the workplace, including managing change, leadership, decision-making, and cross-cultural differences in work behavior.  In this episode, Stew and Joel discuss Joel’s book, The Process Matters, and what works and what doesn’t in order to engage employees so all can be successful. Being fair and transparent matters. Sharing accurate information is important. The onboarding process matters as does giving people some voice and control in how they can best contribute to an organization’s mission.  Joel addresses the fallacy of not having enough time to devote to developing people in this way, noting that an ounce of prevention is well worth the pound of cure. Repairing damage from unfairness is often far more costly, such as in

Wayne Baker is the Robert P. Thome Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Management & Organizations at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and Faculty Director of the Center for Positive Organizations. His latest book is All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success. He is the author of five other books and many scholarly articles.  His work has focused on social capital, social networks, generosity, and positive organizations, and values. Wayne is a cofounder and board member of Give and Take Inc., developers of the Givitas collaborative technology platform based on principles in All You Have to Do Is Ask.In this episode, Stew and Wayne talk about the science and art of both asking for and giving help, and we need to be able to do both.  Getting the support we need to achieve our goals, at work and in all the rest of life, is too often inhibited by difficulties we face in asking for it.  In this conversation, Wayne describes

Stan Silverman is the author Be Different! The Key to Business and Career Success. A recognized thought leader and influencer, Stan publishes a widely read, nationally syndicated column on leadership in the Philadelphia Business Journal and 42 affiliated business publications across the U.S. Stan is the former president and CEO of global PQ Corporation and is a senior executive in residence at the LeBow College of Business of Drexel University.  He earned his engineering and MBA degrees from Drexel. He is vice chairman of Drexel University’s board of trustees and the former chairman of its College of Medicine. He also serves on the boards of three K-12 independent schools and is a member of the faculty of Board Advisory Services of the National Association of Corporate Directors.In this episode, Stew and Stan talk about what it takes to be different and how crucial it is to learn how to do so if one is to succeed in one’s career and in the rest of life.   They talk about the value of trust -- perh

Due Quach (pronounced “Zway Kwok”), is the Founder and CEO of Calm Clarity and author of Calm Clarity: How to Use Science to Rewire Your Brain for Greater Wisdom, Fulfillment and Joy, one of Fast Company’s best business books of 2018. Through her social enterprise, Calm Clarity, she guides organizations to incorporate valuable insights from neuroscience and mindfulness to address unconscious bias and build a high-performing and inclusive culture. She also heads a second nonprofit, the Collective Success Network, to mentor, support, and empower low-income, first-generation college students to successfully navigate college and enter professional careers. Having started life in poverty as a refugee in inner-city Philadelphia, she turned to neuroscience to heal the long-term effects of trauma, graduate from Harvard College and the Wharton School, and built a successful international business career. Her inspiring story is featured in The Portal, a new documentary film about meditation as a portal for healing and

Richard Boyatzis is Distinguished University Professor at Case Western Reserve University and is one of the world’s experts on emotional intelligence.  His great new book is Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth. He has a B.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard. Using his Intentional Change Theory (ICT), he studies sustained, desired change at all levels of human endeavor from individuals, teams, organizations, communities and countries. He is the author of more than 200 articles on leadership, emotional intelligence, competency development, coaching, neuroscience and management education. His nine books include the international best-seller, Primal Leadership, and Resonant Leadership.  In this episode Stew and Richard talk about how anyone can be effective as a coach -- helping others learn and create sustainable change -- by following a set of simple guidelines.  Richard describes some of the

Louis Gagnon is the CEO of Total Brain, which is a mental health and fitness platform powered by neuroscience. Total Brain was founded in 2000 by a leading neuroscientist, Dr. Evian Gordon, and its mission is to improve mental health and fitness through brain-based self-awareness and training. Today it is used by large consumer groups and Fortune 500 companies that benefit from lower mental healthcare costs, improved productivity, and critical insights on what drives their organizations. As a corporate executive, Louis held dual Chief Product Officer and Chief Marketing Officer roles at Audible, now part of Amazon, Yodle, and Monster Worldwide.  He is also Advisor to TPG Capital, a top-tier US private equity firm who named him CEO of Ride, a portfolio company that he restructured. Stew and Louis talk about the development of the Total Brain company and its mission to help solve the mental health crisis at work with an assessment tool based on research in neuroscience.  Louis describes how this