The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 356: Stewart Friedman - How To Parent With Purpose & Fuel Your Career

Episode Date: March 15, 2020

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 for details Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com 356: Stewart Friedman - How To Parent With Purpose & Fuel Your Career Notes: Sustaining excellence = "they take seriously the idea that it's not just about work. It's about life." --> Know what you care about... "It takes courage to look inside yourself." Ask yourself, "What am I here to do?"  For Stew, "I'm here to help people grow as leaders and make an impact on the world." What Stew learned from his time as a cab driver: Patience... Everyone is unique. You see how people treat others.  "It created a love of geography." There is a lot of perspective to be gained from working in the service industry. Stew was hired to run the leadership development program at Ford It was important to connect with everyone around him "Be respectful of all people you interact." Humbled -- "I realized I knew nothing when I went to Ford." "I get up there and devise what the next 10 years will look like... And talked about myself the whole time. A key leader pulled me aside and said, 'What the F are you doing?'" Be WHOLE - It's about you as a whole person both at work and at home. "Firms that fully embrace the needs and interests of the whole person will win today's competition for the best talent." "Leading is about mobilizing people toward valued goals." Learn how to talk with others and show them that you truly value you... LISTEN "Ryan, you're one of the most important people to me in my life..." What does the team need from the leader? values, vision, an understanding of the stakeholders The leadership leap: You must care about people Understand the specific priorities Ask, "What am I missing?" Total Leadership: Projection - "If you had control, what would you be doing?" "What's distinctive about you?" Get clarity on what you care about right now Identify the most important people in your life Be innovative -- Constantly experimenting Create 4 way wins: Business Family Community Personal Take initiative - "What's a win for your company? Your boss?" "At the individual level, you need to examine what you truly value, share this with key stakeholders in various life domains both to get feedback and support, and then to experiment with new ways of doing things so that - over the arc of a life - you can achieve harmony and have more of what it is that you uniquely want out of life." Work life integration is a more useful term than work life balance. "Balance is the wrong metaphor." The four elements, where do you devote your attention? Do an assessment - Take 100 points... Divy up how important each of the following are based on your actions: Work Home Community Self Do you find yourself saying, "I'm not paying enough attention to the things that matter to me." "It's like a jazz quartet. Four people paying attention to each other, improvise, respond, make something beautiful over time." "The only failure is the failure to learn from conscious and deliberate efforts to make things better, even if those attempts fall short of the mark." Writing Parents Who Lead -  Crafting a collective vision. "What does our life look like?" The question to ask: "How do you be you?" "The courageous ones are able to bring that question forward..."

What we found when we went into the field to find people who are sustaining excellence over time is that they know how to be real, they know how to be whole, and they're constantly experimenting with new ways of getting things done in their lives from the perspective of their whole lives. They're looking for what I call four-way wins. And that's having a positive impact not just on your business life, not just on your family life, not just on your community life, not just on your personal life, your mind. mind, body, and spirit, but for all four. Are you looking to go beyond simply passively learning via podcast in books? Are you looking to level up your leadership and take a more proactive approach? If so, the Learning Leader Academy may be for you. It's been designed to not only provide you with online training videos.

In fact, I filmed 30 of them sitting side by side with my dad covering a wide. variety of leadership topics. In addition to that, we created a playbook, a manual to put into practice to help you become a more effective leader. But the Learning Leader Academy also gives you the opportunity to interact with an active community of leaders with growth-oriented mindsets. The video lessons serve as a framework to stimulate discussion amongst our community of thoughtful and intentional leaders helping each other grow into the kind of leader that inspires others to follow. If this sounds interesting to you, go to Ryanhawk.me. That's Ryanhawk.me for more details about the Learning Leader Academy. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Brixie and Meyer.

I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Received Mindful Monday updates what I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about. Also give you more details about my book, Welcome to Management,

text learners to 44222. Now, Onanites feature leader to the great Stu Friedman, award-winning Wharton, professor, and best-selling author, founded Wharton's leadership program and its work-life integration project in 1991. He launched Total Leadership in 2000,

while on leave from Morton serving as the senior executive at Ford Motor Company and charge of leadership development globally. Thinkers 50 named him the world's number one thinker in the field of talent. A few of the topics we discussed, Stu defines the four-way win and how to implement this at your place of work and at home. Then a new exercise, a series of questions to ask both your spouse and your coworkers and how this will make your life better. And then the three keys to total leadership and how you can put them in action immediately. Ladies and gentlemen, it's so good with Stu Friedman. All right, Stu, Friedman, it's so good to have you here on The Learning Leader Show. Welcome.

It's great to be here, Ryan. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. We talked briefly before I hit record it, and you know, I'm fascinated about the theme of sustaining excellence, specifically leaders who have been able to do that. And you have done a really good job of both studying and surrounding yourself and living the life of excellent leadership. So when you think about that, what have you found to be some of the commonalities among leaders who sustain excellence? Such an important issue, and I'm glad we're starting with that. Because that's really at the heart of everything that I've been trying to do in these 35 plus years of my career.

What I have found in my research, in my practice, and in my own experience as a leader, as well as in my consulting work, is that to be sustainable as a leader and to really drive excellence in all the different parts of your life, you've got to take seriously the idea that it's not just about your work. And that leadership is about life. It's not just about business. It starts, the fundamental idea is knowing what you care about, knowing what's important to you, knowing what your purpose is, knowing where you're going. So that's the foundation on which everything else builds. And of course, what you care about changes over the course of your life. And it takes some courage to do the hard work of looking at yourself, looking inside you.

yourself and and uncovering that which is truly you. It's a it's a lifetime's effort. So that's the foundation and and it gives rise to excellence in all the different parts of life if you think about and continually reflect on what is it that I'm here to do and how how by doing that do I create value for other people so it can never just be about you. That's that's the first idea. Being real, I call that, knowing what matters most to you, your values, your vision. There are other elements to the picture, but I would say that's the most fundamental. When you do that hard work on yourself and ask yourself the question, what is it that I'm here to do? What's the answer to that?

I'm here to help people grow as leaders so that they can have a positive impact on the world. How did you come up with that? What was the process to get there? Well, it's a long one. I'm going to be 68 in a few months. So I've been at this for a while. I began my career. Well, after driving a taxi in New York City, that was the first job I had after graduating from college. Really? Yes. Wow. I learned a lot about leadership in that role. Well, there's some books written about that from cab drivers and the experiences. Like, can you, are there, are there parts of your, like, are there any key moments you remember this from that? Gosh.

Yeah. Ryan, we're never going to get anywhere if we talk about my career as a cab driver. Oh, let's pick one. 45 years ago, but sure, I'll be happy to talk about it. Okay, okay, go pick one. Seriously, I think it's fascinating. Well, I think what you learned is. that role, among other things, is patience.

You know, everyone who comes into your cab is a different person, and you learn so much just from observing how they interact with you and how they treat you, because you're in a kind of, you know, you're in a service role, and many people think of you as kind of a second-class citizen and don't treat you as a human being, and those that do, you see some important differences but you know having an openness to meeting each person where they are and and of course on the road in in new york city traffic you have to be you know ever vigilant and also patient at the same time as to you know when to make your move when to stop when to when to allow others to go when to you know aggressively move into your into a new lane uh so those are some of the things that i i

picked up and also just having a love of the geography of, you know, your environment, the city of New York, which is where I'm from, that helped a lot too. How did it impact you from a per my, my wife, Miranda, um, spent a lot of time working in restaurants growing up as a waitress and a bartender and she still regularly is able to, to pull from those experiences. experiences in the service industry. And also she needed to make money, did not have much money. And so she learned the behaviors of like every day I'm showing up with a big smile on

my face because I get bigger tips when I have a smile than when I don't. And it sounds so trite and simple. I think for her, it probably was true. For me, it didn't really. I'm sorry. Finish your thought. No, no. I'm just saying I guess I'm curious about their perspectives that you've picked up from

a job like that, as well as now that you've gone on to be the famous Stu Friedman. I know, sorry, but thinking about how you actually treat others in a service-oriented business, perhaps the person taking out the trash from your office or somebody driving you in a car. How has it impacted you in that way? Very much. I'm a really big tipper. I know, I know what it's like to work for tips. And I appreciate that. I appreciate. people who are doing that work every day. And I have a great deal of respect, you know, for service providers of all kinds and a real empathy for what it's like. So that definitely affects me. It really hit me in a renewed and especially powerful way when I went to Ford Motor Company

in 1999 for a few years when the CEO recruited me to be head of leadership development. After 15 years as a professor at Wharton, having founded our work-life integration project and our leadership program in 1991, in the late 90s, he invited me to join a group of about 30 oddballs. I mean, we were a strange group of executives coming in from all different industries, from Hollywood, from design, from physics, all different kinds of arenas to try to infuse the culture with. a new mindset and one of the things that I learned quickly there was how important it was to connect with everyone around you if you were going to get anything done because I made some serious mistakes in not doing so in my early days there and I recall vividly when I returned to Wharton from Ford one of the main one of the many surprises after I had you know, acclimated to being a senior executive in a big global company and had some success

there coming back into the academic role, one of the things that I learned that I had come to appreciate much more so than I had in my time. Prior to that was being respectful to all the people with whom I was interacting. I'd sort of forgotten that as an arrogant young assistant professor at the Wharton School. Not and you know, I'm not saying anything about any of my colleagues here, of course, but you do tend to get an inflated ego. You know, it's easy to fall prey to that. And I was humbled big time when I went to Ford and really got to know and work with the amazing people in that company. From, you know, the guys and gals who took care of our building to, you know, to the board of directors and everyone in between. How did you get humbled?

Well, many ways. I quickly realized that I knew nothing. You've been teaching this, though, at one of the best institutions in the world. And I was pretty good at that. Yeah, yeah. But it's an entirely different thing to be in a completely different environment with a whole new set of role demands and a completely new political landscape. So I will never forget the feeling that I had when I was asked three weeks in to give my half hour, here's the new vision of leadership development at Ford Motor Company to the top 400 HR people from around the world. Mind you, we had 10,000 HR people in

the company at the time. So this was the top of the HR organization meeting at global, headquarters in Dearborn. And here's this new academic from the East Coast. Those are bad things. And I'm from outside the company. There were five or six other people inside the organization who rightfully thought that they should have had the job instead of me. And so I get up there.

And of course, I'm being coached by some people to basically have the mindset of look, Stu, you're not there to make friends. You're there to make change. You're the smart guy. So just tell them what's up. Because I had done a lot of consulting work and served as faculty on the design and delivery of corporate learning programs in the 80s and 90s when this whole movement was burgeoning. And I had a lot of experience doing that and was writing about it, publishing about it. And so I get up there. and I lay out the picture of what the next 10 years was going to look like as I had devised it with input from other people, of course. And I'm thinking, wow, this is awesome.

I'm doing such a great job here. And I get off the stage and the guy who taught me a lot, who was sort of like my number two that I inherited in the group that I took. go over then he pulls me side opens the door of some side room and slams it shut and it's just the two of us and he looks at me you know nose to nose what the fuck did you just do can i say that i'm sorry ryan did i just transgress you already did go for it keep going well i'm quoting all right um what are you talking about tom that was you know a succinct and compelling picture of of our achievable future, wasn't it? He said, all you did was talk about yourself, man. I said, what are you talking about? And I didn't realize it. I just didn't realize it that I had been saying

I a lot instead of we and us. I was talking about me, my ideas, my vision. I didn't even know it. And I was hardly, you know, sensitive to how I was being read in, you know, how I was being heard how I was landing in that group. And that, you know, that was three weeks into the, into the job. So I had a lot of digging out to do after that. And thanks to Tom's help and a lot of other people, I, you know, after a while started to figure out how important it was to be actively pursuing the ideas and input of people around me if I was going to get anything done, which I eventually did sort of figure out kind of how to do. But it took a lot. And that turned my whole life around, really.

Is that, has that story or that experience, how do you, because there may be leaders within businesses that, in the sporting world, they'd say read their own press clippings, use that type of analogy. How do you, how do you help leaders build awareness so that they don't have one of those moments, nose to nose, pulled aside and realize that they've just talked about themselves for the instance? entire speech. Well, one of the things that we built into the total leadership program, which our team invented there and which I've been cultivating and bringing to individuals and organizations with our team worldwide over the last 20 years, and it's really the second principle in response to your first question. The most important thing is to know what matters to you, to be real.

The second principle, which I have found to be important and which I try to help people learn and which, of course, I work on all the time still, is to be whole. And that means to recognize and respect the fact that you've got people who matter to you in the different parts of your life, not just at work, but also at home and in the community. And they have certain needs of you and expectations of you and you of them. and it's very easy to assume that you know what they're thinking and that you know what they need what what years and years decades of practice and a lot of research tells us is that we're often wrong because of our own biases and assumptions about what's right and true from our

limited experience and a big part of our practice is to help people first identify who the important people are in their lives and in their work, and then to write about what they think other people expect of them. And then, and this is the most important piece of it, and I think gets a long way around to your important question, to learn how to talk to them and to listen and to be patient in hearing from them what they really think. And the way to get at that that we have found most effective is simply this, to say, Ryan, you're one of the most important people to me. And here's why. And then I would tell you. And I want to make sure that our relationship continues to grow because it's not perfect. And I want to try to make it as good as it can be so that we go into the future together stronger.

is that something you'd be willing to talk with me about. Now, when I say that to you, Ryan, I'm just pretending, of course, we don't really know each other very well. Let's say somebody real said that to you. How would you react? Very positively. Like I would feel like I would feel a combination of emotions love, care, thoughtfulness, which is a very important quality in somebody that I'm going to spend time around. Yeah.

All right. So just by telling you that you matter to me, I've had an impact on strengthening our relationship and hopefully building a little trust, which is the most precious commodity you've got as a leader. You can never have too much of it surrounding you. But that's just the beginning of what we help people to develop. And anybody can do this at any level, at any career stage. And the early you start getting good at this, the better because you can never be too good at it. It's like, you know, playing the trumpet. or tennis or swimming or whatever, you can never be too good at this performing art. So you establish, you know, you've done some of the hard work of identifying the key people in your life, which is not easy in itself, because there you've got to make some choices. Not everybody is important, as important.

And that follows, again, from first defining where you're going and what your purpose is, and that helps you to realize who the important people are for your future and who are perhaps less important. And it's important to make those distinctions. So then you do the difficult work of thinking, well, what does Ryan actually need for me? And what do I need from him? And you write about that.

And we do all of this in a peer-to-peer coaching environment. So if you and I and Mary are in a coaching trio together, you would do the writing about your values, your vision. You would do the writing about your stakeholders and what they, need from you what you need from them and how their needs and interests interact with each other and I would be doing the same and so would Mary and you'd be reading our stuff and coaching us and we'd be reading your stuff and coaching you and of course we'd all be learning and holding each other accountable and encouraging each other which of course deepens deepens the learning when you then prepare for conversations with those people that's when the rubber really

starts to hit the road and you and you you discover new ways in which other people actually see you and when you do that in a concentrated period of time of say a month or so and have maybe a 10 or these deep dive conversations with people at work at home and in the community and you realize how each one of them is very different and each conversation requires some care and attention in terms of how to make it work for them not for you and you say to them Okay, Ryan, so I've thought about it some, and here are the four things that I think are most important to you is you look at me and our future together, and I name them. One, two, three, four. And then I say, do I have it right?

What am I missing? And that's the formula. And it works really well because of the following reasons. First, it tells you I thought about it. So yes, thoughtful, loving, careful attention to you and what you. you see when you look at me. So I'm trying to dive into your heart, your mind, see through your eyes. I call that the leadership leap, you know, going into somebody else's soul, really, and looking through their eyes to see yourself. I've shown you that I've taken care of

try to do that. That's the first thing, sends a powerful message. Second thing is, it's as specific as I can make it. These are the three or four things that I think are most important to you. Maybe I've given an example or two so that you can respond to the specifics and correct me when I say, and this is the third piece of the really important puzzle here, what am I missing? What have I got wrong? What's what's off? Because I know I don't have the whole picture. And that's how you create psychological safety. That's how you create an exchange in which the other person is going to feel free to tell you that you're full of it or that you're, that you're full of it. Or that you're, you're, you're you're you. You're, you're that you. You're you. You're, you don't really know the whole story. And that's how we train people, in essence, to get more comfortable hearing things that are discordant with how they see themselves and to make other people feel comfortable telling them the things that they need to hear. Because what usually happens in these conversations, and here I promise I'll stop this very long

lesson about stakeholder dialogues, the big takeaway substantively is you discover that what other people expect of you is usually a little bit less than what you thought and a little bit different. And that's really practical and useful knowledge because it tends to lessen the pressure that you feel to do things that you really need not be spending that much time on. And it redirects your attention to those things that are really much more important. And if you do this in a concentrated period of time with people in the different parts of your life, you start to see opportunities for doing something in one part of your life that it's actually going to help people in the other part of your life. And you start to think more holistically about your life as a whole.

So for the mid-level manager right now, Stu, who's listening, and let's say they're running a team of 13 people working within a large company. And their day-to-day thinking is somewhat along these lines. And I judge as based on emails I receive there. You know, I'm trying to hire a great team. I have two openings right now. I'm trying to exceed really aggressive goals set for me by my company. I have more meeting notices flying my way than I can handle. And so there, you know how it goes. You've been, you've worked in those types of businesses.

You've worked at the top of Ford. You're teaching this. So for that person, if they want to say, whoa, that kind of 10 minutes there from Stu, I, I like to get, I like to like start high level and then zoom right in. Get very, get very practical. so that once the second that this podcast is over, somebody goes right into action. And I think what you just described could it could be done immediately. And I'm talking practically make a difference in a real way.

So for that person, is there a resource or what's the first step they should take in order to implement this both at work and at home? Well, my book Total Leadership lays this all out with examples from real people, all kinds of people in a lot of different industries. And that's really the foundation for the new book, which is focused on working parents, which I'm sure we'll get into shortly. But in total leadership,

there's a set of exercises that anyone can do. Again, illustrated with real people to show you, here's how to identify your values. What are the three critical episodes in your life history that have shaped your values and beliefs that you're willing to share with other? people. I love these questions. Do you have other questions like that? I love those. Oh yeah.

The book is filled with 30 exercises like this. So it starts with your values and then your vision. 15 years from now to the day, what is the ideal day look like? This is a very powerful and easy exercise to do. You can do it with your kids. They're old enough. Tell me what you're doing 15 years from now in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening. What is that for you? And with whom? Oh, my gosh. And what's the purpose?

Why are you doing what you're doing? By writing that out, you start to see much more clearly and viscerally, you know, what life can be like and where you're headed and why and what your purpose is. Yeah. Isn't it really hard, though, to predict that far into the future? Oh, yeah. Of course. Like, so when did you first do that exercise?

I'm curious. So it's not, it's not so much about predicting. Okay. And let me just clarify that. Okay. I want to, I want your listeners to, to not be hung up about, you're not writing a contract with yourself. You're not, you're not trying to prove anything to anybody. This is an exercise in imagination.

It's really a projection from your heart right now. If you had control, how would you be living? what would you be doing why would you be doing it and what i've found is that the more you can focus on how you are bringing that which is distinctive about you to the world in a way that touches other people in a positive way that's what inspires you first and foremost and of course other people so it's not about the the action plan for now to to you know to 2035 that's not the point of it. The point is to help you to clarify what you care about right now. Because your idea for the future is just an active imagination that springs from your head and your heart. What matters to you?

That's what you're going to be doing. If you're freed from the constraints of having to actually put a plant together. And so that's really the purpose of the exercise. And then you refine it as you talk to other people about it, you get their reactions, you know, you change it. If you talk to your kids about it, then, you know, be talking to your friends or your spouse or your boss. But it's a really useful tool. So those are some of the exercises. Just get you started on the first principle of being real. There's a whole bunch of other exercises and instructions on how to identify who the most important people are in your life now looking forward and then how to how to scope out what you think they need from you, what you need from them, how to look at that set of expectations

as a system that are interacting with you and they with each other and to look at your life as a whole. And then, of course, how to talk to them and how to listen in a way that I was describing in that very long 10-minute lesson. So the three parts, and we've touched on two of them. And I want to hit the third one, and then I want to go to parents who lead. So the first one is be real. The second one is be whole. And the third one is be innovative.

Can you explain on that one? Yeah, that's the fun part. Okay. So, and, you know, I didn't just make these up in the shower one day. We did a lot of research in the 90s with the foundation of this work, which then came to fruition at Ford. When I had the resources and a team to invent and to come up with new ways of thinking about leadership and how to develop it, what we found when we went into the field to find people who are sustaining excellence over time is that they know how to be real, they know how to be whole,

and they're constantly experimenting with new ways of getting things done in their lives from the perspective of their whole lives. They're looking for what I call four-way wins, and that's having a positive impact, not just on your business life, not just on your family life, not just on your community life, not just on your personal life, your mind, body, and spirit, but for all four. And when you encourage people

to look for ways under their control, within their scope, doesn't have to be huge. In fact, smaller is better because it's more doable. A small doable step in the direction that you want to go,

your vision, that you can take, probably get wrong, partly right, partly wrong, and then be mindfully adjusting your actions in light of the impact that you see you're having on the people around you, you start to gain greater confidence and competence as a leader of change.

That is sustainable precisely because it's not just about you and it's not just about your business, but you're making change happen in a way that your kids are going to want you to make and that your spouse and your friends are too. And so you get more support. And people do all kinds of different experiments, everything from taking care of themselves better so that they can be a little bit less of a jerk to other people and more patient and more energetic, you know, through exercise or, you know, nutrition or mindfulness training, reading books, going for walks, whatever, to bounding time and attention for particular people

in projects. That's a huge issue today, of course, is how you create focus and boundaries so that when you're with people, you're attending to them and not distracted. And so people experiment all kinds of ways of doing that. Expressing appreciation is a very common kind of experiment. Some people take that leadership vision that they've crafted. They're so excited about it. And they sort of take it on the road and share it with people and ask other people to do the same.

People experiment with delegating in new ways. But the goal in all these cases is to try some new way of getting things done that you have consciously and deliberately thought of. as a kind of scientist in the laboratory of your life, and you collect some data on it, and you make it time limited. So you might say to your boss, Ryan, let's say you're my boss, and I say, Ryan,

what I've been thinking about lately is how I think I'm going to be a more productive member of our team if I can be offline on Wednesdays from 4 o'clock on. And I know that that's not our normal way of doing things, but I'd like to just try this for a month because I think you're going to see an improvement not just in my energy level, but also in my focus and my performance in terms of my sales quota, whatever it is. Could we just try that for a month and see if that works for you and for me?

And if it doesn't, you know, we can go back to the way things are now or maybe try something different. Would you be willing to give that a try? What's your reaction, Ryan, if I actually pitch that to you? Of course. Really? Yeah. Why would you say, of course? One, it's really not that much time.

So, like, thinking just purely practically. Not asking for the world. Right. It's 4 o'clock on a Wednesday. Also, me personally as a leader, if somebody has, I could tell that they've thought that through. Now they are also, I'm empowering them to take ownership over their work. And if they have to hit a sales quota, which is actually a job I worked in as both a sales rep and a sales manager. and sales VP at one point in my life.

How did I know that, Ryan? Did you look it up? No, I just, I'm just getting to mess with me. I thought maybe you did. So anyway, you should have lied, but anyway, no, but I think I like the thought of somebody taking, not only me empowering them, but them, them taking ownership over the decision-making and I think people are more apt to achieve goals that they set for themselves, not that I set for them. That's called leadership, right?

That's looking to the future. That's looking for a win for you and for me. It's like this is something I want to do that I know is going to be good for me and my family and my community, let's say. And got to be and it's good for you too. And this is the problem with work life balance, which is, of course, impossible. And it's harmful to think in terms of balance because it's always the default is always, okay, I got something and I'm taking. it from you. Balance means I win, you lose, or you win, I lose.

And instead, the four-way wins mentality is, what am I going to do here that's going to make something good for you and for me? And that requires that I take the initiative to think through what's going to be good for us. And of course, as my boss, you love that. Oh, yeah. Because that's just, that's how you want your people thinking. And in fact, another lesson I learned at Ford when I first arrived is a lot you learn when you're first arrive, right?

The team that I inherited, we had, there were 12 people on it. It eventually grew to about 50 by the time I was done there. We had a lot of investment and a lot of fantastic growth internally. The first, the very first encounters with a number of the people, who were on this team that I inherited, my having written one of the first articles in the Harvard Business Review on the topic of work and life. It was called work and life, the end of the zero-sum game, 1998. People had read that. And as soon as I got there, they were like, hey, you're the work-life balance guy. I need Fridays off. And I'm like, you don't get it, man. I now have a boss for the first time in my

whole life, really, since I had that taxi dispatcher back in Brooklyn in 1974. And now I have an officer of the Ford Motor Company, who's himself a 30-year veteran, and he's got a lot, he expects of me. And you are here to help me deliver to him into this company. So if you want Fridays off, you've got to figure out how that's going to help us get our job done. So why don't you go back and figure that out. And that was a huge insight for everybody because what I do there, I didn't say no. I said, make it about us, not just about you. And that's how leaders think. Let's touch very briefly before we get to parents who lead. You mentioned that people call you the work-life balance guy. I've read about that. And I've also read about work-life integration.

Can you, because this is a question I actually get, I feel like at the end of keynotes where during the Q&A, they'll say like, I'm, you know, talk about how much work they have to do and how it impacts their personal life. And it's never the easiest question to answer. I'm curious how, how, when you're posed of that, which I'm sure you are constantly now, because you've written so much about it, what is your, your mindset towards work life integration? Well, the work life integration project, which I founded in 1991 at Wharton was, was, was deliberately called that because we knew even back then that balance was the wrong metaphor.

And I prefer the metaphor of the jazz quartet. And I write about this in total leadership, where you think about these four buckets, and they seem to make sense for most people in different continents and different cultures. People define the buckets differently, but it seems to work to help people to think in a differentiated way about the different roles that they play, work, home or family. which everybody defines differently, community, which could mean friends or neighbors or social groups, political groups, religious groups, could be anything really beyond work in life. And then there's you, your distinctive individual attributes, your mental health, your physical health, your spiritual

growth and development. So if you think about those four elements, they're all a part of you. How much they matter to you, that's the matter of your values, your judges. You're just. judgment, your choice. Where you devote your attention, that also is a matter of your choice more than you think. And one of the exercises I ask people to do is just that. Take 100 points and your listeners can do this. You don't need a chart. You can do it in your head. Take 100 points and divvy them up, allocate them according to how important each of the different parts of your life is to you right now. This is called the four-way view. 100 points. Work. home community and self.

If they're all equal, it's all 25s. If you're doing this with your boss, it's 100,000,000. Just kidding. I was like, wait, what? And then you look at a typical week or a month and ask yourself, how do you allocate your attention across those different domains? Guestimate, another 100 points. And then how satisfied are you with how things are going on a scale of 1 to 10?

your well-being in each domain. And then finally, on a scale of one to ten, how well are you doing and meeting the performance expectations of key people in the different parts of your life? That takes about three minutes. And then I encourage people to talk to somebody else about what they discovered there, whatever they're willing to share.

And typically what you get from those conversations, and this is what I do when I'm speaking in front of people, I always have them do this exercise because it's always an eye-opener. first they realize I'm not the only one who hasn't figured it out which is really important to know you know this peer to peer coaching piece is really crucial because it creates a sense of legitimacy for it being normal to struggle all right that's the first thing nobody's really quite got this figured out that's first secondly you realize I'm not paying attention to the things that matter to me and And yeah, there are some things I can think of that small adjustments that would help me better align what I care about with what I do. And then you help somebody else think that through. And of course, you get more ideas for yourself.

So when you think then about ideas for innovation to be creative and innovative, what I encourage people to do is to think about the jazz quartet. And for you jazz fans out there, you've ever seen a good jazz quartet, what do you see happening? you see four people who are paying attention to each other, responsive to each other, improvising as they're hearing new things, new ideas, around a theme or a motif. And what they're trying to do those four people is to make something beautiful happen together

over the course of time, not at any one moment. And, you know, sometimes it's just the trumpet that's playing. And the other instruments are resting. That's the musical term. Rest. sometimes it's just the bass and the drums other times it's all four but you're you're responsive you're improvising and you're trying to make something beautiful happen together over time and that is a much better way to think of work and life integration or harmony than balance because when you think

balance the default is i've got to give something up in this part of my life in order to be successful in that part and of course you're going to have to make some tradeoffs and sacrifices nothing comes free. However, if you switch the lens and look at your life in terms of where there's opportunity for positive impact across the four domains, you are much more likely to find those opportunities and to see how you can pursue them. And when you do that, you just feel better and you have more sustainable performance because you're doing things that are going to help you in your whole life, not just in one part. How hard is it for you to put into action what you preach and teach?

It's not easy. It's not, and I'm still working on it. And I came up with these ideas 30 years ago or longer. I practice it every day. And this is my secret, Ryan, that I will reveal to you and your listeners. I write about the stuff. I coach people all the time, all different levels, industry. I'm teaching this material mainly so that I can try to figure it out myself.

I mean, I found one of the best mechanisms for learning is teaching. Absolutely. We teach to learn. Yes. Yes. True. That's why I encourage my clients and my students to become teachers in their own form and fashion because it helps you to sustain attention to these issues, which are so easy

to ignore, so easy to put aside in the, the hurly-burly of everyday life and all the pressures and demands that are just, you know, coming at you and a deluge, uh, it takes a lot of discipline and encourage me, which is why the peer to peer piece is so critical to step back. And you got to pause. You got to pause and reflect. Otherwise, you're just going to keep doing what you've been doing and that usually isn't smart. Yeah. I mean, one of the simple practices that we implement in our home here with my wife and I is that whenever we experience something that's really impactful from a learning perspective, whether it's a book or a podcast, is just try to teach that to the other one.

And that practice of distilling the essence of the core message that we've learned from the book or the podcast and then sharing it with somebody, the person that we love more than anybody else. And that goes back and forth. One, like, it's cool because I'm learning through her new things that I have not read or listened to yet. and she's learning through sharing and that I'm doing the same. And I think that's a daily thing that you can do. It has to be long. You can set aside time to do longer sessions like that, but that's like one small exercise.

Again, we're zooming out and zooming in regularly throughout the course of this conversation so that you can, once it's over with, you're actually implementing something and changing your life right now and not just having happy talk, but actually doing something different. So that's what people have been telling me for the last 20 years. my students and clients like, can you write a book that's going to help me to do this with my partner because she keeps asking me like, hey, what are those exercises that you're doing? That's cool. I want to do it too. And so that's what we did. And here we go with parents who lead. It's like you know what you're doing here, Stu. You make the perfect transition to where we wanted to go and how we want to end this conversation. Parents who lead, the latest work, the leadership approach,

you need to parent with purpose, fuel your career and create a richer life. And so it sounds like You wrote the first natural question that's kind of boring, but it's understandable, is why do it? And it sounds like you, you had to do this. This book needed to get out in the world because people were requesting it. Well, that was one reason. Okay. I frankly didn't want to because, you know, I've written a couple of other books, bestsellers. I'm pretty active, you know, building up that whole practice.

But my publisher, the Harvard Business Press said, hey, we need a book for working parents and you need to write. it. And I'm like, man, I'm going to be 65. I don't know if I got another book in me. I'll do this if you let me have a co-author. And so I recruited my long-term, long-time research partner, Alyssa Westring, who is a millennial mom, you know, a tenured professor at DePaul University of Chicago. And so I'm the boomer grandpa. She's the millennial mom. And we teamed up, which, you know, made it so much more fun and so much more relevant for a broader scope of people. and we went into the lab and we created a model built on the total leadership principles that we created four partners in parenting, as we call them, parenting partnerships, because they come in all forms, right? It's not just heterosexual married couples, but there's all kinds of ways in which people are raising kids these days. Working parents, people are out of work now who are going back into the workforce, partnered with people who are. And we took these same basic principles, and what we do, just what you do naturally with Europe. with your partner, we have people do the four-way view on their own and then guess what their partners looks like and then share the results. We have them write about their core values and then

share what their partners come up with. And then we have them write about that leadership vision and then compare notes on that and then come up with a joint, a collective mission, which is a powerful exercise. And some people in our lab, they were like, once they've done that, we're done. We don't need to do anymore. This is awesome. We're just going to go off and do that now. Most people, though, stuck around

to do the next phase, which was identify the key people in your lives together, what they need from you, what you need from them, starting with your kids. So there's a whole chapter on, what are your kids need? We distill the wisdom from the literature and child

development, child psychology, which we're not, we're organizational psychologists, but we're able to curate that literature. Here's what kids generally need. What do your kids need? How would you talk to them to help them to tell you what they need from you as a leader in your life, in your family? And how are you going to talk to them? How are you going to build trust, gain support? Just like we were talking about earlier, Ryan, with respect to your people at work, you do the same thing with your kids. And of course, you discover all kinds of ways in which you didn't know them. And you're discovering things about your partner, too, that you didn't know when you share your vision.

But you also then engage stakeholders at work. You talk to people at work. You talk to people in your community, caregivers, teachers, people who are important to you in the enterprise of your life as a leader as a parent. And then do experiments. And family four-way wins is what we teach people to do. And it's a ton of fun. They come up with all kinds of creative things that are designed to make things better. for the partnership, the relationship, for the kids,

and then for each partner's career, each partner's community and family life, and each partner's personal life. And they just had a ton of fun doing it. And what we described in parents who lead are these exercises with the examples of the real people who were in our research project. And it's just a ton of fun,

and we're having all kinds of fun delivering this, now in this program, this parents lead program and talking about it here and there, including here, which I appreciate having the opportunity to do. Of course. I want to tease out maybe one example. Perhaps you could think of one. Sure. I think crafting a collective vision, so I appreciate your team sent in the book early before it came out, but this crafting of a collective vision with your partner and

or with your family, because we went through with my wife. and our daughters went through this where we would all write down our own values separately and then spoke about why each of us chose what we chose. And then we matched them all together and they're hanging up on our wall. And I think, but I am, I am curious about this crafting of a collective vision. What does that look like in practice? Well, it's the same principle, really the same practice, the same tool as I was describing earlier for you as an individual, except it's, you know, what does our life look like?

15 years from now, what are we doing that involves us, our family, and the rest of our lives, in a typical day, 15 years from now. So one family, their vision had them traveling. You know, just having their kids, they were reflecting on what a day would look like. They were in some foreign country. Their kids were, you know, in their teens, and they were kids were going to school, in some foreign land, and they were working on, you know, globally on some projects, each one of them separately. So it had that sort of as the central idea.

And those people, they quit our workshop, and they act within like the next six weeks they had sold their house and were traveling. Really? With little kids, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Those were some bold people. Yeah. But, you know, that's not typical.

What typically happens, you know, the more common picture is, you know, they've grown in their careers. The kids are older. You know, there's an ongoing connection of trust and mutual support with their kids. But, you know, they've just got more deeper together. And, you know, in other cases, it's, wow, you want that? I want this. We've got to work on that. And it leads to some difficult conversations in some cases where you come to realize that, wow, we need to adjust here.

But, you know, the best leaders among us deal with reality, right? I love this quote from the great James Baldwin, the novelist and civil rights activist who said, not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. And I think that's true of the best leaders. You take a hard look at your reality and you try to make a better tomorrow. And there's really nothing quite like doing that with your most intimate relationships in the context of your whole life. And that's really what parents who lead is about. It's thinking of yourself as a leader, as a parent.

And that's one of the big a haas that people take away from this experience is they realize, you know, this is this is a leader. championship challenge. And as a parent, I am a leader. And that's what I need to be. That's what my kids need to be, need me to be rather. Great stuff. One more question in regards to, you probably get this a lot in your world. But let's say you're sitting and you're having office hours and someone who has just graduated and they say, Stu, I want to make a positive contribution on the world. I want to have an excellent marriage. I want to be a great parent someday. This is a what I want to do is what I want to be. What are some general pieces of life advice you would give me in order to set me on the right track to making that happen? I think it's such a wonderful question. And yes, I have been asked that a number of times over the years. And what I find is the most crucial piece of the puzzle is where we started this conversation, right? So it's a good place to close. And that is, how do you be you?

if you're not if you're not tapping into that which is distinctive and valued by you about yourself nothing else is going to work really well and that's the hardest part especially for young people in their early 20s i was going to say i was so immature at that time i don't think i could have answered that question it's hard man yeah it's hard and you need help yes it's very hard to answer that question on your own yeah most most people need the support of of other people asking them that question. Yeah. And, you know, the courageous ones are the ones who were able to bring that question forward

into a conversation so that it becomes a real question that they are trying to address. And, you know, a lot of people never figured they answer out. And that's tragic. You get to the end of your life and you realize, wow, what I really was was somebody who I wasn't. And the sooner you get to an answer to that question, you know, it's to thine own self be true. It's what Bard said, and it's fundamental to everything we know about leadership and about, you know, most of philosophy. So it's not a new idea, right? But in the current context of young business professionals, especially, there's so much social pressure to be someone else.

Yep. And I can't tell you how many people have, you know, needed a tissue to dab their eyes since they've been crying with, yeah, but my mom insists that I fill in the blank. Or my friends are all doing this cool thing and fill in the blank. But I just really want to weave. Or I want to, you know, ride my bicycle or I want to be a painter or I want to be an inventor or I want to be an inventor. You know, I don't really want to be an investment banker. Well, who's forcing you to do that? So the big question is how we find the courage to be free to be ourselves.

And again, that's a lifelong effort for most of us. Some of us are very lucky. You know, if you're Bruce Springsteen and you're 14 years old and your mom gets you that guitar and you see all this, Was he eight or something? That's it. I know who I am. I know who I want to be.

And he had it from the beginning. Of course, he had all the motivation and all the talent to be able to realize his immense talent to bring it to the world. Most of us aren't that lucky. And we have to work harder. And I think one of the points that just to pull one small string from what you said there, we need help typically. And so that's why even if you are young and immature, like I was certainly at that age, if I was asking that question, which I wouldn't have been mature enough to even ask you that question then.

But if I was, the part about it that could have been helpful is making sure you're intentional about surrounding yourself with those types of people that are willing and able to help you. And so that's why you're who going back to the talk I had in this podcast with the great Jim Collins, your who becomes. vital the people that are closest to you. And so be very intentional about that. Stu, absolutely. We went longer than I expected, but I could talk to you another two hours, man. I really appreciate you. You know, you asked great questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? If you go to totalleadership.org, you can find out all about our practice and books and free resources, videos, et cetera. And there's a page there for the Parents Who Lead Book Project, which tells you all about that and all the wonderful things.

People are saying about it. I'm happy to say. Definitely a lot of awesome blurbs. The books, parents who lead, the leadership approach you need to parent with purpose, fuel your career and create a richer life. Stu Freedman's so good. I absolutely want to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. This has been a lot of fun. It's been my pleasure, Ryan.

Thanks so much. Thanks, Stu. Wow. impactful talk with Stu more than a few times I was left really questioning myself and my actions and behaviors and that is why I love having these conversations to speak with people who force me to think and I hope the same happened to you a few of the initial takeaways instead of using the wrong metaphor of work life balance think of it as work life integration and do that exercise, the 100 points exercise, four categories, work, home, community, self,

and what you want and what you think is optimal with dividing those 100 points, and then actually what you're doing and see how they measure up. Then the humbling experience he had at Ford, using I far too much, self-analyze and think about the last interactions you've had with your team, people in your life are you using I too much and then developing deeper relationships Stu and I were on video I saw him look directly into the camera like he was staring into my eyes when he said Ryan you're one of the most important people to me as he's showing me how to do this exercise and I'd encourage you to do this

for the people who are important to you in your life tell them talk to them have deeper conversations with them. I realize we're all very busy. This could be super helpful. Once again, thank you so much for continuing to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. You do that because you tell a friend or two. Perhaps one that has never listened to a podcast. Say listen to the Learning Leader Show.

This particular one with Stu Friedman is so useful. And because you do that, it continues to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a basis and you know for that I will forever be grateful thank you so much talk with you next week can't wait awesome man thank you so much that was great really good thank you yeah well what I really liked about your interview style is that you just went right in for the stuff you were interested in from the beginning and that made it a real conversation where I felt like you were trying to understand where I'm coming from and that of course made it easier for me to talk about everything that I wanted to share so I really appreciate that oh cool thank

you. Yeah, I appreciate that feedback as well. It certainly means a lot coming from you. And thanks for doing this and investing your time and not mailing it in and really giving it. And that's awesome. I really mean that. You could be just be on the book tour and chilling. And that's not what you do. So I appreciate that, man. No, I'm chilling. As you can see. I haven't showered yet today. 3.30. When you decide to talk, though, you're not, you're not just going to sit back. You're doing your thing. I appreciate it, you know. Well, I'm passionate about it. And I want to try to bring it, you know, so that people can relate and use it. That's, uh, that's what we're doing here. Yeah. I, I, uh, I, I'm glad that you, you, you're doing what you're doing to help the

people that you're helping. And, uh, yes, let us, for sure, keep the dialogue going, Ryan. For sure. All right, man, I'll let you know, you and your team know when, uh, this thing's going live. Okay, cool. All right. Thanks, Sue.