Work and Life with Stew Friedman

Jason Thacker is a Senior Vice President of TD Bank Group and Head of Credit Cards and Unsecured Lending. Prior to his current role, Jason served in various executive positions at TD Bank. He started his career in brand management at Procter & Gamble as the company's youngest global expatriate, leading priority brands in both the US and Canada. Jason holds an MBA from The Wharton School and an HBA from the Ivey Business School. In recent years, Jason has been recognized as one of Canada's Top 40 under 40, The Wharton School's 40 under 40 and P&G's Global Alumni under 40. 

In this episode, Stew talks with Jason about his career, how he applies lessons learned years ago in Stew’s Total Leadership class at Wharton, his recent paternity leave and its impact on his work and most important relationships, the impact of fatherhood on his career, and much more.  

Here then is an invitation for you, a challenge, after you’ve had a chance to listen to this episode:  If you know someone who is thinking about taking paternity leave or is either now on or has just returned from such a leave, how can you support them?  Share your reactions to this episode and your suggestions for future shows with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn. 

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Lauren Smith Brody is the founder of The Fifth Trimester and author of the bestselling book The Fifth Trimester: The Working Mom’s Guide to Style, Sanity, and Success After Baby. Lauren’s book was a simultaneous best-seller in the Amazon categories of motherhood, women and business, and cultural anthropology. She writes regularly about the intersection of business and motherhood.  She is also on the board of the early education nonprofit Docs for Tots. A longtime leader in the women’s magazine industry, Brody was previously the executive editor of Glamour magazine.

In this episode, Stew talks with Lauren about the practical advice she gleaned from her research about working mothers’ experiences following their children’s arrival, including tips for building strong relationships with the most important people in your life.  They discuss how the pandemic has both highlighted and exacerbated the challenges working mothers face and what public policy can do to move us faster toward an egalitarian society.  

Here then, is an invitation, a challenge, for you, once you’ve listened to the conversation.  If you agree that investment in our nation’s children is wise, express your support for government policy that provides for their care.  Share your reactions to this idea, this episode, and suggestions for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn. 

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Jason Harrisis is CEO of the creative agency Mekanism, which has been named to Ad Age's Agency A-list and twice to their Best Places to Work. He’s the author of a recent book called The Soulful Art of Persuasion. Jason works closely with brands using a blend of soul and science to create provocative campaigns that engage audiences. Those iconic brands include Peloton, Ben & Jerry's, MillerCoors, HBO, and the United Nations. He’s been named in the Top 10 Most Influential Social Impact Leaders, as well as the 4A's list of "100 People Who Make Advertising Great." His methods are studied in cases at Harvard Business School.

In this episode, Stew talks with Jason about building a trusting workplace culture and strengthening your reputation and your market power through persuasion, though Jason’s take on persuasion is not what most people think about when they picture what it means to be persuasive.  He demonstrates with enlightening examples how the ability to persuade -- which we need in all parts of our lives -- results from being original, generous, empathetic, and soulful.  And he provides super-practical tips for how to cultivate these qualities.   

Here then is an invitation for you, a challenge, after you’ve had a chance to listen to this episode:  What might you try to say or do that would reveal more of yourself to others, whether at work or in some other part of your life, and thereby build greater trust in your world?   Share your reactions and your suggestions for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.  

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Liya Shuster-Bier is the founder and CEO of Alula, a radically honest platform for cancer patients, caregivers, and survivors.  She is a cancer survivor herself.  Prior to Alula, Liya built a career in community development and impact investing, partnering with mayors and governors across the country to create innovative financing solutions that improved community outcomes. She started her career at Goldman Sachs, on the corporate currency derivatives team. In addition to receiving her MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School, where she was a student in Stew’s Total Leadership course, Liya is a proud Dartmouth alum, a native of Queens, NY, and an immigrant.

In this episode, Stew talks with Liya about the story of her experience as a caregiver during her mother’s fight against cancer and about her own journey from the discovery of her own cancer to her current life as a survivor.  With compelling examples, Liya vividly describes the trials and tribulations -- the physical, social, economic, and emotional challenges -- of living with cancer and how she realized, because she felt lost, the need for a resource that could help people with cancer and their caregivers deal with the realities of the world beyond hospitals.  Liya talks about Alula’s mission, it’s fast-growing number of partnerships with product and service providers as well as investors, and how her company’s culture is focused on sustaining the real lives of all its stakeholders.  Hers is an inspiring leadership story of how you can transmute an excruciating pain in your life into something of value to others.

Here then in an invitation for you, if you or someone you care about is struggling with how to treat and survive cancer: Explore myalula.com and find help. 

Share your reactions and suggestions for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn. 

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Erica Dhawan is author of Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection No Matter the Distance.  She is also the Founder and CEO of Cotential, a global organization that helps companies, leaders, and managers leverage 21st century collaboration skills and behaviors to improve performance. She’s also co-author of the bestselling Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence. She was named by Thinkers50 as “The Oprah of Management Ideas” and featured as one of the Top 20 Management Experts around the world by GlobalGurus. She has degrees from Harvard University, MIT Sloan, and The Wharton School, where she took Stew’s Total Leadership course.  (And when he wasn’t able to receive in person the Thinkers50 award for distinguished achievement in the field of talent, he asked Erica to do so on his behalf -- they’ve been friends for a long time.)

In this episode, Stew talks with Erica about her latest book, written before the pandemic but even more important now that so many are working almost entirely in the virtual world.   She shares lots of practical advice on such matters as when to write in all caps, with whom to use emojis, how to negotiate ambiguous time-to-respond issues, how to respond to passive aggressive emails, a method for analyzing your digital body language style, and more.  

Here then, is an invitation, a challenge, for you, once you’ve listened to the conversation:  Pause after drafting your next email, before you send it, and think for a moment about the emotional reaction you expect from the recipient.  Does this suggest a change in what you wrote?  Share your reactions to this idea, this episode, and suggestions for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.

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Katy Milkman is an award-winning behavioral scientist and the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She hosts Charles Schwab’s popular behavioral economics podcast Choiceology and is the co-founder and co-director of The Behavior Change for Good Initiative, a research center at the University of Pennsylvania with the mission of advancing the science of lasting behavior change.  This work is being chronicled by Freakonomics Radio. Katy  has worked with or advised dozens of organizations on how to spur positive change, including Google, the U.S. Department of Defense, the American Red Cross, 24 Hour Fitness, Walmart and Morningstar. 

In this episode, Stew talks with Katy about her new book, How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. Katy shares her very practical advice about how to craft a way to get things done that is tailored to your own particular stumbling blocks whether it is failure to launch, impulsivity, procrastination, forgetfulness, laziness, lack of self-confidence, or a desire to conform to expectations. Katy describes some of her book’s evidence-based strategies for overcoming these obstacles to change -- strategies such as temptation-bundling, commitment devices, and cues -- and when and how to use them to increase your chances of successfully implementing change in your life.  

Here then, is an invitation, a challenge, for you, once you’ve listened to the conversation.  Think of something you’d like to change but haven’t yet and come up with a temporal link to your actually doing so by defining your starting time as a fresh start or reset in the creation of a new definition of who you are.  Share your reactions to this idea, this episode, and suggestions for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn. 

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Jordan Shapiro is the author of Father Figure: How to Be a Feminist Dad.  He is a senior fellow for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and Nonresident Fellow in the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. His previous book, The New Childhood: Raising Kids To Thrive in a Connected World, focused on parenting and screen time. During the week, you can find him in the classroom at Temple University, where he teaches in the Intellectual Heritage Program and developed the online version of the university's core curriculum.

In this episode, Stew talks with Jordan about fatherhood in the modern world and the dilemmas fathers face at work and at home, stigmas that undermine divorced fathers, why patriarchy is harmful to men and to women, the importance of being a feminist, and what it takes to become a feminist dad -- critical consciousness, responsive fathering, removing locker-room gender essentialism, and rigorous inclusivity.  Jordan offers practical advice on how fathers can adopt these principles in their lives, thereby liberating themselves and giving their children the love, support, and guidance their children need to thrive.  

Here then, fathers, is an invitation, a challenge, just for you, once you’ve listened to the conversation.  What can you do to demonstrate to your children a commitment to rigorous inclusivity and what, if you did so, would you expect to be the result for your children’s lives?  Share your reactions to this episode and ideas for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn. 

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Joann Lublin was management news editor for The Wall Street Journal until she retired in April 2018, and she is still a regular Journal contributor. She shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for stories about corporate scandals and was awarded the 2018 Lifetime Achievement from the Loeb Awards, the highest accolade in business journalism. Her new book -- Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Navigate Work and Life -- explores the emotional and professional challenges women face as they try to move forward in their careers while raising a family. She’s also the author of Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World. 

In this episode, Stew talks with Joann about what she learned about what it takes to find harmony among the different parts of life from her own personal experience and from interviewing trailblazing women in her own cohort (Boomers, that is), their daughters, and executives who are mothers now.  She describes the profound shifts that have occurred across the generations -- in technology, gender roles, and workplace expectations -- and how they have created new pathways for men and women.  They discuss practical ideas for how to overcome the guilt that still hurts working mothers, the critical skills mothers develop that are of real value to their business and career success, and how a marriage contract can be a boon to a more egalitarian world.  

Here then is an invitation, a challenge, for you, once you’ve listened to the conversation.  What small step can you take to reduce the guilt that a working mother in your life -- perhaps it’s you -- currently feels about her choices?  Share your reactions to this episode and ideas for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.  

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Susan McPherson is the author of a new book -- The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Relationships. In it she brings to bear 25+ years of experience in marketing, public relations, and communications.

In this episode, Stew talks with Susan about the very best question to ask -- How can I help you? -- to build relationships of any kind, at work or elsewhere. They discuss the various types of communication modes and how they can be used effectively to strengthen bonds.  Susan describes and illustrates her systematic approach to building networks of support, what she calls the “gather, ask, do” method, demonstrating in this conversation how connection is her superpower.

Here then is an invitation, a challenge, for you, once you’ve listened to the conversation. In an upcoming conversation today or tomorrow, lead with the magic question, “how can I help you?” and see what happens.  Share your reactions to this episode and ideas for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.

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Tsedal Neeley is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, an accomplished scholar and author, and award-winning teacher. Her new book, Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere, could not have arrived at a more auspicious moment.  Her previous book, The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations, chronicles the behind-the-scenes globalization process of a company over the course of five years. Tsedal has also published extensively in leading scholarly and practitioner-oriented outlets about virtual work and large scale change. Her HBS case, “Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems”, is one of the most used cases worldwide on the subject of virtual work.

In this episode, Stew talks with Tsedal about the pros and cons of remote work -- for performance, well-being, and relationships in all parts of our lives -- and what we’ve learned about these pushes and pulls during the disorienting world of  the pandemic.  Drawing on research evidence across a number of fields, Tsedal describes tools any organization or individual can use to learn to thrive in remote work and offers insights about what the future of work will look like.   Stew and Tsedal both talked about the great Richard Hackman’s profound influence on their research and teaching. 

Here then is an invitation, a challenge, for you, once you’ve listened to the conversation. How can you use relaunching as a tool for improving the effectiveness of a team with which you are involved?  Share your reactions to this episode and ideas for future episodes with Stew by writing to him at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.  

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