Stewart Friedman

Emeritus Practice Professor of Management
Director, Wharton Work/Life Integration Project and Founding Director, Wharton Leadership Program

Contact Information

Primary Email:
friedman@wharton.upenn.edu
Office Phone:
(215) 898-8618

office Address:
3031 SH-DH
3620 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Research Interests: leadership development, work/life integration, dynamics of change

Links: CV, Total Leadership, Work and Life Podcast, HBR Digital Articles, LinkedIn, Twitter @StewFriedman, Work/Life Integration Project, MOOC: Leading the Life You Want

Overview

Stew Friedman is an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been on the faculty since 1984 and since 2019 is emeritus. He worked for five years in the mental health field before earning his PhD from the University of Michigan. In 1991, as founding director of the Wharton Leadership Program (now called the McNulty Leadership Program), he initiated the School’s core leadership courses, including the Learning Teams. A few years later, he launched the Leadership Fellows. More recently, he cofounded Wharton’s P3: Purpose, Passion, Principles — a co-curricular experience run collaboratively by students, faculty, and administrators. He also founded Wharton’s Work/Life Integration Project in 1991.

Friedman has been recognized by the biennial Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers repeatedly since 2011. He was honored with its 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award as the world’s #1 expert in talent management and was inducted in its Hall of Fame in 2023. He was listed among HR Magazine’s most influential thought leaders, chosen by Working Mother as one of America’s most influential men who have made life better for working parents, and presented with the Families and Work Institute’s Work Life Legacy Award.

While on leave from Wharton for two-and-a-half years, Friedman ran a 50-person department as the senior executive for leadership development at Ford Motor Company. In partnership with the CEO, he launched a corporate-wide portfolio of initiatives designed to transform Ford’s culture; 2500+ managers per year participated. Near the end of his tenure at Ford, an independent research group (ICEDR) said the Leadership Development Center was a “global benchmark” for companies striving to accelerate the growth of their people. At Ford, he created Total Leadership, which has been a popular Wharton course since 2001 and is used by individuals and companies worldwide, including as a primary intervention in a multi-year study funded by the National Institutes of Health on improving the careers and lives of women in medicine and by 135,000+ students in Friedman’s first MOOC on Coursera. Participants in this program complete an intensive series of challenging exercises that increase their leadership capacity, performance, and well-being in all parts of life, while working in peer-to-peer coaching relationships.

His research is widely cited, including among Harvard Business Review‘s “Ideas that Shaped Management,” and he has written two bestselling books, Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life (2008) and Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life (2014), now being taught as a MOOC on Coursera. His third Harvard Business Press book was Parents Who Lead: The Leadership Approach You Need to Parent with Purpose, Fuel Your Career, and Create a Richer Life (2020). In 2024, Wharton School Press published a new edition of his landmark study of two generations of Wharton students, Baby Bust, 10th Anniversary Edition: New Choices for Men and Women in Work and Family. Work and Family – Allies or Enemies? (2000) was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the field’s best books. In Integrating Work and Life: The Wharton Resource Guide (1998) Stew edited the first collection of learning tools for building leadership skills for integrating work and life.

Winner of many teaching awards, he appears regularly in business media (The New York Times cited the “rock star adoration” he inspires in his students). Friedman serves on a number of boards and is an in-demand speaker, consultant, coach, workshop leader, public policy advisor (to the U.S. Departments of Labor and State, the United Nations, and two White House administrations), and advocate for family-supportive policies in the private sector. Follow on Twitter @StewFriedman and LinkedIn, read his 50+ digital articles HBR.org, and tune in to his podcast Work and Life with Stew Friedman (since 2014).

Research

Stewart Friedman, Baby Bust, 10th Anniversary Edition: New Choices for Men and Women in Work and Family (Philadelphia, PA: Wharton School Press, 2024) Abstract
Ten years ago a groundbreaking cross-generational study revealed that greater freedom and new constraints were leading fewer young people to choose parenthood. In the intervening years, the decision to have a family has not gotten easier.

Description
Stew Friedman, founding director of The Wharton School's Work/Life Integration Project, studied two generations of Wharton college students as they graduated: Gen Xers in 1992 and Millennials in 2012. The cross-generational study produced a stark discovery—the rate of graduates who planned to have children had dropped by nearly half over those 20 years. While some might wonder what this privileged group can tell us about broader trends in the United States, Friedman argues that they were “the canaries in the coal mine. . . . if they could not see a way to make their careers and families work, how could those with fewer opportunities and resources square this circle?” In a new preface to this 10th anniversary edition of Baby Bust, Friedman observes that the birth rate in the United States has continued to decline in the years since. He offers new insights into why fewer people are choosing to have children, how the pandemic affected these trends, and what can be done about it. In this book, Friedman addresses: + How views about work and family have changed; + Why men and women have different reasons for opting out of parenthood; + How family has been redefined; + What choices we face in our social and educational policy; and + How organizations and individuals—especially men—can spur cultural change. In the debates on work and family, people of all generations are calling for a reasoned, thoughtful, research-driven contribution to the discussion. In Baby Bust, Friedman offers just that: an astute assessment of how far we have come and where we go from here.
Stewart Friedman and Alyssa Westring, Parents Who Lead: The Leadership Approach You Need to Parent with Purpose, Fuel Your Career, and Create a Richer Life (: Harvard Business Press, 2020)
Liat Eldor, Alyssa Westring, Stewart Friedman (2019), The indirect effect of holistic career values on work engagement: a longitudinal study spanning two decades, Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 12 (), pp. 144-165. doi:10.1111/aphw.12177
Jeane Ann Grisso, Mary Dupuis Sammel, Arthur Rubenstein, Rebecca M. Speck, Emily F. Conant, Patricia Scott, Lucy Wolf Tuton, Alyssa Westring, Stewart Friedman, Stephanie Abbuhl (2017), A randomized controlled trial to improve the success of women assistant professors, Journal of Women's Health.
Stewart Friedman and Alyssa Westring (2015), Helping Fathers Flourish in All Parts of Their Lives, Flourishing in Life Work and Careers.
Stewart Friedman and Alyssa Westring (2015), Empowering individuals to integrate work and life: insights for management development, Journal of Management Development, 34 (3).
Stewart Friedman (2014), Implications of the Revolution in Work and Family, Reinventing the Company in the Digital Age.
Stewart Friedman, Leading The Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and LIfe (: Harvard Business Press, 2014)
Stewart Friedman (2014), Work + Home + Community + Self, Harvard Business Review.
Stewart Friedman, Baby Bust: New Choices for Men and Women in Work and Family (: Wharton School Press, 2013)
All Research from Stewart Friedman »

Teaching

Past Courses

MGMT6710 - Executive Leadership
Despite the business world’s obsession with leadership, what it takes to be an effective leader is often not commonly understood nor commonly practiced. In this course, the focus is on growing the student's capacity as a leader. Students will learn practical and customized lessons about how to improve their performance and results at work. We use the evidence from the science of leadership and teams to understand the key tactics and principles that will enable students to better lead others as they strive to attain shared goals. We will cover topics such as leadership effectiveness, adaptive leadership, empowering leadership as well as how to motivate, inspire, and lead teams effectively (e.g., decision making, coordination, coaching). This course offers students the opportunity to learn and practice the skills needed to become better leaders, now and in the future.
MGMT8900 - Advanced Study-Ind

Awards And Honors

Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, 2023
Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, 2022
Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, 2018
William G. Whitney Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2017
Thinkers50: The World's Top 50 Business Thinkers, 2017
HR Magazine Most Influential Thinkers, 2017
William G. Whitney Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2016
Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award for the World's Top Thinker in the Field of Talent, 2015
HR Magazine Most Influential Thinkers, 2015
Axiom Business Book Award, 2015
CEO Read Business Books Best Seller, 2014
Wall Street Journal Business Books Best Seller, 2014
HR Magazine Most Influential Thinkers, 2014
Thinkers50: The World’s Top 50 Business Thinkers, 2013
Families and Work Institute's Work Life Legacy Award, 2013
Top Professors on Twitter in Leadership, 2012
Thinkers50: The World’s Top 50 Business Thinkers, 2011
Excellence in Teaching Award: Core Curriculum, 2011
TotalLeadership.org Named one of Forbes' Top Websites for Women, 2010
William G. Whitney Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2007
MBA Core Curriculum Teaching Award, 1996
Outstanding Teaching Award, Undergraduate Evening School, 1993
Outstanding Teaching Award, Undergraduate Division, 1990

Activity

Latest Research

Stewart Friedman, Baby Bust, 10th Anniversary Edition: New Choices for Men and Women in Work and Family (Philadelphia, PA: Wharton School Press, 2024)

All Research