Stewart D. Friedman

Total Leadership

On 17 March 2016, the Rafael del Pino Foundation organised the Keynote Lecture "Total Leadership" to be given by Stewart D. Friedman, founder and director of The Wharton Leadership Program.

Steward D. Friedman is Management Department's Practice Professor at the Whartom School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he founded the Wharton Leadership Program and the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, which he currently directs.

His extensive and prolific teaching and research career has focused on finding solutions to the main challenges facing managers and organisations. He was a pioneer in the inclusion of leadership programmes in business schools, knowledge that he has applied to business reality on several occasions. For example, he directed the Leadership Development Center at Ford Motor Company, where he contributed to transforming the company's culture with initiatives in which more than 2,500 executives participated each year. This programme was recognised by the International Consortium for Executive Development Research (ICEDR) as a "global benchmark" for leadership development programmes.

Professor Friedman is a member of a large number of governing bodies of companies and public institutions and has been recognised on several occasions as one of the 50 most influential intellectuals in the world. With his book "Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life", translated into seven languages, he has coined the term Total Leadership, for which he is renowned. Both this work and his latest book "Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life" have been number one bestsellers according to The Wall Street Journal.

Summary:

What can having a child inspire a person in terms of leadership? Stewart D. Friedman, founder and director of The Wharton Leadership Program, was inspired by a book "Total Leadership. Be a better leader, achieve a fuller life", which he presented on 17 March at the Rafael del Pino Foundation. For Friedman, it is important to be aware of what is really important and what is not, of who is important to us. The fact is that we need to improve all aspects of our lives, meaning those related to the world of work, family life, relations with society and care of the body, mind and spirit. To do this, we need to make our actions in line with our values and what we find fulfilling in these four areas of life. Moreover, by using our creativity we can come up with practical ideas that will enable us to make the fundamental changes we may need. The leader needed today is not only a person who focuses strictly on the business side, but on the whole person and knows how to combine work and family life. This new style of leadership seeks to harmonise work, home, community and self, bringing about the necessary changes with authenticity, integrity and creativity. Authenticity means clarifying what is truly important, integrity refers to making this analysis for all areas of the person, and creativity means experimenting with the search for new solutions. In this sense, Friedman proposes a method of assessing how we spend our time in these four fundamental areas of life, comparing the results with our deepest values and developing "experiments" to create "four winning paths". These are those activities or behaviours that result in simultaneous improvements in all aspects of a person's life.

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The Rafael del Pino Foundation is not responsible for any comments, opinions or statements made by third parties. In this respect, the FRP is not obliged to monitor the views expressed by such third parties who participate in its activities and which are expressed as a result of their inalienable right to freedom of expression and under their own responsibility. The contents included in the summary of this conference are the result of the discussions that took place during the conference organised for this purpose at the Foundation and are the sole responsibility of its authors.