A moment that changed a career.

• Author: Friedman, Stewart D.
• Position: LEADERSHIP - Column

From Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life by Stewart D. Friedman. Copyright 2008 by the author. Published by Harvard Business Press (www.harvardbusiness.org/press).

BY THE MID-1980s, my professional life was humming. I had finished my graduate work in organizational psychology, begun research on leadership development, and landed my dream job at the Wharton School. But my wife, Hallie, and I had been trying unsuccessfully to have a child for some time.

Then, finally, at 5:30 a.m. on a beautiful autumn morning, our first child, Gabriel, arrived. In a warmly lit room in Pennsylvania Hospital I stood transfixed, holding this practically perfect being for the first time. Wrapped in a yellow blanket that covered him entirely except for his calm face, Gabriel looked at me and around the room, taking it all in. I wondered, what must I do now to make our world a safe and nurturing one for him?

I could not get this thought out of my head. A week later, I arrived back in my Wharton MBA class on organizational behavior and set aside the topic for which we'd all prepared that day, on motivation and reward systems.

Instead, I told the story of what had just happened to me. I...