Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life [Hardcover]

Stewart D. Friedman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1422103285 | ISBN-13: 978-1422103289 | Publication Date: June 8, 2008 | Edition: 1

Now more than ever, your success as a leader isn't just about being a great business person. You've got to be a great person, performing well in all domains of your life -- your work, your home, your community, and your private self.

That's a tall order.

The good news is that, contrary to conventional wisdom about "balance," you don't have to assume that these domains compete in a zero-sum game. Total Leadership is a game-changing blueprint for how to perform well as a leader not by trading off one domain for another, but by finding mutual value among all four. Stew Friedman shows you how to achieve these "four-way wins" as a leader who can:

Be real: Act with authenticity by clarifying what's important

Be whole: Act with integrity by respecting the whole person

Be innovative: Act with creativity by experimenting to find new solutions

With engaging examples and clear instruction, Friedman provides more than thirty hands-on tools for using these proven principles to produce stronger business results, find clearer purpose in what you do, feel more connected to the people who matter most, and generate sustainable change.

Most leadership development books focus only on your professional skills, while books about personal growth concentrate on your needs beyond work. Total Leadership is different. It's a unique and long-awaited resource that shows how to win in all domains of life.

In a world of work-life trade-offs, Stew Friedman offers what most think impossible: a field-tested program that gives you not only what you want in business, but also what you want in life. Brilliant.
--Timothy Ferriss, New York Times bestselling author, The 4-Hour Workweek

Destined to be a classic, this is a remarkable book. I have studied leadership and led organizations for over twenty years. No other book has reshaped my thinking about leadership development as much as Total Leadership.
-- David A. Thomas, professor, Harvard Business School, and author, Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Professionals in Corporate America

Stew Friedman absolutely gets it. He is both a visionary and a much-needed advocate for a new kind of total leadership in the twenty-first century. What an empowering book!
-- Janet Hanson, Founder, 85 Broads

Total Leadership will help you build a life, not just a sum. Stew Friedman has written the owners manual for all types of leaders, young and old, who aspire to both professional success and personal fulfillment.
-- Tom Tierney, Chairman and Cofounder, The Bridgespan Group

The best leaders are those who stay connected to their communities, to the people they love, to themselves. In Stew Friedman s Total Leadership, you'll learn simple, powerful new ways to make these connections happen and enjoy the rich rewards that inevitably follow.
-- Keith Ferrazzi, CEO, Ferrazzi Greenlight, and author, Never Eat Alone

As the pace of business continues to race forward at lightening speed, Stew Friedman offers us an innovative and sustainable model for successful leadership. Total Leadership provides a unique proposition for individuals who strive to be their very best both personally and professionally.
-- Dave Lissy, CEO, Bright Horizons Family Solutions

Total Leadership is so aligned with my thinking as an HR executive and medical director of a global business. With practical tools and compelling stories, Friedman demonstrates how to achieve four-way wins a distinctive, important new concept for today s leaders.
--Dr. Robert W. Carr, Vice President and Corporate Medical Director, GlaxoSmithKline

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Friedman, a former academic and leadership consultant, presents “Total Leadership,” his “four-way” win method that enables a leader to find mutual value at work, at home, in the community, and personally. He explains that his views are not work-life balance, which he considers a zero-sum game. Using exercises, stories, charts, and lists, the author describes Total Leadership as a program for becoming a leader who acts with authenticity by determining what is important, who acts with integrity by respecting all parts of his life, and who acts with creativity by experimenting to find new solutions. Claiming leadership can and must be learned, the author offers step-by-step instructions for using his principles to produce stronger business results while having a richer life and creating opportunities for others. Although this book appears to be a manual for client seminars and an infomercial for his consulting activities, Friedman nevertheless offers thoughtful insight into important leadership qualities that will improve results while allowing for a fulfilling life for leaders and their followers. --Mary Whaley

Review

"Total Leadership is...inspiring. [It] combines  leadership studies with work-life, rejuvenating [and] mastering both...My students named it their most liked and most useful reading...

Winner of CEO-READ Best Book Award 2008 in the Category of Personal Development

"If you're looking to balance work and life, this easy-to-read, holistic guide to success is for you. Friedman embraces the interconnectedness of all parts of life and shows how each area can enrich the others. There are plenty of exercises requiring lots of self-reflection. Best of its kind." -- Management Today 9/30/08

"Friedman's book will be a valuable resource to anyone interested initiating a self-dialogue about professional and personal values and, indeed, to anyone interested in becoming a better leader."  -- Workspan - the Magazine of WorldatWork  by Ryan Johnson May, 2008

"In the future, being a leader will require new ways to integrate work with the rest of one's life, resulting in more effective leadership and a more fulfilling life. Total Leadership points the way."
- Robert Reich, U. of California, Berkeley; former U.S. Secretary of Labor

Students talk about Stewart D. Friedman, a management professor at the Wharton School, with a mixture of earnest admiration, gratitude and rock star adoration. --The New York Times, May 28, 2008

Friedman...offers thoughtful insight into important leadership qualities that will improve results while allowing for a fulfilling life for leaders and their followers. --Booklist, June 1, 2008

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business School Press; 1 edition (June 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1422103285
• ISBN-13: 978-1422103289
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #128,947 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stew Friedman has been on the Wharton faculty since 1984. He became the Management Department's first Practice Professor for his work on applying theory and research to the real challenges facing organizations. As founding director of the Wharton Leadership Program, in 1991 he initiated the required MBA and Undergraduate leadership courses. He is founding director of Wharton's Work/Life Integration Project.

Stew's most recent book is the award-winning bestseller, Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life (Harvard Business Press, 2008). The program it describes is his challenging Wharton course, in which participants complete an intensive series of real-world exercises designed to increase their leadership capacity and performance in all parts of their lives by better integrating them, while working in high-involvement peer-to-peer coaching relationships and completing much of the activity online in a cutting-edge social learning environment. Total Leadership 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.

In 2001 Stew concluded a two-year assignment as a senior executive at Ford Motor Company, where he was director of the Leadership Development Center (LDC), running a 50-person, $25 MM operation. 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 LDC was a "global benchmark" for leadership development programs.

Stew worked for five years in the mental health field before earning his PhD in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan. He has published on work/life, leadership, and the dynamics of change, including the widely-cited Harvard Business Review articles, "Work and life: the end of the zero-sum game" (1998) and "Be a better leader, have a richer life" (2008), and "The Happy Workaholic: a role model for employees" (Academy of Management Executive, 2003). Work and Family - Allies or Enemies? (Oxford, 2000) was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the field's best books. In the book Integrating Work and Life: The Wharton Resource Guide (Jossey-Bass, 1998) Stew edited the first collection of learning tools for building leadership skills for integrating work and life.

Stew serves on a number of boards and has advised a wide range of companies and public sector organizations, including the U.S. Department of Labor, the United Nations, and two White House administrations. He gives keynote addresses and conducts workshops globally on leadership and the whole person, creating change, and strategic human resources issues. The recipient of numerous teaching awards, he appears regularly in business media (The New York Times cited the "rock star adoration" he inspires in his students), was chosen by Working Mother as one of America's 25 most influential men in having made things better for working parents, and in 2011 was selected by Thinkers50 as one of the "world's top 50 business thinkers."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book - deceiving title, July 10, 2008

By 

M. Henderson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life (Hardcover)

I took two intercontinental flights recently and took the time to go through the "Total Leadership" program. And, before I begin my review, I want to say that over the past ten years or so I've seen an absolute avalanche of "leadership" books come out - most of them gimmicky and useless. This is not one of them and in fact I believe the title may deter people from purchasing this; do not be one of them.

"Total Leadership" is about finding your way when you have multiple responsibilities tugging you in different directions. Until now, I've often felt family pulling me one way, only to find the more time I spend with them the more I resent the time it takes away from work. Similarly, on business trips for example, I fight with feelings of guilt for being away from my family. And that's not to mention the the toll all of this takes on my health, when I'm too busy to exercise or just watch the game with friends. I'm here to say this book can help, like finding the long lost manual and finally figuring our how to do new things with a product, this book acts as a guide to finding a semblance of control in your life. It's not about sacrifice, and it's definitely not found in the idea of "balance", this book advocates a powerful third way: overlapping your domains and drawing boundaries.

What makes this book especially effective are the exercises the author puts the reader through. The reader is asked to define the issue, starting with the multiple responsibilities and challenges s/he faces, then it moves on to defining your domains, where is it that you spend your time? Most of the readers (including myself) would find four areas: self, family, work and community. Then, with domains defined, you can identify stakeholders in each domain and begin the process of finding ways "to live your life in accord with what really matters to you." The reader is asked to discuss his/her vision for a future life (post-change) with trusted individuals s/he has previously identified. A particularly effective step is then speaking with others about living your life differently, such as: your boss, significant other and friends, and getting their opinion and feedback on your plan, and as difficult and challenging as this may be it ends up providing the most powerful incentive to change through accountability and stakeholder buy-in. In many cases, I found that as much as I was building bridges between domains in my life, I was also creating boundaries (for example, no longer do I check my blackberry or the Internet between the hours of 6pm - 9pm.) But some of the biggest changes are personal ones that are for me and my family, other readers will likely find similar decisions they make without necessarily sharing them.

This book is not about easy decisions, or difficult ones, its about drilling down to what's most important in your life and building from there.

Ultimately, this book is required reading once, in my opinion, you are put in a position of responsibility. It is effective in maintaining a mindset conducive to responsible living, it provides a non-cookie cutter approach and it creates change in your life through practical exercises.

For these reasons, this reviewer highly recommends "Total Leadership."

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than The Four Hour Workweek!, June 9, 2008

By 

Tech-shaman "-D" (Silicon Valley) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life (Hardcover)

Stew Friedman has hit the ball out of the park by writing a book about his real-world experience helping people combine and optimize their home life with their work life. I took a class from Stew at Wharton a few years ago as the ideas and techniques in this book were evolving. The basic idea is to use Stew's rating methodology to rank how much effort you put into different parts of your life and to measure it against the returns you get. It's surprisingly easy to do and very insightful. Then, the book shows you how to optimize where you focus your energy so you can get better results in all the parts of your life that matter. Very few business and leadership books admit that the link between your home life and your work life is an integral part of how you function in both. Total Leadership not only understands this idea, it teaches you how to strengthen the link, enriching your life at work and at home. Try it, it works!
-a happy VP somewhere in Silicon Valley

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant insights on the never-ending process of becoming a total person, July 10, 2008

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life (Hardcover)

I wish this book had been available 20 years ago when I was a senior-level corporate executive, struggling without much success to balance everything in my life. At that time, I had a large corporate staff to supervise and was married and the father of four teenagers, three sons and a daughter. Moreover, I was actively involved in several non-profit organizations. Finally, whenever possible, I tried to "squeeze" into my already busy life a occasional round of golf, a visit to one of the local art museums, "going out" to see a film. What I should have done -- but failed to do -- is what Stewart Friedman recommends in this book: to reflect on and then explore (through a four-step process of discovery) the relative importance of four domains in my life (i.e. work, home, community, and self) and determine (a) whether or not the goals I was pursuing in each were in synch, (b) in synch with the other goals, and (c) and how satisfied I was with what was happening in each and all domains. That was then...

Now, here's my take on a few of Friedman's key points.

1. Most people (including business leaders) function in the aforementioned domains. Once each has been measured, he challenge is to make whatever modifications are necessary to establish and then sustain harmony between and among them. "The whole fits together elegantly."

2. According to Friedman, "total" leaders possess great strength because they do what they love, drawing upon the resources of their entire (four-domain) life. By acting with authenticity, they are creating value for themselves, their families, their businesses, and their world. By acting with integrity, they satisfy their craving for a sense of connection, for coherence in disparate parts of their lives, and for the peace of mind that comes from strictly and consistently adhering to a code of values. Meanwhile, they "keep a results-driven focus while providing maximum flexibility (choice in how, when, and where things get done.) They have the courage to experiment with new arrangements and communications tools to better meet the expectations of people who depend on them."

3. At the same time, a "total" leader does everything she or he can to help others (at work, at home, in the community and for themselves) to become aware of whatever changes may be necessary within her or his own domains; to have a sense of urgency about making those modifications; to decide to commit to appropriate action that will create for each a different, better future; to solve whatever problems encountered when pursuing the giving goals, meanwhile sustaining commitment despite any barriers, delays, distractions, etc. Total leaders also ensure that "people who depend on them" have the support and encouragement they may need by celebrating incremental successes while resisting "slippage."

4. In Chapter 6, Friedman urges that those who aspire to become total leaders learn how to adapt to new circumstances with confidence to conduct several "design experiments" whose purpose is to increase the ability to be innovative with creative action. He identifies ten types such as "Appreciating and Caring" experiments that involve having fun with people, caring for others, and appreciating relationships. Daniel Goleman characterizes this as developing "emotional intelligence" and Friedman believes that it is very important in each of the four domains. Because each domain has different kinds of relationships, separate goals and strategies must be devised for nourishing ("humanizing") relationships in each.

5. In the next chapter, Friedman offers sound advice on "how to get going and make something new stick" during what is necessarily a never-ending process of human development. Once again, he stresses the importance of achieving "four-way wins" in each domain by "jumping" into the hearts and minds of others. "The best experiments are those that don't just get the approval from all your stakeholders, but will genuinely benefit them by changing their worlds for the better...When you're trying to make something new happen, you've got to know what others care about, so that you can adjust your actions. And you've got to know whom they trust, so that you know who will listen to whom as you seek to exert influence."

I can personally attest to the importance of each of these and Friedman's other key points. However, what he advocates is obviously much easier said than done. Consider the concept of "balance," of "integrating" what is most important in each of the four domains. Let's assume that someone achieves that. For most of us (including corporate CEOs), a proper balance on weekdays usually differs (sometimes) substantially from a proper balance during weekends. Moreover, obligations, objectives, and opportunities in the work domain, for example, change during the progression of a career. That is, our proper balances on weekdays and weekends frequently change, and that is also true of each of the other three domains. The key to effectively responding to these changes is to think and feel one's way through a four-step process.

Of course, Friedman is fully aware of this. In fact, in the final chapter, he observes that total leadership "doesn't end with the implementation of your experiments. This is really just the beginning. Being a better leader and having a richer life is an ongoing search, which I hope you will be on for the rest of your life. As long as you continue practicing authenticity, integrity, and creativity, you will increase your chances of scoring four-way wins - performing better and finding satisfaction in your various domains."

I presume to conclude this review with a personal note: After reading Friedman's book and before composing this review, I read The Last Lecture in which Randy Pausch (age 46) shares his thoughts and feelings as he awaits imminent death from pancreatic cancer. Actually, "awaits" is not the correct word because Pausch does everything he can to leave no "IOUs" behind for his beloved wife ("the woman of his dreams"), their three young children, other family members, friends, and associates. In his last lecture to his students at Carnegie-Mellon, he provides a "distillation" of how he felt about the end of his life. "It's not about how you achieve your dreams. It's about how you lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you." In my opinion, this is precisely the same message that Stewart Friedman communicates to his own students as they prepare for a career in business. The "total leader" is first and foremost a total person.