Total Leadership
In Friedman's most recent book, Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life, Friedman argues that leadership in business cannot be merely about business anymore: it has to be about life as a whole. Total Leadership is an approach to human resource management and leadership development created and tested at Ford and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania that suggests that leadership must be embodied at all levels of an organizational culture to create sustainable change that’s beyond work-life balance that is good for work, family, community, and self (mind, body, and spirit).
This approach, Friedman writes, is superior at integrating work and the rest of life, preferable to the pursuit of “balance,” which erroneously assumes the necessity of tradeoffs. With “four-way wins,” all parties benefit. From this perspective, individuals realize that their actions as leaders serve a larger purpose, making the world better. They feel part of something bigger than their own lives, and thereby find greater meaning in what they do. The approach has been used in non-profits as well as major for-profit corporations in the United States, Canada, Europe, Central America, and South America to increase organizational and individual productivity by decreasing stress, turnover, and absenteeism by capitalizing on one's personal life interests and priorities. Total Leadership is a primary intervention in a multi-year study funded by the National Institute of Health.
Friedman presents Total Leadership as a proven method to achieving four-way wins. It is based upon following these principles using stakeholder interviews for 360 degree feedback:
1. Be Real: Act with authenticity by clarifying what’s important.
2. Be Whole: Act with integrity by respecting the whole person.
3. Be Innovative: Act with creativity by continually experimenting.
Read more about this topic: Stewart D. Friedman