Wharton School, leadership development, holistic , work, life, results

Total Leadership takes a holistic view of the developing leader, no matter what age or level. The goal is to improve performance in all four domains of life — work, home, community, and self – by finding mutual value among them. It’s a structured method that produces measurable results.

By proceeding through a guided series of exercises and experiences, people make changes that enable them to transform the way they invest their attention, skills, and resources. Their daily actions become more closely aligned with their values. They work smarter, with greater focus and commitment. They achieve the results that matter most, in all areas of their lives. And they become more confident and more competent as leaders.

We launched the Total Leadership program at Aegon Spain to help our team take responsibility for their lives, in all its areas, as a way to help them also be more complete in terms of their contribution to their work. The result was magnificent, with significant increases in commitment (from levels below 50% to more than 80%) and a very good evaluation of the program by all participants.

Tomas Alfaro, CEO, AEGON España

"Total Leadership transformed my development as a leader and internet entrepreneur. This book and the exercises in it are equally powerful – I’m buying a copy for everyone in my company."

Brett A. Hurt, Founder and CEO, Data.World and Bazaarvoice

Total Leadership helped me tremendously to rediscover and reaffirm my core work values. For a journey to authenticity, this is the must-read road map for leaders and leaders-to-be.

Jane Lin-Baden, CEO, Asia Pacific Isobar

Stew Friedman's Total Leadership approach has been tremendously valuable to me as I have grown my career. It has provided me a tremendous tool set for success in my career and in my personal life. I have enjoyed these tenets so much that I have had Stew come and present his two-day course to over 75 professionals in my organization and they all came away much better armed to handle the many demands on their time. Stew is fantastic.

Sam Allen, COO, Marketing, Salesforce

I have seen lives changed through Stew and his Total Leadership framework. If a person is willing to put in the work, the outcomes are amazing.

Jim Hoar, Leadership Development, Target

Stew Friedman shows you how to succeed in all areas of your life. From personal experience, I know the Total Leadership program delivers profound results for both individuals and organizations.

Harry Weiner, Co-founder and Partner, On-Ramps

Total Leadership was transformative. I moved from seeing the world as a series of zero-sum tradeoffs, to seeing the world as teeming with potential positive-sum outcomes...from a narrow view of myself as a leader (at work only), to a strong sense of responsibility and confidence in my leadership in all domains of life.

Matt Benchener, Principal, Vanguard

Total Leadership is an excellent blueprint for optimizing time and energy across multiple domains [and] provides an invaluable methodology for analyzing and realigning priorities to maximize one’s full leadership potential.

Captain Thomas, U.S. Marine commander, veteran of 200+ combat missions

I have enjoyed working with you, learning from you, and seeing the results of this program in our firm. For just one example, one participant reported how Total Leadership resulted in his doubling his volume of client contacts per month, which led to four new business developments valued at $1MM+ in follow-on work. Thank you for introducing a new way to look at leadership.

Laura Mendelow, Leadership Development, Booz Allen Hamilton

The Total Leadership framework is brilliant. It yields promising results and can be easily implemented by any individual, regardless of career/level/age. It has given me hope, and a dynamic tool towards living a more rewarding life. I am grateful to you for developing and sharing this “gem” with the world!

Melissa Presbery, Philadelphia Insurance Companies

This framework helps me more carefully consider the ways in which each of the domains impact the others, and I have been able to identify synergies, which is wonderful. When I used to focus more on work-life balance, I always felt stuck between the two — one was always pulling at the other.

Participant in Pathways Program for University of Pennsylvania Faculty

Based on large-scale research and case studies of applications in a variety of real-world settings, our program has been shown to be effective in driving positive results for thousands of people.

Bolstering Well-Being in All Parts of Life

A recent study of 665 participants in the long-form version of our Total Leadership program (over a four month span) showed average increases in satisfaction in the four domains of life between 14% and 45%.

Using standard health risk assessment measures, this sample of 665 participants showed improvements in well-being, in terms of their physical health, mental health, and stress between 19% and 37%.

Working Smarter

The Total Leadership program not only enhances well-being but it improves performance as well, including at work -- and with less time devoted to work.

In our study average gains in meeting the performance expectations of key stakeholders at work, at home, in their communities were between 9% and 25 %. These improvements coincided with a reallocation in attention spent in a typical week – from work to the other parts of life.

Changes people made from practicing the principles of being real, being whole, and being innovative resulted in their working smarter and enjoying the benefits of more intelligent choices about the investment of their attention.

Increasing Confidence as a Leader

Thousands of participants over the past 15+ years have assessed themselves at the start of the Total Leadership program and then again four months later. This chart summarizes findings on how these perceptions changed for over 500 people. Numbers in green show the percentage gain on each of the nine attributes. On the "Fake" to "Genuine" dimension, for example, there was an 8% improvement.

As you go through the experience, you become more focused on the things that matter and so you feel more grounded, more like the person you want to be. You generate more support and feel more connected to the important people in your life. You become more resilient in response to the vagaries of our turbulent world. And you become more open to discovery and so feel more hopeful, indeed enthusiastic, about the future and your power to shape it.

Enhancing Leadership Skills

Participants also rated themselves on our proprietary Total Leadership Skills Assessment (freely available at this site) – described and illustrated in Leading the Life You Want – both before they went through the exercises, dialogues, and experiments, and again afterwards. The numbers in green next to each skill (description abbreviated here) shows average improvements on each of the 18 skills.

Driving Business Results -- Case Studies

Total Leadership has been used to improve business results and enhance well-being for people in organizations worldwide. Here are brief reports from among thousands of people who have taken up the Total Leadership challenge in hundreds of companies:

Ford Motor Company -- Unleashing Energy to Produce Economic Value

Total Leadership came to life after Stew Friedman was recruited to head up a leadership development program at Ford Motor Company in the late 1990’s. Starting with 35 high-potential managers from across the globe, they followed the Total Leadership program and implemented changes that affected their work and the other parts of their lives.

Experiments by participants in this first group produced a combined $5.8 million in cost savings, $0.7 million in new revenue, and $0.5 million in productivity gains, as measured by accounting professionals in their respective departments across the company.

They also improved relationships with customers and colleagues and felt more satisfied with their jobs. They felt more deeply connected to their families and their communities, especially since they had brought them along in the process of change. They reported feeling healthier and less stressed. They were making better use of leisure time. They were feeling better about the company, and more excited about tying their futures to its future. They accomplished these results by reframing the idea of business leadership, by applying new skills and insights at work, at home, in the community, and within the self.

Women Faculty in Academic Medicine -- More Research in Less Time

The pattern of getting more work accomplished in less time as a result of the Total Leadership program was demonstrated in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health in which 65 junior women faculty at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine undertook our program, and did a workshop on grant writing, in addition to other departmental and school-wide interventions. Compared to members of a control group who did not experience these interventions, the women in the experimental group were as productive (measured by increases in publication record) but significantly more efficient; they worked fewer hours while achieving the same level of scholarly output. They were able to devote more of their time to caring for the other parts of their lives.

Target -- Real Leaders Have Real Lives

The results of our Total Leadership program at Target demonstrate that you can be a committed A-player executive, a good parent, an attentive spouse, a healthy person with hobbies -- yes hobbies! -- and a community life. This Harvard Business Review digital article describes what happened with Target executives who experimented with creative ways to integrate the different parts of their lives and how they taught others to do the same.

Booz Allen Hamilton -- Positive Impact on Business Development

Following a long-form version of the Total Leadership program, high-potential professionals at this global consulting firm reported improvements at work and in the other parts of their lives. For examples, they said:

I developed new add-on business with existing clients from $12 million to $20 million
As a result of my work in the Total Leadership program, I doubled the number of client contacts/month which led to four new business developments totaling at least a $1 million value with expected follow-on work.
I recommend this course to people who say they just don’t have enough time. It teaches you how to use the same time for multiple things. It got me to think of things differently and actually make changes in my life. One of the best courses offered at Booz Allen.

Dell -- Expanded Market Share, New Business, and Better Fitness

A Total Leadership participant at Dell described in detail how he obtained a 51% market share with China Mobile (China’s largest telecom provider); secured over $100M in a new business opportunity; and launched a new Dell product before the holiday period, leading to the sale of over 10K units in a weekend QVC show. He was more productive, energized, and focused at work as a result of a new fitness program he started as an experiment designed to produce a four-way win.

MarketBridge -- Career Advancement and Key Talent Retention

Saudi Arabia Basic Industries -- Better Efficiency and Focus

A Total Leadership program participant at Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation reported on how he increased his efficiency at work by 35%, increased his bottom line results by 30%, and was better able to focus on the most important aspects of his work. By committing time to goals in his personal life, he learned to delegate small tasks to employees who benefited from the opportunity to expand their skills while allowing him to do more high-value work.

U.S. Army -- Changing Lives Through Leadership

As one of the first organizations to participate in our Train-the-Trainer program, the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center has continued to bring about sustainable change through Total Leadership since 2010.

The Army used to ask members to “be all you can be” and now they can add “in each of your four domains” to that slogan. After learning and applying TL tools to understand expectations and pursue four-way wins, participants have reported significant increases in performance and in satisfaction with key relationships in their lives.

One corps member experimented with "no electronics family meals" three times a week with the goal of strengthening her relationship with each of her children and improving her leadership capacity. She said, "I have often said your staff is like your family. You can intertwine management skills between the two, with different goals and results. Learning how to have supportive, non-judgmental, but still useful discussions with my kids helps me do the same at work with my staff...People are not always looking for an answer or for you to solve the problem. Sometimes they just need you to listen...This is especially helpful when providing guidance or correcting someone in a higher position than mine."

The well-established, growing TL alumni community in the Army remains engaged with each other and with new program members. Alumni often reach out to their initial Program Leader for coaching on new experiments. As one alumni recently said to his Program Leader, “You’re changing lives!”

BBVA -- Transformation to the Bank of the Future

During the preparation for an all-hands Total Leadership session for world-wide employees at BBVA, a global financial services organization based in Madrid, Stew Friedman asked Enrique Gonzalez, Head of Culture & Employee Communication, what he thought about the initiative. “This is going to have a huge impact in BBVA,” said Enrique. “We are telling our employees to become better leaders and have richer lives. Until now, we only talked about the importance of BBVA projects from the perspective of the professional side. This is a huge step forward.”

A year earlier, BBVA’s Talent & Culture Area had decided to test the value of Total Leadership through a short offsite with 15 BBVA executives from the Customer Solutions Area. After this productive session, BBVA launched a series of programs led by Friedman and his colleagues on the Total Leadership Spain team.

Carlos Torres Vila, BBVA’s CEO, said that “the concepts of Total Leadership have an extraordinary power; especially the idea of looking for simultaneous improvements in the different parts of life. This is the four-way win approach. It is key to our transformation of BBVA into the bank of the future.”

The programs, jointly designed and conducted by BBVA and the Total Leadership team, included:

All members of BBVA’s Steering Committee, including CEO Carlos Torres Vila, participated in a full-scale, six-month Total Leadership program led by Stew Friedman.
The Total Leadership Spain team delivered a session to introduce the basic program to BBVA executives in a Talent & Culture Global off-site meeting in Córdoba, Spain.
The Global Training Area designed and implemented a customized course for BBVA Talent & Culture Area managers – two full days and, a month later, a two-hour clinic to review results and lessons learned from experiments each participant conducted.
Friedman delivered a three-hour training session for BBVA´s Coaches Group, held with a group in person and streamed to 100+ others in this group worldwide.
Hundreds of copies of Total Leadership (in English and Spanish) were distributed to participants at the all-hands session, which was streamed to employees around the world.

Results so far have been profound. In less than a year, BBVA has achieved quantitative and qualitative changes from the investment in these Total Leadership programs. Evaluations of the programs by participants have been exceptionally high. Ricardo Forcano, a member of the BBVA’s Steering Committee, said this: “Total Leadership is person-centric. It transcends the bank’s scope by providing real value beyond the work experience for our employees in their personal lives. Total Leadership will help employees to have a richer life. Furthermore, it is action- oriented, practical, hands-on, and teaches through experiential learning – learning leadership in life by taking action and reflecting on it.”

Results

Bolstering Well-Being in All Parts of Life

Working Smarter

Increasing Confidence as a Leader

Enhancing Leadership Skills

Driving Business Results -- Case Studies

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