Total Leadership

Integrating work, home,

community, and self
to increase business results
by enriching lives

Stew Friedman
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

 Workshop goals

• Review trends in leadership development

• Understand Total Leadership approach
• Learn three key principles
• Sample diagnostic tools
• Initiate practical ideas for innovative action
• Consider implementation issues

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

What kind of leadership
do we need now?

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

 Total Leadership
Integrating work, home, community and self to
increase business results by enriching lives
Modern Leadership Total Leadership
• Focus on results vs. • Focus on results in all domains
activity at the workplace • Mobilize resources towards life
• Mobilize resources vision
towards business vision • Leadership expected in all
• Leadership expected at domains at all levels.
all levels • Influence at any level needed
• Influence up and out as in each domain
well as down • Continually innovate to
• Continually innovate leverage synergies across
domains
© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman
 Why Total Leadership now?
A new employment environment
• Labor market dynamics and competitive pressures
– The war for talent
– Leveraging human capital for competitive advantage
• Flatter organizations, broader spans of control
• Workforce values
– Having a life and meaningful work to reduce stress
– Working parents need to care for kids
– Post-9/11 – contribution to society/healing the world
• New communications technology – digitized work
– Navigating the 24/7 world – work anytime, anywhere
– Managing access & presence while increasing flexibility
© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman
Work and Family -- Allies or Enemies?
Friedman and Greenhaus, 2000

• Work and family can be allies

• Time is not the major problem
• Autonomy is essential for work-family
integration – leaders at all levels
• We can have (much of) it all, but it’s
especially tough for working mothers
• Women may be better adapted for the
jobs of the future
• Kids – unseen stakeholders at work

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

How is leadership learned?
Center for Creative Leadership study

Challenge

Assessment Support
 Performance Capacity
+
Leadership is required
to perform in ways
that build future
performance capacity.

- +
Performance

-
 Performance Capacity
+
Positive
failure

- +
Performance

Negative
success

-
 Overall goal – make a difference!
 A leader’s success depends on authenticity, integrity,
and creativity in achieving results that matter.
Program goal: increase your capacity to lead.
 Leaders invent themselves by developing character
and articulating vision.
Program goal: Clarify and passionately articulate your
vision and take self/others to next level of
development.
 Leaders create change, initiate innovation.
Program goal: inspire commitment and improve
performance by learning how to continually experiment
in organizational and other life settings.

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

Total Leadership drives performance

Not “either/or” but

“both and more”

Benefits
Benefits
to
to Person
Business

Both a business and a personal imperative.

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman
 Demonstrated benefits of Total Leadership

Business Personal
• Operational excellence • Fewer conflict-ridden tradeoffs
• Productivity gains • Greater sense of control
• Greater focus on results • More energy for work
• Greater commitment to • More satisfied with personal
organization goals growth
• Increased attraction and • More satisfied with job/career
retention of talent • Perform better as parents

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

 Examples of successful
Total Leadership experiments
• Use new media to launch retail concept
without establishing a San Diego
management office to reduce relocation costs
• Connect manufacturing supervisors virtually
to reduce co-location requirement, increase
productivity, and increase flexibility/control
• Manage external litigation team document
sharing via eRoom to reduce cost and
increase flexibility
• Teach new technology applications in son’s
middle school to gain consumer insight
© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman
 Demonstrated business results from a
Total Leadership program (35 managers)

• Shareholder value
– Cost reduction: $1.5M
– Cost avoidance: $4.3M
– New revenue: $0.7M
– Productivity increase: $0.5M
• Improved customer relationships
• Transformed culture and skills
– new mind set about how work is, and can be,
done
– new skill set for how to redesign work

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

 Total Leadership program roadmap

Readings, Learn principles, Conduct

initial debrief diagnostics, dialogues,
diagnostics prep for dialogues draft exp’t

Debrief Conduct exp’t, Lessons

dialogues, give/get learned;
refine exp’t feedback coach/mentor

Assess  Analyze  Act to improve performance

in all domains through leadership and e-tools
© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman
What must be done to end
the zero-sum game?
Harvard Business Review, 1998

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

 Clarify what’s important
For you personally For business leaders
• Clarify life priorities, • Communicate vision, goals,
values, and expectations and performance
of key stakeholders expectations
• Align actions with values • Reward performance and
• Know the choices that not time spent working
you’re making when • Build accountability w/
you’re making them metrics
• Focus on results that • Listen to understand diverse
matter and performance employee needs/priorities
metrics • Role model authenticity by
aligning actions and values

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

 Recognize and support
the whole person
For you personally For business leaders
• Build partnerships, • Demonstrate interest
networks, trust in all in what people care
domains about in their lives
• Negotiate performance • Cultivate trust and
expectations networks of support
• Find synergies across
domains -- transfer skills • Leverage assets they
• Manage boundaries bring to the business
among domains from other domains
• Move flexibly across • Help people
domains boundaries and flexibly
move across them
© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman
 Continually experiment with
how goals are achieved
• Need mind set for continual innovation
– Raise assumptions about current methods
– Search actively for win/win solutions
– Pursue innovation before resigning to tradeoffs
– Learn by smart trial-and-error new ways to meet
multiple expectations at work and other domains
– Encourage flexibility and experimentation in
how, when, and where things are done
• Need skill set
– Leadership tools
– e-tools

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

 Clarify what’s important
What’s your leadership legacy?

What kind of What are my

leader do I want to core values,
become? beliefs, and
ideas about
leadership?

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

 What’s important?
Importance, energy, and satisfaction
     Satisfaction
Importance Time/Energy Spent (1=not at all; 
( in %) (in %) 10=fully satisfied)
 

Work/Career % % 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Home/Family % % 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Community/Society % % 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Self : spirituality, emotional 
and physical health,  % % 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
relaxation
     
100 % 100%

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

 Clarify what’s important
Coaching debrief
• Coaching
– Pair up to listen, ask questions, give feedback
– In full program, extensive coaching network
• responsible for giving feedback throughout
• mentor next generation of participants
• Coaches:
– Comment on what “client’s” values seem to be
– Ask about major challenges in achieving vision
– Ask about choices about time and energy at work ,
at home, in the community, and for self
– Brainstorm ideas for what might be tried in an
experiment to better align actions and values
© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman
 Domain Map
Your alignment of values and goals

Create
alignment
for better
results.

© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman

 Domain maps:
mental and physical

Physical map:
segmented
domains

Mental map:
compatible domains
 I am only
meeting half
Stakeholder expectations of you
of my wife’s
expectations

WORK HOME COMMUNITY SELF

5
My wife is fully
Your expectations of stakeholders
meeting my
expectations

WORK HOME COMMUNITY

10
 Stakeholder map
H
O

K
M

R
E

O
1
Outer circle lines W
represent how well 10 Our
they are meeting your
expectations example

1
Inner circle lines
represent how well
you are meeting their
expectations

N MM
CO
ITY U
L F
SE
 Coaching exchange on
stakeholder expectations
• Stakeholder charts • Stakeholder Map
– What are the main things my
stakeholders want from me?
– How are these expectations
compatible with each other?
– Where do they conflict?
– What are the main things you
really want and need from
your key stakeholders?
– How compatible are my
expectations for them with
what they expect of me?
– Do expectations fit vision?
– In which domain are you doing best
in meeting expectations?
– Where are you doing worst? Is the
solution with you? Them?
– Which relationships would be
easiest to change? Hardest?
– How improve performance in one
domain by improving performance
in other domains at the same time?
– Which domains should you focus on
first, given the value to you?
– How improve satisfaction?
– Concerns about dialogues?
Experiment with leadership tools
• Dialogues with key stakeholders
– clarify and negotiate expectations
– increase focus on results that matter in all domains
– mobilize support for your vision and valued goals
– explore how to meet expectations in new ways
• Further leadership actions in all domains
– delegate more effectively
– cultivate trust and networks of support
– courageously drive change, influencing with integrity
– innovate to leverage synergies across all domains
 Goals for stakeholder dialogues:
clarify expectations
• Confirm/validate your perceptions
– Clarify further – ask questions
– What do they need?
– What do you need?
– What can you do better?
– Listen actively – restate in your own words
• See things from their perspective
– Don’t blame them
– Be sensitive to their feelings and acknowledge them
– Distinguish your fears from their intent
• Focus on performance and results that matter
• Mobilize support for your vision, values
 Goals for stakeholder dialogues:
reframe/negotiate expectations
• Find synergies in compatible interests
• Probe for potential alignment with your vision,
values, and your initial ideas for innovation
• Distinguish positions from interests
– Search for basic need underlying interests
– Ask “why” and “why not?”
– Recognize there might be multiple interests
– Look forward not back
– Be concrete – make a list
• Be open to possibilities, change in your expectations
• Explore how to meet expectations in ways that
better fit your life – leadership/communication tools
 Negotiation basics
• “An interactive communication process that
may take place whenever we want something
from someone else or another person wants
something from us”
• Universal reciprocity norms
• Each negotiation is different
• Prepare, exchange info, bargain, commit
• Take people as you find them
 Effectiveness as a negotiator
• Willingness to prepare – assess, analyze
• High expectations
– your vision, values
– appeal to fair standards – results that matter
• Patience to listen – creative options
• Commitment to personal integrity
– be reliable
– build the relationships
 The relationship factor
• Credibility through networks – social capital
• Build working relationships with small steps:
gifts, favors, disclosures, concessions
• Avoid reciprocity traps
– Don’t trust too quickly – take turns
– Don’t let them make you feel guilty
• Always follow the rule of reciprocity
– Be reliable and trustworthy
– Be fair to those who are fair to you
– Let them know if you’re being treated unfairly
 Shared interests
“the elixir of negotiation”
• Discover the other party’s goals
– Beware partisan perceptions, restricted view of
possibilities
– Tendency to be competitive – instead, expand the pie
– Don’t’ fail to identify their interests – relentless
curiosity about what motivates them
• Planning
– Look for common ground – compatibility within and
across domains
– Why might they say “no?”
– Search for low-cost solutions to their problems that
advance your goals
 The other party’s interests:
role reversal exercise
• Get inside their heads
– Identify obstacles to innovation
– Understand their core interests to align better with
yours
• Exercise
– Pretend you are 1 of your stakeholders
– Coach (colleague, friend) pretends to be you
– Set the stage – you sit in stakeholder’s chair
– How might it serve my interests to have new/different
expectations of him/her or to provide support?
– Write reasons why stakeholder should support you
– Debrief: what learned about stakeholder’s interests?
 More tips for stakeholder
dialogues
• Make it as natural as possible, for you and for them
– Consider their preferences for how to communicate
– Get their full attention
• Put mutual benefits first – “we not me”
– start with what they will gain from dialogue and possible
innovation
– share your vision and values
– explain reasons for the dialogue and what you are aiming to do to
improve performance and results
– try making an exchange; if you are asking for something, then
offer something in return they might appreciate
• Use this as an opportunity to try new methods to improve
• Rely on any proven track record if you can -- with
resistant stakeholders – and recount success stories
 Stakeholder
dialogues provide
an opportunity to
build trust and gain
support
 Experiment with
communications tools
Your use of different media for each domain

• Use F2F to F2F Virtual Virtual

build trust real time asynch
• Shift time and
place with Work
virtual for flex
• Increase Home
ability to be
accessible Comm.
and “present”

% use average for each domain

 The virtues of virtual
• Increases flexibility and What does it take to
control by employees over make it work?
where, when and how work • Initiative
is done • Trust
• Easier to move rapidly • Joy
across domains
• Individuality
• Easier to manage
boundaries • Equality
• Gives rapid access • Dialogue
• Is readily broadcast • Connectivity
• Works for variety of roles • Workplace options
 The perils of virtual
• Employer fears:
– Are they really working?
– How measure contribution and performance?
Requires trust and focus on results not face-time
• Employee fears:
– Reduced social interaction and sense of community
– Expectation of 24/7 work time
• General concerns:
– Misunderstandings more likely with “thin”media
– Can you build trust without F2F?
– Other pitfalls?
Patterns of interaction chart
• What patterns do you see in your chart?
• What are the consequences of your use
of different forms of communication for
your capacity to align domains and
achieve your performance goals in each
domain?
• What opportunities can you create to
more effectively use different forms of
communication with key stakeholders?
 Guidelines for your experiment
Goals: increase business results, enrich lives

1. Using your organization (the people that

report to you, or a significant part of it
2. Use the total leadership diagnostics to
rethink how you approach work as an
integral part of your life.
3. Where feasible, experiment with virtual work
and flexible schedules to deal better with
existing workload.
4. Apply new communication and leadership
tools.
 Guidelines for your experiment
Goals: increase business results, enrich lives

1. Develop metrics for learning that are indicative

of both short-term business results (e.g.,
immediate performance), long-term business
results (e.g., attraction and retention of talent),
and results at home, in the community, and for
yourself.
2. Demonstrating leadership by influencing key
stakeholders in all domains necessary to
implement your project.
3. Consolidate lessons learned into your own
philosophy to be used in educating others.
 Goals and metrics for your
Description of 
experiment        
innovation Goals: estimates of specific benefits Specific metrics to assess results By when  Notes/Updates
(include how Value  completed
Drivers will be applied)

Work:
 
 
 

Home:   
 
 
 

Community:
 
 
 

Self: 
 
 
 

Alignment among domains:
 
 
 
Innovative action for better performance

and results that matter in all domains

• Experiment to:
– gain greater authenticity, integrity, control and choice
– increase results/satisfaction of expectations
– mobilize support to achieve goals that matter
– leverage synergies across domains
• Targets/metrics:
– domain map – alignment among domains?
– stakeholder map -- expectations satisfied?
– feedback/self-designed measures of results
• Increase capacity to lead, then teach others
Your ideas for initiating
innovation?
Coaching to influence for improved
performance in all domains
• Goal – create change to increase results
• People resist change – coaching matters
• Directive vs. non-directive coaching
– Directive: teach, offer observations, advise
– Non-directive: listen, client solves problem
• Building effective coaching relationships
– Confidence in your credibility
– Believe you care about them
 Effective coaching:
Build credibility, show you care

• Always try to be helpful – have to be seen as

caring about client, not you
• Stay in touch with current reality – listen well
• Access your ignorance – ask dumb questions
• Treat everything as an intervention
• Client owns the problem, not coach
• Go with the flow – don’t pre-package solutions
 Stages of change and
coaching
• Awareness of the need for change
• Urgency – “if you don’t then…”
• Decision – “are you going to…?”
• Problem-solving – plans for action
• Commitment – mustering the will
• Reinforcement – small wins, building
momentum
 Generating awareness
• Diagnostic assessments and
analyses intended to do this
• Key questions:
– What’s working and what isn’t?
– How can you improve?
– How leverage synergies across
domains?
– What are your blind spots?
 Expanding the field of
awareness
What client…
…knows …doesn’t know

What you know Arena Blind spot

What you don’t know Facade Unknown

 Increasing the urgency

• Create the burning platform

• Why it’s really important to move
towards your leadership vision
• Key questions:
– How important is this to your future?
– What will happen if you don’t change?
– What will happen if you do change?
 How change will occur
Action plans for innovation
• Alternate futures
– What options are available for mutual gain?
– How will you measure progress?
• Potential barriers/resistance?
– What stands in the way?
– How overcome? With what leadership and
communication tools will you implement?
• Action plans
– What will you do when?
– How will you generate needed support?
Commitment to innovative action
• Commitment will wane without urgency
• Decision must be authentic
• Coach should test for commitment
• Key questions:
– Do you have the will to go forward?
– What will happen to your commitment?
– What if this is harder than you think?
– What are the first steps to take?
– How can I help you muster the will?
 Reinforcement for action
• Positive aspects of change must be
reinforced to avoid slippage
• Build momentum by acknowledging
progress
• Key questions:
– Are you doing what you said you’d do?
– Is it working? Are your metrics useful?
– How can I reinforce your commitment to
action?
 Practice coaching
• Choose client, coach, observer (s)
• Client identifies area for help with experiment
• Client and coach dialogue
– Set psychological contract
– Aim to meet primary goals of coaching
– Observer – don’t speak, just watch and write
– Look for coaching dynamics in action
– Notes for feedback to both client and coach: what
worked and what could be improved, for both
• Debrief: Observer shares notes, discuss
reactions, identify lessons learned and how to
apply them
Checklist: Is your coaching useful?
• Does client have sufficient awareness of the
need for change?
• Does client feel strong sense of urgency?
• Has client made the decision to change and
expressed this clearly?
• Has client done enough problem-solving?
Barriers identified? Specific plans for action?
• Has client committed to taking action?
• Is client getting reinforcement for action?
 Achieve small wins
Building commitment to action
• Concrete, implemented, moderate import
• Towards your leadership vision
– Keep the dream in mind then act and adapt
• Major change is accumulation of small wins
– Break journey down in to measurable goals
– Small wins breed success
• Initiate action
– Act on what’s doable, under your control
– Create visible signs of progress: builds momentum
reduces resistance, increases confidence
 Implementation challenges
and opportunities

• Cultural values: enablers or inhibitors?

– Regional/national
– Organizational
• Driving innovation and strategy
through leadership development
Insights for action
 Total Leadership
Integrating work, home, community and self to
increase business results by enriching lives

Thank you!
friedman@wharton.upenn.edu
© 2003 Stewart D.Friedman