While people in the business community hear a lot about the importance of work/life balance, it's often unclear exactly what that phrase means or how one achieves it. Stewart Friedman, founding director of Wharton's Leadership Program and the Work/Life Integration Project, thinks he has an answer. In his new book, titled Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life, Friedman describes the four domains of people's lives -- work, home, community and self -- and what individuals can do to integrate these domains and improve their leadership skills at any stage in their careers. He talked with Knowledge@Wharton about the ideas and research that went into this book. An edited version of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: To start out, can you give us a brief description of the theme of Total Leadership?
Friedman: The basic idea is that you can integrate the different parts of your life in ways that you probably didn't think about before you went through the steps that I take you through in this book, which is my Wharton course brought to life in the form of a book.
The big idea is that it's possible to create value for the different parts -- for work, home, community and your private self, the domain of mind, body and spirit -- in ways that you probably didn't think about before. It doesn't have to be a trade-off. Most people operate in a world of thinking about sacrifice as a necessity, that you have to give up something in one part of your life in order to achieve success in another part. That's probably always going to be true to some extent.
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