Acknowledgments

The six stories in this book have highlighted an eternal truth; without a doubt, no one makes it on their own. I’m very pleased to take this moment to thank those who’ve provided me with that most precious thing, their help, in producing this book.

I am most grateful to the many people who expressed their skepticism about the essential idea in Total Leadership—that work and the rest of life are locked in combat with a guaranteed loser in the end—for they propelled me to write it. I hope that Leading the Life You Want persuades a few of them to think again about the possibilities for four-way wins over the course of a life.

But despite my keen interest in demonstrating that great achievement in the sphere of work is the result of commitments and resources we derive from other parts of life, I would not have had the wherewithal to take up the cudgels were it not for Melinda Merino, my editor at Harvard Business Review Press, who asked, as soon as Total Leadership was done, “OK, what’s the next one?” “Are you kidding?” I exclaimed, “I’m exhausted!” She corralled my oft-wandering attention and inspired me to take the collection of biographies I’d been gathering for years, make my argument, and use the biographies to show others how these people achieved both greatness and goodness in their lives. The brilliant Scott Cooper gave me invaluable pointers for how to pitch the book’s initial structure and start to organize the raw material on the biographies. Then, after all the stuff was in one place, my captain, the incomparably talented editor, Connie Hale, took me by the hand and walked me through the arduous tasks of composition, step by step, with grace, exquisite taste, and just the right amount of edge. But the sculpting of the biographies themselves would not have happened without the journalistic prowess of Jessie Scanlon, who, with kind and knowing hands, worked her magic with the giant slab of clay I’d thrown on the table.

Producing that slab of clay was the result of many dedicated hands, starting with the hundreds of Wharton MBA students in my Total Leadership class who, over the past decade, have written short narratives about the people they admired, using the principles of the class as the lens through which to view these exemplary lives. (You can view some of these at http://www.slideshare.net/totalleadership/presentations.) Their impassioned explorations of the meaning of these lives fueled my conviction with evidence. The specific suggestion for four of the six profiles came from these students: Chris Marvin, who wrote persuasively about Eric Greitens; Wendy Guthrie, who connected me to Julie Foudy; Jessica Wang, who suggested Sheryl Sandberg (years before she became a household name); and Lara Gitlin, who demonstrated why Michelle Obama was a great case in point. (I chose Tom Tierney and Bruce Springsteen on my own.) Amrita Singh and Emily Weinstein did invaluable research in culling the many biographical studies and helping me think through how these exemplars demonstrated the principles and skills of Total Leadership. Once I’d narrowed the list, a small group of student researchers, under the wise and patient direction of another student, Alice Zhou, gathered everything we could find about our subjects. Christie Irizarry unearthed all available information about Julie Foudy, Karen Okigbo gathered tons of information on Michelle Obama, and the incomparable Molly Reed brought together the material on Greitens, Sandberg, Springsteen, and Tierney. Sarah Fu, Alex Lim, and Vandit Shah researched three subjects who were ultimately excluded from this volume.

I had the good fortune and great pleasure to speak directly with people who helped me put flesh on the bones of these stories. In addition to my own observations and conversations with the principals, I benefited enormously from chronicles kindly offered by J. J. Abrams, Jeff Bradach, John Donahoe, Joel Fleishman, Rebecca Goldman, Lawrence Green, Ken Harbaugh, Kaj Larson, Reggie Love, Chris Marvin, Barb Osburg, Adele and Joel Sandberg, and Karen Tierney.

Part II of this book is the result of a rich collaboration with two people from whom I learned a great deal about the skills needed for integrating work and the rest of life, and how to teach them: organizational psychologist Alyssa Westring, of DePaul University, and positive psychology coach Katie Comtois. Alyssa has brought her remarkable insight and deep knowledge of the literature to researching these skills with me for many years. For this book, she gathered information on many specific practices and described their evidentiary basis. Katie, for her thesis in Penn’s Master of Applied Psychology program, did the same. After substantial winnowing, I asked alumni of my Total Leadership class to provide feedback on the exercises we’d collected, and over sixty of them did so, vastly refining the description and rationale for the two exercises I ultimately chose for each skill. I was very fortunate to have the able assistance of Gabriel Friedman, my son, in harvesting a heap of inspiring quotations, for flavor.

I am blessed to have the chance to work with my dedicated team of colleagues at Total Leadership, who bring to life our mission, which is to increase the capacity of leaders in all walks of life to perform in ways that create maximum value for themselves and for society. My wife and business partner, clinical psychologist Hallie Friedman, is not only my love and inspiration; she also drives our strategy, provides editorial guidance, and employs her substantial expertise as a researcher and clinician in analyzing all the thorny questions we encounter in trying to apply our core ideas and methods. Our head of client services, the magical Michelle Rajotte, was a student in my MBA for Executives class a while back, after having served our nation as an Air Force captain, and, to my great fortune, now brings her tireless enthusiasm and care to making it possible for thousands of students and clients to benefit from Total Leadership solutions. I am grateful, too, to Ryan Findley, the gracious and resourceful engineer who runs our online operations, and his team at Neomind Labs, especially the late Justin Broglie, for his creative talent and generous spirit.

I would be nowhere without the love and tolerance of my family: words cannot describe the gratitude I feel, though poorly express, each day for Hallie, Gabriel, Harry, and Lody. And before them, my remarkable parents, the inspiring artists, Vic and Leah Friedman.