Introduction

Beyond Balance

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

—VIKTOR FRANKL

“Out of control.” That’s how Sam, a divorced father of two girls and an ambitious professional, described his life. By day he managed an IT group for a health care conglomerate while dreaming of starting his own company. “I feel like I can never get it all done,” Sam continued. “I’m constantly distracted. I wish I could be under less stress and pay more attention to my daughters, especially as they’re getting into their teen years, and to my mom, who’s just been diagnosed with early-stage cancer.”

Sam looked down at his desk and shifted in his chair; he was in his home office. I could see only a part of it on the computer screen (we were videoconferencing). His sense of being overwhelmed extended to his professional life. “I’m struggling to find the right partners who can help me develop and market an app I’ve designed that can make it easier for people to track their personal health habits,” he said, leaning forward. “I really believe that this thing can make a difference in people’s lives.”

It’s a full life, but at that moment Sam felt not so much full as stretched thin. He continued, “When I’m at work I’m worrying about Sophie and Erin, and when I have them on the weekends I’m online taking care of loose ends at work or trying to connect with leads for funding my start-up. I just don’t have enough time for it all. Yet I have this gnawing sense that I should be doing more with my life.”

Sam’s plight is not unique to busy managers. I often hear these sentiments, from adults young and old, whether they are executives, students, doctors, retailers, artisans, research scientists, soldiers, stay-at-home parents, teachers, or engineers—and whether they live in the United States or elsewhere. These are the chaotic, early days of the “twitch” era, in which we often feel as though we’re drowning in a deluge of data and yet can’t stop picking up our smartphones, checking our social media accounts, flailing in the wash of e-mails. Few of us are skilled enough psychologically to exploit the power of new communication tools, and it’s increasingly difficult to maintain the boundaries that allow us to give our projects the attention they require, and our people the care they deserve.

What’s more, social expectations for men and women are changing. Traditional norms are rapidly fading, leaving many people confused or disappointed (or both) about gender roles. Anne-Marie Slaughter’s inquiring Atlantic article of June 2012 (“Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”) sparked a fervent national conversation. It was stoked later that year with the decision by Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer to revoke the work-at-home option for the tech company’s employees. The fire was fanned by the book campaign of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, whose catchphrase (and book title) Lean In urges women not to step back from challenging careers. Women and men are hungry for help in figuring out how to navigate the turbulent modern-day waters of meaningful work, domestic responsibility, community engagement, and a satisfying inner life. No one seems to have the answers.

At the same time, economic pressures are forcing individuals, families, organizations, and communities to do more with less—or just to do less. Indeed, as I wrote last year in Baby Bust: New Choices for Men and Women in Work and Family, a study that compares the Wharton School’s class of 1992 and the class of 2012, many young people are forsaking the opportunity to have or adopt children because they don’t see how they can manage it. We remain in difficult financial times, in which large swaths of our economy have been disrupted, leaving millions displaced from their lines of work with diminished prospects for economic stability. Many of us may dream of achieving something significant in our life’s work— something we can feel proud of—and yet find ourselves struggling to do so without shortchanging the people who count on us.

Perhaps you, like others, feel fragmented or discouraged. Perhaps you are looking for more purpose. You might have inklings about what to change, but you fear failure, or you fret about being selfish, or you can’t stop the scramble to make ends meet, or you just don’t know where to start.

The Problem with “Work/Life Balance”

For nearly thirty years, my life’s work has been to help people like you find ways to bring the often warring aspects of life into greater harmony. Toward that end, my research has focused on a fundamental misconception we all have about the “costs” of success. Many people believe that to achieve great things we must make brutal sacrifices; that to succeed in work we must focus single-mindedly, at the expense of self, family, and society. Even those who reject the idea of a zero-sum game fall prey to a kind of binary thinking revealed by the term we use to describe the ideal lifestyle: work/life balance.

Work/life balance is a misguided metaphor for grasping the relationship between work and the rest of life; the image of the scale forces you to think in terms of trade-offs instead of the possibilities for harmony. And the idea that “work” competes with “life” ignores the more nuanced reality of our humanity. It ignores the fact that “life” is actually the intersection and interaction of the four domains of life: work or school; home or family; community or society; and the private realm of mind, body, and spirit. Of course, you can’t have it all—complete success in all the corners of your life, all at the same time. No one can. But even though it can seem impossible to bring these four domains into greater alignment, it doesn’t have to be impossible. Conflict and stress aren’t inevitable. Harmony is possible.

From years of studying people in many different settings, I have found that the most successful are those who can harness the passions and powers of the various parts of their lives, bringing them together to achieve what I call four-way wins: actions that result in life’s being better in all four domains. Successful people make it their business to be conscious of what and who matter most. Their actions flow from their values. They strive to do what they can to make things better for the people who depend on them and on whom they depend, in all the different parts of their lives.

Integrating Work and the Rest of Life

Indeed, a set of discrete skills can help you find ways to integrate these four domains. You can learn these skills. And with practice you can master them. You can achieve a kind of integration that will, in turn, help you have the impact you want to have and lead a life in which you stay true to yourself, serve others, and grow as a person. This integration is the key to leading a meaningful life—the one you want.

To replace conflict with a sense of completeness, or integrity, doesn’t require turning your whole world upside down. Instead it requires figuring out how to take incremental steps that are under your control and that move you in the direction you want to go, while bringing others along with you. Doing this means thinking and talking about what truly inspires you, whatever in the world that might be—creating new products that improve the quality of life, teaching old folks how to dance, being recognized by your peers for your accomplishments, showing children how to read, having a reputation as a trustworthy person, solving problems or puzzles, being part of a team that takes pride in its achievements, reading about new ideas or old characters, growing vegetables, designing video games, coaching hockey, or talking about movies with your mother. In pursuing your passions, whether vocational or avocational, you can extract the special something that is unique about you and convert it into something that helps make others’ lives a little better. It is not only thrilling to discover a way to do what you love and to love what you do, but it usually results in your having better market value, too.

It’s not easy, especially if you’re facing obstacles that loom large; and there’s almost always disappointment and failure along the way. But it’s a creative and rewarding process. I like to think of this creative process in musical terms. Imagine that you are a musician in a jazz quartet. You’re trying to make good music. Your goal is to produce sounds that take your listener on a soul-touching journey. You have a theme, a direction you’ve chosen for each piece, around which the players improvise. Things happen along the way that you haven’t planned or that you can’t control, so you must listen and continually adjust your playing. Sometimes only the saxophone plays, and other times it’s the piano and the bass, or the drums and the saxophone, or only the drums. You’re trying to bring them together, rhythm and melody, over a period of time to produce something uniquely beautiful and valuable. (In your case, the period of time is your entire life.)

When you start—or maybe even a long time after you start—your band fails to gel. The parts don’t sync, the instruments clash, and individuals fail to meld into a whole. But you work with what you have, combining disciplined structure, practice, increasing competence, concentrated effort, dedicated commitment, and trial and error. You refine your skill so that you can produce the sound you hear inside your head, the melodies that stir your soul. Each instrument has its limits. Each has a specific contribution to make to the whole. For a jazz quartet to produce great music, discipline is as important as improvisation and serendipity. It’s not magic, even if the result is often magical.

Foundations

This book describes, illustrates, and teaches the specific skills you need to pursue four-way wins. Why these skills? Why not others? It’s because the skills presented in this book are the ones that have proven to be the most effective in my three decades of teaching, research, and practice helping individuals—at all levels, in different stages of life, and across various spheres—integrate work and the rest of life.

In the 1980s I began asking the question, What does it take to bring together the different parts of life in mutually enriching ways? We launched the Work/Life Integration Project at the Wharton School, and in collaboration with leading scholars, practitioners, and policy makers, I initiated surveys and interviews, action research, and case studies in a wide variety of settings to find the answers. In a series of books and articles, I’ve shared the results of my studies and tried to make these ideas available to the wider public. In 1998, with Jessica DeGroot and Perry Christensen, I edited a collection of learning activities, written for educators, to teach what we were starting to discover about the skills for integrating work and the rest of life; it was called Integrating Work and Life: The Wharton Resource Guide. My book Work and Family—Allies or Enemies? was written in 2000 with Jeffrey Greenhaus and based on large-scale survey research. It offered new ideas for actions that individuals could take to produce greater harmony among the different parts of life. With Sharon Lobel in 2005 I wrote an article, “The Happy Workaholic: A Role Model for Employees,” that described the practical lessons we uncovered in field research on senior executives who lead flexible and engaging work environments and the skills they use to do so. And in Baby Bust, mentioned earlier, using twenty-year longitudinal data comparing two generations of Wharton students, I explored the values and aspirations of millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000) and the skills they need to reshape our culture, our organizations, our communities, and our families.

Being Real, Being Whole, Being Innovative

The most important part of the foundation for the skills in this book is Total Leadership, a program I developed at Ford Motor Company that later evolved into a course at Wharton. Total Leadership is a set of principles for achieving four-way wins and a sequence of exercises that flow from the principles. The idea of the Total Leadership program is to enhance your capacity to be a leader in all parts of life, and for you to transform yourself from feeling unfocused, fragmented, and stagnant to feeling inspired, connected with others, and excited about the future.

It starts with three principles: be real, be whole, and be innovative. To be real is to act with authenticity by clarifying what’s important to you. It’s about exploring your answer to this basic question: What matters most to me in my life? To be whole is to act with integrity by recognizing how the different parts of your life affect each other. This involves identifying who matters most to you at work, at home, and in the community; understanding what you need from each other; and seeing whether and how these needs mesh or don’t mesh. All this examination allows you to be innovative. You act with creativity by experimenting with how things get done in ways that are good for you and for the people around you. You learn how to take small steps aimed at scoring four-way wins: improved performance at work, at home, in the community, and for your private self (mind, body, and spirit).

Since 2001, thousands of people have taken the program, at Wharton or elsewhere, at in-person workshops as well as online, including on a customized social learning site built especially for this course as well as in a MOOC (massive open online course) on Coursera.org, where over 54,000 students are enrolled as of this writing. In 2008, my book Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life, attempted to put this program on the page. Tens of thousands of readers, in numerous languages (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian), have used the book to help them lead more fulfilling lives. I often hear from former students and other Total Leadership alumni that they are sharing the ideas and exercises with their colleagues, family members, and friends. I came to see that this approach is equally effective for people who may or may not be MBA candidates, and who may or may not aspire to run companies, governments, or public service organizations. This approach can also help anyone who is feeling frazzled by the often-competing demands of work and the other parts of life. It can help people who have found success in their professional lives but feel a nagging sense that they have failed to develop their spiritual selves. This approach—because it is entirely customized by each person who tries it—can help the many women and men who are disappointed that “having it all” is much harder than they thought when they were younger, as well as those, just starting out, who seem to have already concluded that they’ll have to settle for success in only one part of their lives.

My research has shown that there are ways for everyone—from the managers of sales teams, to executives in government agencies, to computer engineers, to florists, to coaches—to achieve professional success without always having to sacrifice the things that matter in their personal lives. Indeed, we’ve found that the opposite is true: sustainable professional success results from meaningful investments in the rest of life.

Skills for Integrating Work and the Rest of Life

The Total Leadership book (and the Wharton course that shares its name) presents a structured program—step-by-step instruction, a process for setting goals and tracking progress, a series of exercises to complete in stages—to help you successfully pursue four-way wins. In contrast, this book drills down into specific skills for being real, being whole, and being innovative that you can learn and practice at any time. You can dip in and out of the process, focusing only on the skills you need most at any one time or in any specific situation. It’s not necessary for you to have read or done any of the exercises in Total Leadership (but the book is now available in paperback if you’re interested). You can start to produce greater harmony between work and the rest of your life with this book, assessing yourself on the skills and building them through specific exercises. You can learn and practice the skills either singly, or in small bunches, or all together.

The first step is to do a self-assessment in the next section to determine which skills most need your attention. Then you can choose to strengthen those that are weakest or build on those you’ve already mastered. As you read the description of each skill, think about how it plays out in your life. Which ones are your strengths, and which ones are weaknesses? If I were to ask people who know you well, what would they say about whether each skill is true of you? And how might things be different if you practiced each of these skills in your everyday life?

As you review these skills—don’t score yourself yet—you might wonder whether they are easy for me to describe but difficult for you to develop. Let me ask you to take a leap of faith: don’t worry too much about that right now; instead, try to approach them with curiosity and an open mind.

Skills for Being Real

The first of the three Total Leadership principles is to be real—to act with authenticity by clarifying what’s important to you. This is the foundation—your values and your vision of the future you want to create.

KNOW WHAT MATTERS.

You know how important each of the different aspects of your life is to you. Your high self-awareness enables you to understand and clearly describe the value of each of the roles you play—worker, spouse, parent, sibling, son or daughter, friend, or citizen. You are also able to see the bigger picture, in which all your different roles in life contribute to your vision of the future.

EMBODY VALUES CONSISTENTLY.

You are able to be yourself wherever you are, wherever you go. You act in ways that are consistent with your core values. You have taken the time to get comfortable in your own skin. This confidence allows you to be yourself wherever you are. Rather than conform to external pressures, you rely on your internal compass to guide your words and deeds. Rather than bend to social pressures, you make choices that match your values, and you are not afraid to share your opinions.

ALIGN ACTIONS WITH VALUES.

You make choices about how to spend your time and energy in ways that match what you really care about. This skill allows you to think about your goals so that you have a clear understanding of them, making it easier for you to prioritize. You understand how what you do each day fits with your values, so you are able to persevere when things get rough. You also know when and how to say no. You do not let feelings of guilt force you to take on things that are not true to what you stand for.

CONVEY VALUES WITH STORIES.

You tell stories about the key people and events that have shaped your values in a way that binds you to others. You can pinpoint episodes in your life that have shaped your values. You allow others to gain insight into the person you are and where you’ve been by sharing your stories. You display both confidence and vulnerability by opening yourself up. This lays the foundation for building relationships based on mutual appreciation and trust.

ENVISION YOUR LEGACY.

You have a vision for where you are headed and the legacy you want to leave. You know not only where you’ve been, but also where you’re going. You can paint a vivid picture of the life you want to lead, visualizing yourself in ten and even twenty years. Not only do you have a vision of the future, but you also have ideas that excite you about how to achieve that vision, even if you don’t have all of the details figured out.

HOLD YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLE.

You hold yourself accountable for doing what is most important to you in your life. You don’t let weeks or months pass by without reflecting on what matters. You routinely evaluate whether you are living according to your values. If you notice that you are doing things that are not important to you, you adjust your actions so that they line up better with your values. At the very least, you are willing to try to take steps to ensure that you are pursuing a life that matches what matters most.

Skills for Being Whole

The second Total Leadership principle is to be whole—to act with integrity (the Latin root is integer, which means whole or complete) by respecting all the different parts that constitute the whole person, ensuring that you and the people who inhabit these realms are clear about what you need from each other and are willing to provide it.

CLARIFY EXPECTATIONS.

You communicate with people important to you about expectations you have of each other, and you make sure these expectations are clear. You are willing to express your needs, values, and goals to those you care about. You are willing to set aside time for these conversations and are able to broach topics that may feel uncomfortable at first. You are an active listener who is also willing to hear constructive feedback, ask clarifying questions, and work to resolve disagreements.

HELP OTHERS.

You look for opportunities to help many different people. You are generous and caring in key relationships in your life. Whether these relationships are with colleagues, neighbors, friends, or family, you see that it’s fun and fruitful to help other people. You view relationships as a means for enriching your own life and the lives of others.

BUILD SUPPORTIVE NETWORKS.

You are able to convince people to support you in your goals. You are able to tap into your personal and professional networks for support of what’s important. With your enthusiasm and passion—and your reputation for going out of your way to connect people—you convince others to support you. You do not need to manipulate others to gain their support; it is offered freely because others share your vision of the future and want to help you realize it.

APPLY ALL YOUR RESOURCES.

You use skills and contacts from different parts of your life to help meet any need or goal. When pursuing your goals, you are able to think creatively about the resources you have developed in the various domains of your life. You do not force your relationships into rigidly defined categories or roles. Instead, you draw on assets—other people, your own talents, what you have learned—from different parts of your life to get things done.

MANAGE BOUNDARIES INTELLIGENTLY.

You are able to delineate and maintain boundaries between the different parts of your life. You not only know when to merge the different aspects of your life, but you also know when to segment, or separate, them. You are able to decide when it is beneficial to create boundaries that allow for concentration on a single goal or responsibility. Despite the 24/7 connectivity we all have to work, family, and other relationships through technology, you are able to turn your attention to one thing at a time when you need to do so, rather than try to accomplish everything at once.

WEAVE DISPARATE STRANDS.

You are able to weave together the pieces of your life so that it has coherence. You view the different aspects of your life as interconnected in a way that is mutually enriching. You see how your different roles complement each other. You have a sense that all aspects of your life are integral parts of who you are; they all fit together as one. You understand how the various parts you play enable you to realize your vision.

Skills for Being Innovative

The third principle is to be innovative—to act with creativity and courage in continually experimenting with how things get done, bringing others along with you as you progress toward goals that matter.

FOCUS ON RESULTS.

You focus on the results of your efforts to accomplish goals and are flexible about the means for achieving them. You keep your eyes on the prize. When evaluating your progress, you don’t count the hours you’ve logged but instead look to whether or not you are producing a positive outcome. You judge yourself and others by your accomplishments and emphasize quality instead of quantity of effort.

RESOLVE CONFLICTS AMONG DOMAINS.

You seek creative solutions to conflicts rather than sacrifice one part of life for another. You realize that the different aspects of your life are not competing with one another, that it’s not a zero-sum game. You don’t accept the notion that engaging in one area of your life must always require sacrifices in the others. Instead, you look for ways to create win-win solutions that meet multiple goals.

CHALLENGE THE STATUS QUO.

You challenge traditional assumptions about how things are done, experimenting to make things better whenever possible. You are not constrained by conventions about how others think things should be done. Rather than follow the pack, you are willing to think and act like a rogue. You are not overly concerned about how others will perceive you. Instead, you are willing to step out on a limb to find a creative solution to the challenges you face.

SEE NEW WAYS OF DOING THINGS.

You are willing to question old habits and innovate in managing life’s demands. You do not allow long-standing routines to dictate how you live your life. You are willing to try new approaches to see whether there are opportunities for greater performance in, and cohesiveness between, the different aspects of your life. You are willing to question your behaviors and to experiment with creative solutions for managing day-to-day as well as long-term goals.

EMBRACE CHANGE COURAGEOUSLY.

You look forward to change—seeing it as an opportunity—rather than fear it. You embrace opportunities for personal development. Rather than follow a strictly defined path, you realize that life takes unexpected twists and turns. You are confident that you will be able not only to survive the unexpected but also to thrive in new circumstances.

CREATE CULTURES OF INNOVATION.

You look for opportunities to encourage others to learn new ways of doing things. You encourage innovation wherever you go. Leading by example, you empower others to think creatively. You display both confidence and humility as you share with others your successes as well as the obstacles you face. Your enthusiasm for learning is contagious, and your courage inspires others to seek out new opportunities.

 

Although we’ve not gotten into specific examples of how these skills are applied—that’s a big part of what the rest of the book is about—reading these basic descriptions should give you an initial understanding of these skills. Now let me ask you to review them again, this time assessing yourself on each one. Rate yourself by writing next to each skill a number from 1 to 5, using the scale shown, that best describes whether you agree or disagree that the skill is a particular strength of yours. You can do this online using a tool developed in partnership with Qualtrics at www.qualtrics.com/totalleadership.

• 1 = Strongly Disagree

• 2 = Disagree

• 3 = Neutral

• 4 = Agree

• 5 = Strongly Agree

If your total score is greater than 85, then I recommend you return this book, although it still might be fun for you to learn more about the people profiled here, who exemplify these skills (see the next section for more detail on the profiles). And please get in touch with me so that I can discover how you’ve mastered and applied these skills in your life.

If, on the other hand, you’re like most of us—with a score between 35 and 85—then you have room to improve. And improve you can. This may seem like a lot to absorb, and some of these skills may be more obvious to you than others. In the chapters that follow, I flesh out these skills for being real, being whole, and being innovative, describing and analyzing how six remarkable men and women exemplify them in their lives. You will learn how these skills have allowed these people, each in his or her own way, to mature over time into leaders of significance, to make their mark, and to find meaning in their lives.

Profiles of People Who Exemplify These Skills

To help you learn the skills and see them in action, the book starts, in Part I, with the stories of six extraordinary people: Tom Tierney, Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Greitens, Michelle Obama, Julie Foudy, and Bruce Springsteen (see “Six Models” for an introduction to these six people and the reasons they were chosen for this book). These individuals have found ways to integrate work and the rest of life, to achieve four-way wins, and to bring different areas of their lives into greater harmony. Taken together, the six exemplars illustrate what each skill looks like in action.

These profiles are based on extensive research into public information available—biographies, articles, books, and recorded interviews—as well as my own observations and interviews with the subject or individuals close to the subject. My goal is not to tell their entire life stories or provide complete pictures of them but rather to highlight key episodes in their lives that personify these skills. In this way, we can learn from their example how to apply the skills in our own lives.

Learning from Their Example

Why did I decide to profile these six people as models for how to integrate work and the rest of life? As someone known as “the work/life balance guy,” I get push-back almost everywhere I go, especially from high achievers. “Stew, it’s nice to try to balance it all,” they say to me, “but in the real world, c’mon: how can you have a substantial impact without making major sacrifices in your personal and family life?” I wanted to provide an answer to those who kept asking me for examples of people who have achieved great things and who are, in the common parlance, “balanced.”

I set out to find familiar figures, role models (though certainly not universally liked) who have practiced, wittingly or unwittingly, the skills for integrating work and life, and who could help teach us all how we can cultivate these skills. The skills they’ve developed would enable any of us to be leaders living our lives on our own terms.

I began by generating a list of people who have demonstrated what it means to be real, to be whole, and to be innovative. I drew on biographies composed by my students, conversations with friends and colleagues, and my own research.2 I culled the list many times to arrive, finally, at six men and women from different sectors (business, public service, and sports and entertainment).

There is no way, of course, that these few can be fully representative. I chose them as illustrative models. You don’t have to identify with them to learn from their examples. You might even be tempted to shrug them off, because it’s not easy to relate to people who have all the money in the world, beautiful and supportive spouses, bosses who really care about them, or supersized native talents. But their stories will open you up to new ways of thinking and acting. I’m sure you can think of others, and I hope you do; finding your own models will deepen your grasp of the skills in this book and of their practical value to you.

In each of their stories I found naturally occurring illustrations of people who did great things by discovering—usually through trial and error—ways to integrate the different parts of their lives so that they reinforced and enhanced each other. This book describes highlights of their life stories to show that even though they seem on the surface to be unusually talented, or just lucky, they are actually flawed people who have been engaged in a lifelong quest to align aspects of their lives through specific behaviors. Each chapter tells selected events of a life and analyzes how one person applied specific skills to carve a unique path. My analysis of each case will show you how to use these stories as guides. The first challenge for you in reading this book is to be curious about how their choices help you consider those you face. The second challenge is to start to practice the skills that have enabled them to lead the lives they truly want.

Still, you might be asking, Does it really make sense to try to learn leadership and life lessons from such extraordinary human beings? These are not everyday people. But if you think their success derives only from great luck, think again. Not one of them was born into a life of high privilege. They have strived to achieve their own kind of greatness and, in one way or another, to make themselves into the people they are now. Each has suffered disappointment (half of them are on second marriages), frustration, doubt, and loss. They’re human, after all. I imagine you will see possibilities for yourself in all of them.

These narratives show how accomplishment in a career is achievable not at the expense of the rest of your life, but because of commitments at home, in the community, and to your interior life. Each of these people is imperfect, more like you and me than you might imagine. Each has had a significant impact on the world beyond family, work, and the private self. And each strives to lead a meaningful life. All have made choices that integrate the different parts of their lives. This, in turn, results in both professional success and a full life that inspires them and enhances the lives of others.

Skeptics take heed. The lives of these sterling men and women in business (Tom Tierney and Sheryl Sandberg), in public service (Eric Greitens and Michelle Obama), and in sports and entertainment (Julie Foudy and Bruce Springsteen) defy the myth of the zero-sum game, in which success in your career means failure in the rest of your life, and vice versa. All of them, like the rest of us, have struggled, and their examples will help you see how you can cultivate a life in which values, actions, social contributions, and personal growth exist in harmony, like a great piece of jazz music. This is a life in which disparate pieces fall into place, not every day—that’s the impossible myth of “work/life balance”—but over the course of time. Like these six, you can attain significant achievement in a way that fits the person you are. Indeed you must, because, as these leaders prove, your own way is the only way that will work for you.

How to Use This Book

Leading the Life You Want offers a new way of thinking as well as new practices that you can use now. Its purpose is to help you develop the skills you need to lead a life that you define as successful. In Part I, you’ll look at how each of the six models has found a very personal way to pursue four-way wins—to integrate the different domains in mutually enriching ways—over the course of their lives. You’ll see how, knowingly or intuitively, they learned, practiced, and applied discrete skills to achieve harmony in their complicated lives.

Even though each of their lives is different from yours, you will find ways to apply the lessons to your situation. These examples will help you muster the courage to initiate significant change because it’s good for you as well as for the people around you. You can pick and choose which stories are of greatest interest, and you can read them in whatever order makes sense for you.

As you prepare to read about these great leaders, keep your baseline self-assessment at the ready as a point of reference. Take notes on how you see these skills in action in the lives of the people profiled here. As you read, write down your ideas about questions that arise, such as these:

• What is Tom Tierney’s method for focusing on his legacy?

• How does Sheryl Sandberg’s commitment to creating connections in the service of women’s advancement help her company?

• When does Eric Greitens hold himself accountable for achieving meaningful results?

• Why does Michelle Obama manage the boundaries among her different roles?

• How did Julie Foudy figure out what was important to her?

• What does Bruce Springsteen do to encourage innovation?

Then, Part II drills down into those skills, giving you simple ways to develop them yourself. You’ll find concrete, actionable ideas—curated from the applied research in organizational psychology and related fields—for what you can do now to practice these skills. You don’t need tons of money, the best boss, the most supportive spouse, or the greatest talent to apply these skills and thereby live with a richer sense of significance, strengthened resilience, and a more hopeful outlook on the future. It may not be possible to have it all—indeed, it surely is not—but with this set of skills it is possible to have more of it.

These skills may be useful, too, if you want to show others how they can act in ways that make things better not only for them personally but also for their families, their communities, and their work.

You can decide which skills to focus on first, based on your own analysis of the skills you most want to develop. Use table I-1 to locate where in the book each skill is illustrated by our models.

Leading the life you want is a craft. As with music or writing or dance, or any athletic endeavor, you can always get better at it. Some of us start with greater natural assets than others—a strong body, a gift for creative thinking, a conscientious personality, or mathematical ability. Some of us are helped by genetic endowment and by what we have learned from parents, role models, and mentors. But this capacity can be learned by any individual. In fact, it must be.

As you’ll see next, in Part I, it is the drive to take what they have and use it to enrich the world around them that has given our six models the will to compose, just as an author does, their own stories. Let’s see how they have exploited the power of getting the different parts of their lives humming together.