Life is a zero-sum game, right? The more you strive to win in one dimension (such as your work or school), the more you have to sacrifice in the other dimensions (family, community, and the private self). Described in the best-selling, award-winning book Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life (Harvard Business, 2008) and in the soon-to-be published Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life (Harvard Business, 2014), this course teaches you a proven method that shows how you don’t always have to make trade-offs between life’s most important domains, and certainly not as often as you think. Nor should you! A trade-off mindset makes people feel all manner of stress – unfocused, resentful, and overwhelmed. It hurts those you care about and prevents you from performing effectively to produce results that matter in every part of your life.
In this course you learn how to articulate your values and personal leadership vision, cultivate supportive relationships with people
who matter most in all parts of your life, and continually experiment with how you get things done to better align your actions with your values -- and so produce positive sustainable change. This step-by-step method for pursuing what professor Stew Friedman calls "four-way wins" has enabled people all over the world to become more successful and satisfied leaders in all parts of life: work (or school), home, community, and the private self (mind, body, and spirit).
This practical course has been taught to thousands of students at Wharton and elsewhere by Friedman since 2001. Over 94,000 enrolled in our first two sessions of this course in 2014, and the instructor rating for it was second-highest of all University of Pennsylvania courses on Coursera. Here is a detailed analysis of course outcomes from Session 1. Below are a few quotes from Coursera students:
I absolutely enjoyed this course. I have some wonderful new tools for my leadership toolbox and I plan to continue my experiments. Thank you Professor Friedman for your compassionate lectures. This was a great course. Very inspiring! -- M. W.
There is so much goodness in this course, I have been touched to see so many good people showing care and sensitivity to others through peer feedback and discussion forums that I find it soul cleansing. The professor has been taking so much efforts to participate in so many discussion forums as well as conduct office hours to help us in our lives. I have found great learning from each of the discussion forums and have got different perspectives. Peer feedback is a wonderful opportunity for us to help others. -- V. S.
Through your constant nurturing and defining of principles for being a better leader and leading a richer life I think we have all gained knowledge to be leaders in our lives, and it is through this kind of nurturing that all things are possible. Thank you for putting me back in touch with what makes greatness, the small wins that add up over time. Your methodology is simple, it is not always easy, but it is worthwhile. -- C.
Learn more at Total Leadership and the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project. Like us on Facebook and follow on Twitter @StewFriedman.
