Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life

By Stewart D. Friedman

(Harvard Business Press, $25.95)

It?s been said again and again by business leaders that you can either be successful at work or have a good quality of life outside the office, but not both. Not true, says Friedman, founding director of the leadership program at the University of Pennsylvania?s Wharton School. He insists that performing well in today?s business environment requires that you integrate your work, home, community and private domains ? not devalue or downplay any of those. "The Total Leadership program is for you if you sense that you are succeeding in one aspect of life while underperforming in the others, or failing to capture value from one part of life and bringing it to bear in others, or living with too much conflict among your different roles," he writes. The goal is "four-way wins," in which what you do satisfies each of the aforementioned domains. He measures success by a leader?s capacity to be:

·         Real: "Act with authenticity by clarifying what?s important";

·         Whole: "Act with integrity by respecting the whole person"; and

·         Innovative: "Act with creativity by experimenting to find new solutions."

Friedman offers dozens of exercises that can help people see how they can merge their life values with their work demands, plus real world examples of leaders who?ve enhanced their business results by doing just that. Sometimes there?s a self-help aspect to Friedman?s counseling (with lots of attention paid to "happiness ratings" and small wins on the path to big successes), but it never entirely crosses over into the touchy-feely.

Excerpt:

Becoming a better leader requires constant reflection -- making sense of your experience and then discovering ways to use your insights to increase your impact. Then, to stay ever-sharp, it's good to teach what you've learned (and then try to teach what you still want to learn). Learning leadership by doing it -- what's called action learning -- is effective only when you take the time to reflect on what you might do differently in the future. Looking back is a necessary step in the process of learning and performance improvement in which you?ve invested much so far. If you give short shrift to the task of reflection, then the lessons don't get internalized. They don?t last. -- Total Leadership, Stewart D Friedman

. Friedman

Studebaker: America?s Most Successful Independent Automaker

By Patrick Foster (Motorbooks, $40)

Some of the most dynamic, epic, and eccentric business stories of the 20th century concern car manufacturers. Not just the biggies ? Ford, Chrysler and General Motors ? but also ambitious upstarts such as Tucker, Crossley, Rambler and Studebaker, whose names have passed into entrepreneurial lore. Studebaker represents an especially interesting study. The company started out in the mid-19th century making covered wagons (half of the conveyances that carried pioneers into the American West were produced by Studebaker), but by the 1890s it was experimenting with automobiles. By the end of World War I, Studebaker was the fourth largest U.S. auto manufacturer, drawing a loyal clientele with its high-end, streamlined vehicles. Yet by the mid-1950s it was bankrupt, brought to its knees by escalating labor costs and quality-control problems. A merger with Packard and its introduction of the distinctive Avanti sports car delayed its demise, but Studebaker disappeared as a car brand in 1966. Automotive writer and historian Foster does fine work here spelling out the hope, hype and hardships that faced Studebaker throughout its existence. It?s a cautionary tale for businesses that grow too confident in their success.