Total Leadership: Redirect From Wharton Work/Life Integration Project - 2 views
started by Charles Satterlee on 05 May 11
started by Charles Satterlee on 05 May 11
started by Charles Satterlee on 05 May 11
This website is a redirect from the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project hyperlink available in the syllabus. The reason it redirects is because one of the main advisors on the Total Leadership company website is Stew Friedman, the CEO and creator of the Total Leadership program and faculty member at the Wharton business school, responsible for founding and directing the Wharton Leadership Programs and the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project at the Wharton business school. This website provides information on a program that facilitates one's ability to excel in all domains of one's life; work, home, community, and the private self. The website claims that most leadership development programs only focus on professional skills and most work/family workshops and self-help programs over emphasize family and personal needs at the expense of business results. The Total Leadership programs offers a way to win (they call it the "four-way win") in all four domains of one's life; 1)work, 2)home, 3)community, and 4)self by creating sustainable change by teaching one how to "be real," "be whole," and "be innovative."
The intended audience is an organization, both for-profit and non-profit, that has C suite/executives (i.e. - CEO, CFO, COO, CIO, etc.), high-potential/emerging leaders, management/HR staff, and other employees/teams that it would like exposed to this leadership program to obtain more production from these individuals. One can gather that this is the intended audience because under their "Services" tab on the website it mentions that this program can be tailored specifically for these four unique audiences. The website also has a list of current and former clients from various industries, trade groups and associations, in both the private and public sector; such as Accenture, Coca-Cola, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Disney, and Society for Human Resource Management. I believe this website assumes a certain level of knowledge about the individuals visiting their website. This is identifiable in the terminology that they use when discussing this program. I believe they assume that the potential audience of the program will have some sort of business or management background.
I believe this is a fairly credible website. However, it is a for-profit service that is being offered by a company. This alone makes them biased to their product and in a way; the whole website comes off as an advertisement enticing the organization to purchase their service. The company makes money off of selling the program and offering services such as appearing as key-note speakers, coaching, consulting, providing workshops, and assessments of organizations. The website is registered in the ".org" domain, which was originally reserved for non-profit or non-commercial organizations; however, this organization is selling a commercial service. The advisors to the Total Leadership program seem very credible. All have either a Master's or PhD in management and leadership or an MBA combined with a lot of substantial personal experience dealing with these issues of management and leadership within an organization. This was found under the "About: Who We Are" link on the website. The website does highlight the results that the former participants of the Total Leadership program claim to have experienced after attending this program. They seem credible, but they are quoted and framed in a way that only provides positive feedback about the service/program so it seems very biased.
The general observations I took from this website regarding Work, Family, and Community is that this is a significant issues in the business world. The fact that this company is selling a service/program to coach people on how to succeed in all aspects of their life, the whole-person approach, makes me realize how serious of an issue the work/family conflict has become within organizations and that they are truly recognizing that this is something then need to begin to address to improve their own bottom-line (in the case of for-profit organizations) or improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their organizations (in the case of non-profit organizations, trade groups, associations, and government agencies).