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

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Book review

Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life. By Stewart D. Friedman. Harvard Business School Press, 250 pages. $25.95.

Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn from Experience to Become a Great Leader. By Robert J. Thomas. Harvard Business School Press, 264 pages. $29.95.

This being our "leadership" issue-we call it that, even though it's really only the cover story that gives it that cachet--it's an opportune time to take a look at a few of the multitude of recent books on leadership. There's usually a lot to choose from, and this year is no exception.

Two books, in particular, focus on individual leadership qualities and what makes leaders succeed or fail. The more general of these, Total Leadership, draws from a program (with the same title) begun by author Stewart Friedman at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2001.

Friedman isn't really an academic--he has corporate experience as an advisor to former General Electric Co. CEO Jack Welch and as the head of the Leadership Development Center at Ford Motor Co. But his approach to leadership isn't as hard-edged as a lot of corporate top dogs would pursue, either; it is a "synthesis of ideas that have emerged from two traditionally separate fields: the study of leadership and the study of how individuals can find harmony among the different parts of their lives," he writes.

To Friedman, these goals can work for anyone, at any stage of his or her career. A central tenet is seeking "four-way wins"--results meaningful for career, family, community and society and self. To do that, he writes, means being real, being whole (acting with integrity) and being innovative.

Friedman builds the book in part around a series of actual examples of people who...