When employers no longer offer secure full-time employment with benefits, then it's hard to expect employees to be loyal, engaged, and maximally productive.

The worst thing you can do, despite the innumerable obstacles we confront, is to not try.

People struggle most with seeing new ways of doing things and often need help in breaking through their tradition-bound mindsets.

Invest in helping people know what matters to them and who matters to them (and why), and encourage them to continually experiment with how they get things done in ways the serve their interests and yours as an employer.

At the individual level, you need to examine what you truly value, share this with key stakeholders in various life domains both to get feedback and support, and then to experiment with new ways of doing things so that - over the arc of a life - you can achieve harmony and have more of what it is that you uniquely want out of life.

You really can choose to be the leader you want to be, in all parts of your life, if you take seriously the idea that there's a purpose to your life worth pursuing because it matters not just to you but to others. Consciously and deliberating devoting effort to realizing this idea is ennobling, though never without some struggle.

My research and practice indicates that people need to be doing work they love and to love the work they do. They need to feel that their efforts matter for the people and causes about which they really care. Further, they need to be doing work with people they respect and enjoy. Finally, they need to feel free to choose where, when and how it all gets done. It's not easy to put these conditions in place, but it is certainly possible to do so, as I have seen and shown in my work in organizations and communities using the Total Leadership approach.