My view is that leadership is not about position - you can lead very well with no one reporting to you in a hierarchy and you can lead quite poorly with many people below you in the traditional chain of command. Leadership is about mobilizing people toward valued goals, and anyone can do this, in any aspect of life.

Michelle Obama is a powerful example of someone who has learned how to align her actions with her values, manage boundaries across domains of life, and embrace change courageously.

If you're searching for "work/life balance" you'll always be disappointed because "balance" connotes a zero-sum equation.

I find that many people have a hard time, at first, in painting a compelling image of an achievable future; to envision their legacy, that is. Often this is because they're afraid to commit for fear of failure.

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.

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.

Continual improvisation on a theme is a more useful way to think of how to bring the various parts of life together.