After graduation, participants are asked to return to subsequent classes as project-team coaches. They're also required to spread the total-leadership word, both "mentoring up" to their bosses and collaborating with peers and subordinates to rethink work options. As a newly minted total leader, "I am the role model" for other employees, Bock says. "This taught me that I don't have to wait for permission."
No one has any delusions that total leadership will be a quick sell. "We are emissaries. But this is unexplored territory for most people here," says Paul Jee, 48, a product-marketing manager based in the United Kingdom. "There's a certain amount of trepidation about working differently. It's going to take a while for the company to recognize that this is valuable."
The hopeful indicator, of course, is that the Total Leadership program exists at all. In fact, Friedman says that Ford Motor Co. CEO Jacques Nasser and other executives support the notion of applying work-life sanity to competitive advantage.
"That's what was eye-opening," says attorney Saunders. "Here's this huge company encouraging you to recognize that the lines between work and life are blurred, that it's okay to take care of a personal issue at 4 PM -- and that if you're getting results, it doesn't matter."
Contact Stewart Friedman by email (sfriedm2@ford.com).
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