Leading the Life You Want (Coursera)

Leading the Life You Want (Coursera)

Pursue a meaningful life and improve your performance as a leader. Taught by acclaimed Wharton professor, best-selling author, and former Ford Motor Company executive and head of its Leadership Development Center, Stew Friedman, Leading the Life You Want provides you with the skills you need to lead in all four domains of your life: at work, at home, in the community, and in your private self (mind, body, and spirit).

Class Deals by MOOC List - Click here and see Coursera's Active Discounts, Deals, and Promo Codes.

You'll explore the core principles of leadership and learn the skills you need to bring them to life. You'll see these skills illustrated in the inspiring yet imperfect lives of six remarkable leaders: Tom Tierney (former CEO of Bain), Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook), Michelle Obama (former First Lady), Eric Greitens (Republican Governor of Missouri), Julie Foudy (world champion soccer star and three-time Olympic medalist), and Bruce Springsteen (world-famous rock musician). You'll have the opportunity to assess your own leadership skills, and learn simple, proven exercises to practice them. By the end of this course, you'll have the tools you need to develop your skills so you can grow as a leader in all areas of your life and create greater harmony among them.
Course 1 of 3 in the Achieving Personal and Professional Success Specialization.

Syllabus

WEEK 1
This module is designed to introduce you to the core principles of leadership from the point of view of the whole person, describe the 18 skills that bring these principles to life, and provide you with a self-assessment tool to determine your skills and establish a baseline for your development. Through the case study of Tom Tierney, former CEO of Bain & Company and co-Founder of the Bridgespan Group, you’ll learn the skills of envisioning your legacy, weaving together the disparate strands of your life, and seeing new ways of doing things. You’ll also learn exercises for developing each one of these skills. By the end of this module, you'll understand the leadership principles of being real, being whole, and being innovative, know the skills needed for improving your performance as a leader in all parts of life, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and learn exercises for building your capacity to envision your legacy, weave the disparate strands, and see new ways of doing things.

WEEK 2
This module is designed to help you understand and develop the six leadership skills of conveying values through stories, building supportive networks, resolving conflicts, holding yourself accountable, applying all your resources, and focusing on results. You’ll see these skills illustrated in the lives of Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and Eric Greitens, Republican Governor of Missouri, and learn how they can be applied in very different circumstances. By the end of this module, you'll be able to identify the stories that convey your values, create a plan for holding yourself accountable, build supportive networks, and focus on goals that matter.

WEEK 3
In this module, you’ll learn the six leadership skills of aligning actions and values, managing boundaries intelligently, embracing change courageously, knowing what matters, helping others, and challenging the status quo. Through the remarkable stories of former First Lady Michelle Obama and Olympic Gold Medalist Julie Foudy, you’ll see these skills in action as they redefined success for women across the world and demonstrated leadership in service to others. By the end of this module, you'll be able to define your core values, manage boundaries so you can pay attention to who matters most, act with courage to take smart risks, lead through helping others, and question the status quo to create positive change in your world.

WEEK 4
In this module, you'll learn the essential leadership skills of embodying values consistently, clarifying expectations, and creating a culture of innovation. You'll see how these skills are applied in the leadership of world-renowned rock star and author Bruce Springsteen. You’ll learn how to combine all 18 leadership skills to make full use of your talents and passions to serve others and lead the life you want, no matter what your work setting, family circumstances, or cultural background. By the end of this module, you'll be able to embody your values by aligning them with your actions, develop a process for correctly identifying what people really want from you, and use teaching as a way to create cultures of innovation wherever you work.

Go to Class
MOOC List is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Related Courses

Women in Leadership: Inspiring Positive Change (Coursera) Coursera
Case Western Reserve University

Women in Leadership: Inspiring Positive Change (Coursera)

This course aims to inspire and empower women and men across the world to engage in purposeful career development and take on leadership for important causes - to lead change with more conviction and confidence - and improve our workplaces and communities for all. By offering more complex understandings of issues related to professional women and work, the course will help you increase self-knowledge about your own values and vision, as well as enhance your capabilities as a leader, manager, and team contributor. We will examine the opportunities, challenges, trade-offs, and organizational dynamics experienced by women in work organizations, as well as reflect on and practice effective individual behaviors.

Sep 7th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Arts and Heritage Management (Coursera) Coursera
Università Bocconi

Arts and Heritage Management (Coursera)

Today cultural institutions are facing important dilemmas in many aspects of their management. Over the past decades, a new figure has emerged that of the art manager. Imagine you went to work every day to connect artists with audiences, vision with reality, and money with a mission. That is what managers in the arts do, they play an essential role in transforming the minds, lives, and communities through creative expression. This course has been conceptualized to address the need of skills and techniques to help professionals and managers in running art and cultural institutions.

Sep 7th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Managing Social and Human Capital (Coursera) Coursera
University of Pennsylvania

Managing Social and Human Capital (Coursera)

Based on their popular course at Wharton, this course will teach you how to motivate individual performance and design reward systems, how to design jobs and organize work for high performance, how to make good and timely management decisions, and how to design and change the your organization’s architecture. By the end of this course, you'll have developed the skills you need to start motivating, organizing, and rewarding people in your organization so that you can thrive as a business and as a social organization.

Sep 14th 2026
4 Weeks
Gestión de las empresas de alimentación y bebidas (Coursera) Coursera
Università Bocconi

Gestión de las empresas de alimentación y bebidas (Coursera)

La administración de una empresa de alimentación y bebidas es una tarea fascinante. Los productos de alimentación y bebidas están tan profundamente arraigados en la cultura de la mayoría de los países, que la fabricación y venta de ellos no es sólo una cuestión de hacer y vender productos buenos y sabrosos, sino hacer productos que nutran el cuerpo, el alma y el corazón de las personas. Teniendo en cuenta lo anteriormente expuesto, no es difícil ver que la tarea se convierte rápidamente compleja.

Sep 7th 2026
5-12 Weeks
Managing the Company of the Future (Coursera) Coursera
University of London,London Business School

Managing the Company of the Future (Coursera)

The aim of the course is to provide you with a comprehensive framework for understanding both the traditional principles of management inside companies today as well as the alternative principles that are becoming increasingly important. It provides both theoretical and practical perspectives on the nature of management in today’s organisations.

Sep 14th 2026
5-12 Weeks
OKR Certification: Leadership and Goal Setting (Coursera) Coursera
Measure What Matters

OKR Certification: Leadership and Goal Setting (Coursera)

“Ideas are easy. Execution is everything.” -John Doerr. In this one-of-a-kind OKR Certification, John Doerr builds on his New York Times best-selling book, Measure What Matters. The chairman of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) can lead to exponential growth.

Sep 14th 2026
4 Weeks
Professional Responsibility and Ethics for Accountants (Coursera) Coursera
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Professional Responsibility and Ethics for Accountants (Coursera)

Accountants perform a wide variety of activities which include, but are not limited to, accounting, auditing, tax, management consulting, and financial management. However, a professional accountant’s responsibility is not exclusively to satisfy the needs of an employer or professional services client. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the accounting profession is its acceptance of the responsibility to act in the public interest.

Sep 14th 2026
4 Weeks
Manager dans l'incertain (Coursera) Coursera
Institut Mines-Telecom

Manager dans l'incertain (Coursera)

Le MOOC “Manager dans l’incertain” s’adresse aux étudiants comme aux porteurs de projet et managers (qu'ils soient en activité professionnelle, juniors ou seniors dans leurs domaines de spécialité) mais aussi à tout acteur du monde de l'entreprise susceptible de prendre des décisions dans un contexte imprévisible. Ce MOOC vous invite à suivre une démarche de décision en 12 étapes propre à la méthode du D.M.C. (Decision Model Canvas).

Sep 14th 2026
4 Weeks
Leading with Impact: Team Dynamics, Strategy and Ethics (Coursera) Coursera
Coursera Instructor Network

Leading with Impact: Team Dynamics, Strategy and Ethics (Coursera)

This course provides the foundational concepts and frameworks to understand and apply leadership principles, team dynamics, strategic thinking, and ethical decision-making. Gain insights into the different types of leadership styles, and the roles and responsibilities of leaders. The course will explore how leaders can apply the principles of strategic thinking during the decision-making process. It will also dig into the complexities of team interaction and the importance of ethical considerations in decision-making.

Sep 14th 2026
1 Week
Leading Diverse Teams & Organizations (Coursera) Coursera
University of Michigan

Leading Diverse Teams & Organizations (Coursera)

In this new course, you'll gain evidence-based knowledge and practical tools to help you design and lead diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI) teams and organizations. You’ll better understand yourself and your personal identity in the workplace and gain new skills to identify privilege, implicit bias, and microaggressions in your organization and to take action as an active ally and change advocate. After hearing from experts representing a diverse array of real-world perspectives, you’ll understand best practices for equitable organizational processes and norms and inclusive behavioral practices in teams.

Sep 14th 2026
4 Weeks
Sustainable Agricultural Land Management (Coursera) Coursera
University of Florida

Sustainable Agricultural Land Management (Coursera)

This course will cover the agricultural and urban water quality issues in Florida, their bases, land and nutrient management strategies, and the science and policy behind the best management practices (BMPs). Students will learn to evaluate BMP research and analyze its role in determining practices and policies that protect water quality.

Sep 7th 2026
5-12 Weeks