NATHAN MURFIELD, PHD
LEADING WHOLLY
The Case for Leading with Curiosity, Courage, and Imperfection.
Coming September 2026
Helping everyday leaders lead from their whole selves; not just their strengths.
Leadership Was Never Meant to Be One-Dimensional
Most leadership advice focuses on a single trait: confidence, authority, vision, or expertise.
But the leaders who truly move organizations forward are rarely defined by just one strength.
They lead through integration. They combine curiosity with discipline, expertise with humility, and courage with empathy.
Leading Wholly explores how leadership becomes more powerful when we bring these dimensions together instead of treating them as competing traits.
Great leaders aren't defined by a single quality.
They emerge from the integration of many.
What You’ll Discover in Leading Wholly
Rethinking Leadership Myths
Why the “perfect leader” model falls apart in real organizations, and how curiosity, humility, and courage create stronger leadership in practice.
Leading Through Integration
How effective leaders combine discipline with empathy, expertise with openness, and authority with continuous learning.
Building Stronger Teams
Practical ways to build trust, psychological safety, and accountability so teams can navigate uncertainty together.
Introducing Leading Wholly
Leading Wholly offers a new vision of leadership for a complex world.
Drawing on research, real leadership stories, and lessons from high-stakes environments, the book explores how curiosity, courage, and emotional intelligence work together to build stronger leaders and healthier organizations.
Rather than presenting leadership as a set of traits to master, Leading Wholly shows how the most effective leaders integrate multiple dimensions of themselves; discipline with empathy, expertise with humility, and authority with openness to learning.
The result is leadership that is more resilient, more human, and ultimately more effective.
What Early Readers are Saying
Nathan Murfield’s Leading Wholly offers a refreshing view of leadership grounded in curiosity, humility, and lifelong learning. His chapter on curiosity is particularly compelling, showing that the most effective leaders are not “know-it-alls” but “learn-it-alls” who ask better questions and stay open to growth. It powerfully reinforces a core truth about leadership today: curiosity is the engine of coachability, keeping leaders receptive to feedback, learning, and continuous improvement.
Kevin D. Wilde, author, Coachability: The Leadership Superpower and Executive Leadership Fellow, University of Minnesota
About Nathan Murfield
Nathan Murfield is an engineering executive, leadership strategist, and author of Leading Wholly. Across industrial operations, engineering teams, and complex organizations, he has spent his career studying how leaders navigate pressure, uncertainty, and change.
Trained as a mechanical engineer and educated in executive leadership at Harvard Business School, Nathan’s work sits at the intersection of systems thinking and human behavior. His experience leading global engineering and service organizations shaped a central observation: leadership rarely fails because of a lack of expertise; it fails when leaders become disconnected from the human dimensions of their work.
Leading Wholly grew from this insight. Through research, real-world examples, and years of leadership experience, Nathan explores how curiosity, courage, and emotional intelligence combine to form a more complete model of leadership.
Nathan lives in Minnesota with his family and continues to study how leaders build resilience, trust, and alignment in complex environments.
Start Leading Wholly
Leadership doesn’t develop through perfection.
It develops through reflection, curiosity, and the willingness to grow.
Leading Wholly invites leaders to bring their full experience, humanity, and insight to the work of guiding others.
Join a growing community exploring a more integrated approach to leadership.