Preview: Catherine Tweedie

by: admin

If you have found personal meaning in what you do, Catherine Tweedie argues, you are well on your way to finding that coveted state of work-life balance. You have also discovered an important tool of Centered Leadership, a concept Tweedie is passionate about teaching others in her work as a corporate consultant and educator at McKinsey and Co.

Tweedie has a personal investment in the method of Centered Leadership. A few years ago, she took take a five-month hiatus from her corporate consulting career at McKinsey. The job, she explains, was certainly absorbing and interesting. But something was lacking. Tweedie, a competitive athlete, musician and painter, felt she wasn’t bringing her full self to her work. Ironically, it was after her more loosely-structured months of painting and travel in Europe that she discovered a way to incorporate her passions into her work: back at McKinsey, where the one of the company’s senior partners, Joanna Barsh, had put a lot of study into the very disconnect Tweedie had experienced. Barsh had spent two years interviewing how successful female political and corporate leaders fueled their work. Their methods became the topic of her book How Remarkable Women Lead, which outlines the concept of Centered Leadership. Tweedie heard about the book, she recalls, and “I walked into her office, and asked, ‘how can I be a part of this?’”

Finding meaning, Tweedie elaborates, means discovering how, in work and life, we are connected to what drives us. In her workshop, she helps other women discover ways to connect their inner passion to their work, so they can make the most of their potential. “We all know—and use—these Centered Leadership tools without realizing it…when we are at the top of our game,” she explains. “Having names for them, recognizing them, helps us stay aware of how to apply them. We can apply them more often.” That centeredness means that work and life increasingly support and fuel one another, allowing leaders—at whatever level—to find what Tweedie calls their “human potential.” “Any woman who is finding balance is bringing these skills to both her work and her life.”