Centered leadership: How to build connection

Strong relationships drive great leadership. Learn to build trust and expand your network.. This is video 4 of a 6-part series on centered leadership by Joanna Barsh, director emeritus at McKinsey & Company.

Before You Start

Goal: Identify your relationship strengths and the mindsets that limit you at worj, and develop a concrete strategy for cultivating or deepening relationships that matter.

Watch: "Centered Leadership: Connecting" — Joanna Barsh, McKinsey & Company. This is video 4 of a 6-part series. Members are encouraged to watch beforehand, but a quick recap at the meeting works too.

Meeting Agenda · Approx. 60 mins

  • Member Updates · 10 mins
  • Icebreaker · 10 mins
  • Key Takeaways · 5 mins
  • Activity · 20 mins
  • One Action · 10 mins
  • Wrap-Up · 5 mins

👋 Member Updates · 10 mins

Go around your Circle and share personal updates. Keep them brief and focused on significant changes or important decisions since the last time you met. It's OK not to have one every month. If you have a One Action update from last time, share that too.

🧊 Icebreaker · 10 mins

Invite everyone in the group to share. Keep answers to one or two minutes per person.

Think of a professional relationship that has genuinely supported your growth. What made it work, and what did you do to build it?

💡 Key Takeaways · 5 mins

Connecting is not just networking. It's building the trust relationships that enable you to have greater impact and feel genuinely sustained.

  • Reciprocity is the currency of work relationships. To build trust at work, offer help and take actions to make everyone's work better.
  • Trust is built through four practices: reliability, congruence, openness, and acceptance. Most people are stronger in some areas than others.
  • Your network needs to be broad, connective, and dynamic. Homogenous, comfortable networks limit your options. The most valuable relationships often cross the boundaries of function, level, and industry.
  • Sponsors accelerate growth in ways mentors cannot. Powerful people who take a risk on you — who advocate for you when you're not in the room — are the relationships most worth cultivating deliberately.
  • Connection generates energy, not just opportunity. Belonging is one of the most powerful drivers of meaning at work.

🏋️ Activity · 20 mins

Trust Self-Assessment and Strategy (20 mins)

Step 1: Self-assessment (5 mins)

Take a moment to rate yourself (1–5) on how regularly you practice each of the four elements of trust — at work, at home, and with yourself:

  • Reliability: Do you do what you say you will?
  • Congruence: Do your actions match your values?
  • Openness: Do you share information and feelings appropriately?
  • Acceptance: Do you accept others without judgment?

Then discuss as a group: Which of these areas are you strongest? Where are your gaps?

Step 2: Strategy development in pairs (8 mins)

Take a moment to identify one workplace relationship you want to cultivate or deepen, and note down the following:

  1. Why does this relationship matters to you?
  2. What's one specific action you could take this month to invest in the relationship?

Then take turns sharing your responses with a partner.

Step 3: Share with the Circle (7 mins)

Each person shares their workplace relationship goal with the full group.

🎯 One Action · 10 mins

Commit to one concrete action, big or small, you'll take before next meeting.

Complete the following and share: 'One relationship I am committing to invest in this month is… and the specific action I will take is…'

Go around the Circle and share (1 minute or less per member). Vocalizing it helps hold each other accountable.

📅 Wrap-Up · 5 mins

Before you break, set up your next meeting and close on an energetic note. Go around your Circle one by one and finish the sentence:

Now I am feeling… (choose one word).

  • Set the day, time, and location
  • Choose the next topic or resource
  • Confirm who's leading the discussion
  • Decide how you'll stay in touch in between