Centered leadership: How to find meaning at work

Discover how purpose, strengths, and values help you lead with greater clarity and confidence. This is video 2 of a 6-part series on centered leadership by Joanna Barsh, director emeritus at McKinsey & Company.

Before You Start

Goal: Uncover your core strengths and values and develop strategies for living them at work, so you can lead from a place of genuine purpose.

Watch: "Centered Leadership: Meaning" — Joanna Barsh, McKinsey & Company. This is video 2 of a 6-part series. Members are encouraged to watch beforehand.

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 back to an activity you loved as a child, something that made time disappear. What was it, and do you see any trace of it in your work today?

💡 Key Takeaways · 5 mins

Meaning is the most powerful factor in centered leadership. It begins not with a grand purpose, but with noticing what genuinely energizes you.

  • Happiness and strengths are the starting point. Tapping into your natural strengths will give you greater meaning and fulfilment at work.
  • Strengths are revealed by energy, not just skill. What you're good at matters, but what energizes you when you do it is the deeper signal.
  • Purpose grows from strengths. Your purpose at work will combine the values you care most about with the work you really excel at.
  • Strengths can be rediscovered at any career stage. The activities that energized you as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult are all clues, and they often point to the same core patterns.

🏋️ Activity · 20 mins

Strengths Awareness Activity (20 mins)

This exercise asks you to reflect across three life stages to uncover patterns in what energizes you.

Step 1: Individual reflection (8 mins)

Think about activities that gave you energy at each stage: things you lost yourself in, that felt effortless, that you were drawn back to:

  • As a child (up to age 12): What did you love to do?
  • As a teenager (ages 13–18): What activities energized you most?
  • As an adult (now): What work or activities make time disappear?

Write down 2–3 examples from each stage. Look for patterns — what threads appear across all three?

Step 2: Share with your Circle (12 mins)

Go around the group. Each person shares:

  1. One pattern or strength they noticed across their three life stages
  2. How (or whether) that strength shows up in their work today
  3. One way they could lean into that strength more intentionally

🎯 One Action · 10 mins

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

Complete the following and share: 'A core strength I want to lean into more is… and one concrete way I will do that this month 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