Kelly Tweeddale, an ICF certified executive coach and principal of Break the Tape Leadership, coaches high-performance leaders and organizations throughout North America. Her method is based upon a unique focal point: connecting people and organizations through creativity. Kelly is widely recognized for forging paths of notable growth through strategy, action, and innovation, always with a passion for making a difference and achieving results for her clients.
Recently Kelly sat down with Michael Neuendorff of Bay Area Executive Coach Training to discuss her personalized approach to leadership coaching.
Michael Neuendorff (MN): My first question is related to your background. You have a super interesting background for an executive coach. Many come from HR, consulting, corporate leadership positions, even healthcare. But your background is different. You were recently in executive positions with the San Francisco Ballet and the Vancouver Symphony. What led you from the arts to executive coaching?
Kelly Tweeddale (KT): Well, I could joke and say I needed to have the questions rather than the answers, but really it was the pandemic. During the pandemic my outlook on life, which had been deeply tied to the arts, turned upside down. It wasn’t about live performances anymore but about keeping people safe and healthy. I felt like the purpose and the mission of what I was called to do changed. So that’s what led me to executive coaching.
MN: Interesting. That’s another example of one’s professional life being turned over and changed through the pandemic. But now there are many people benefiting from the fact that you made that pivot and made that change.
KT: And I benefited too because I met people like you, Michael. 
MN: Oh, thank you very much! I know your practice is called “Break the Tape Leadership,” and it’s been about a year and a half now since you launched that practice. How would you say it’s going in relation to the goals you set when you started on your own?
KT: It succeeded my expectations. I’ve always been an analytical, very driven leader, and I wanted to do it differently. I wanted to really be a bit more organic. And so I set some preliminary goals and once those were met in, I think, my third month in business, I thought: “Okay we need to amp this up a bit.”
But what I’ve noticed is giving myself time to grow into where I think I can have the most impact was very necessary for me. Otherwise, a coach can sit down with a client and ask a series of questions and go through the paces of coaching, but to have real impact was really important to me. So, taking my time to feel I could give clients the most value I could became of paramount importance.
And I did that through a series of steps that involved networking and asking for feedback from coachees about what worked and what didn’t. And really listening and being more intuitive about what questions to ask. I also allowed myself to be imperfect. Anybody who aspires to be the “perfect coach” isn’t being realistic, although we try to get as close to perfection as we can in how we handle a coaching conversation, and so forth.
MN: So thank you for sharing that advice and the idea of asking your clients for feedback. I think many coaches have trepidation around that. We all feel vulnerable to doing our best, and maybe asking for feedback is difficult, but it’s such good advice as you’re starting out. And regardless of where you are in your coaching journey it’s something that we should do more often, so I appreciate hearing that. Looking back on the last year and a half, is there anything you would do differently if you could do it over again?
KT: Oh sure. For starters. I would really work my Rolodex. That’s an old term for my network. I didn’t want to jump into leveraging my network until I felt comfortable in coaching. But looking back I view that now as a hiding strategy. Instead, I would lean full force into my closest connections from the start because I found that once I did things started to really click for me.
My network connections gave me a lot of ideas of where I could be effective as a coach. I got a lot of feedback of what the pain points were in the industries that I really wanted to spend my time in. And not using my network until I felt like I was ready I think was just procrastination. 
When I became a creativity and growth coach, I did a series of interviews of both businesses and leaders that fit the profile that I wanted to serve. When I did that, I gathered a lot of usable information but I let it sit for about six months. And in retrospect I think I should have acted more quickly on it. My experience has shown that you only acquire real finesse in your work through doing, not just waiting for something to happen. That realization was one of my “aha” moments.
MN: I know you now do some work with the Small Business Administration as well as run your own executive coaching practice. How do you manage juggling work with an outside organization like SBA, and what their demands are of you, and managing your own practice?
KT: That comes with being a creativity coach and coming from the performing arts sector. The show must go on no matter what. The two sort of work together. And it’s really fun to see how quickly coaching conversations can help people move forward in their business.
MN: It sounds like it’s not stressful for you to juggle your own practice while working with another organization such as the SBA.
KT: I have my own purpose, statement, and mission in what I do, and part of that is to create what I call “agents of momentum.” Working with a group and seeing how they’re becoming agents of momentum is not only fulfilling, but it also allows me to fine-tune my skills as well.
MN: Exactly. You’re getting paid to practice and produce great results for people who are super driven. That was one of the reasons I liked business coaching because working with people who are so passionate about their businesses is always fun and rewarding when they get tangible results through your work with them. Now you’re in line with a big trend in coaching, which is team coaching.
KT: One nice aspect of team coaching is that after the team program ends you usually end up with several individuals that want to continue with one-on-one coaching. So it’s become a great way for me to build my practice.
MN: You’ve done something that’s fairly unique as an executive coach and in that you’ve created your own framework in your first year of practice. Most coaches may come to a point where they start creating their own material, but that’s usually years into their practice. Can you tell me a little bit about your framework in brief?
KT: I call it the TAPE framework and it’s built on my three decades of working in the creative industries. If you envision an opera production, you have singers, you have orchestra, you have music, you have lighting, you have sets, you have costumes, you have everything you can imagine that has to come together towards a common goal.
I became a real student of how creativity works and creativity requires a different framework. The MECE (mutually exclusive, comprehensively exhaustive) framework we learned about in business school doesn’t work in creativity. Because creativity is about seeing the connections between many things. So I created the TAPE framework that measures self-perception in two areas: the skill sets you have and the connections you have for the other skills you lack.
So, I asked a series of questions about a person’s skill sets and another series of questions on what kinds of connections they had and what were their source groups. And then I mapped them out on a world scale. The skill sets you need in really fast growth environments are different from what you need in slower and steady growth environments.
I give clients the option to do the same thing in the framework for their business or their organization. And we look at it as a leader. Where do you feel most comfortable right now and where do you feel you may need more amplification of connections or relationships?
The idea is not to have a “Here’s what you should do” conversation. It’s more like: “What does this say to you? Where would you like to start? What would be most helpful?” And then we talk about growth as it relates to creativity, because that’s what I do. So it’s really a place to start from.
I’m working on a case study right now where I’ve been coaching a business and its leaders for six months, and we’re going to a questionnaire when we wrap to see where they’ve moved from their initial self-perception. The results can provide a coach with a lot of good information and how to use the time of coaching most effectively.
MN: It’s just fascinating to see how this is woven into your practice and supports your work as a creativity and growth coach to businesses. Looking at it from a business perspective, how has it helped to differentiate you from other coaches?
KT: I think it’s something I can bring to the table at the beginning, long before an engagement, something that I can offer for free, to give the coaching prospect something to think about. I think it tees up prospects to get excited about those two things coming together, sparking more ideas and more innovation for growing either as a leader or as a business. And so it just helps bring forward to me those people who are ready to have that conversation and it gives us something to talk about. But I use other assessments just like any other coach would, once we get into the coaching agreement and contract. So I think it works well.
MN: I know that creativity is one of your core values. How has this focus on creativity helped you as a coach?
KT: That’s a good question. As a leader, I was known for always doing things a bit differently, and I always knew that I was most excited by the creative stage. You have to have an inspiration aspiration. And so when I realized that my creativity instinct was lacking, I really was eager to figure out how to get it back. And when I went through coaching training, I was surrounded by people that weren’t there for an agenda. They were there to help me get back on my game. And that was so powerful.
If I do my job well in my business, we democratize creativity. It is not something you’re born with. It is a skill set like any other, and it shows up differently in different people. But my job is to guide you, the coachee, to connect with that and find it in yourself or surround yourself with resources that make you creative. Creativity is sort of my secret sauce.
MN: You’re speaking my language, Kelly. I am so into creativity too.
KT: You have to be creative to think about how you can continuously improve on a process. I lead in-person seminars for the Center for Executive Coaching, and every time I run the seminar, I try to make it a little bit different, a little bit better, and I’ve been pushing myself and also my team to think about ways to do that. That makes me feel creative. I push to be creative.
I’ve met clients over the years who don’t feel they’re creative. I mean, I recall one in particular client telling me: “I’ve never thought of myself as creative.“ How do you help those who don’t think they’re creative start to tap into that? One answer is maybe trying using a different term, maybe “solutions” or “innovation” in place of “creativity.” Some people can more easily align with those terms.
MN: Can you tell me a little bit about how the concept of “joy” figures into your coaching?
KT: I think creativity and joy should go together. A lot of times I’ll say to a coachee: “What brings you joy? How do you get that feeling of joy? What are the ingredients to joy? What if we use what gave you joy and shape it into a new purpose?”
To me, that’s creativity. You’re repurposing something that you already know to solve a new problem or a deficiency or a pain somewhere else. People don’t have to use that word “creativity” to describe the process. I would say, quite honestly, if someone doesn’t want change and doesn’t want to do something better, I may not be the coach for them. But I’ve come to accept that and that’s OK too.
MN: Thanks so much for talking with me Kelly. It’s really been a stimulating conversation!
KT: My pleasure Michael. Thanks for having me on.
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