What if the key to high performance at work isn’t pressure, control, or perfection; but love?

Kelly Winegarden Hall is a leadership expert, business strategist, and founder of Live Large. With over 30 years of experience leading diverse teams and turning around distressed organizations, Kelly helps companies move from surviving to thriving. Her work is rooted in a simple but powerful idea: when people feel seen, heard, and valued, they perform at their best. She is also the author of Love Works: Transforming the Workplace with Purpose and 

In this conversation, Kelly shares what “love at work” actually means, how leaders can create cultures of trust and accountability, and why the future of leadership is not about control; but connection.

What you will learn from this episode:

  • What “love at work” really means beyond romance and why it is a leadership strategy.
  • Why replacing delegation with “enrollment” increases ownership and performance.
  • How to lead through division by focusing on shared purpose and human connection.

“The biggest skill that we have these days as leaders is not to be perfect, it’s to repair and restore trust.”

– Kelly Winegarden Hall

Topics Covered:

03:07 – Defining “love at work” as connection, trust, and shared purpose in leadership.

05:38 – Replacing delegation with enrollment to drive ownership and engagement.

09:49 – Using radical transparency to improve decision-making and team alignment.

12:09 – Transforming culture by involving people instead of managing them top-down.

16:41 – The leadership skill that matters most: repairing and restoring trust.

Key Takeaways:

“Everyone likes it better when things happen with them instead of to them.” — Kelly Winegarden Hall

“When people choose to do the work, they do it better.” — Kelly Winegarden Hall

“Better ideas and better thinking can come from anywhere.” — Kelly Winegarden Hall

“Our lives are about the quality of our relationships.” — Kelly Winegarden Hall

Ways to Connect with Kelly Winegarden Hall:

Ways to Connect with Sarah E. Brown:

 

Full Episode Transcript:

(AI helped us put this together, so if you see any weird grammar or missed words—just know we nailed it during the actual chat.)

Kelly Winegarden Hall

I think the biggest skill that we have these days as leaders is not to be perfect and not to keep people from fighting. It’s to repair and restore trust when people are being themselves.

Sarah E. Brown 

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the KTS Success Factor podcast for women. where we talk about challenges senior female leaders face in being happy and successful at work. I’m your host, Dr. Sarah E. Brown. 

My guest today is Kelly Winegarden Hall. She’s a leadership expert and business strategist who helps individuals and organizations move from surviving to thriving. As the founder of Live Large, she brings 30 years of experience leading diverse teams and transforming struggling businesses into high-performing, self-directing organizations. 

Her new book, which we’re going to be talking about today, is entitled ‘Love Works, Transforming the Workplace with Purpose and Authenticity.’

Welcome, Kelly. 

Kelly Winegarden Hall

So glad to be here. 

Sarah E. Brown 

So tell us a bit about your past and current work.

Kelly Winegarden Hall

Okay. I’ve spent a little more than 20 years in the labels and packaging industry, had in a variety of different roles. I think like a lot of women, I found myself doing a lot of lateral moves until I finally got the chance to run a business. And fortunately or unfortunately, they put me in one that was really struggling where we were going to close a plant and fire 52 problem customers after a big consulting report. 

But when I got into that business and connected with the passion and the knowledge of the team inside, we actually ended up turning it around and growing it for six years straight, even through the economic downturn of 2009 and 2010, and it was very rewarding and fun. 

And after that, I have worked for a few different private equity-owned firms. I’m currently an operating partner and board member for two different investment firms. 

And I had the good fortune of going to the Netherlands to work with a self-directed organization and startup in the circular economy space. And it was very fun to be in that very purpose-driven environment where people were out to change the world through chemistry and engineering, making more things recyclable. 

And that was really the time in my life when the leadership of a team went from commanding and driving and leading more traditionally to truly coaching and welcoming the adults to the table to bring their best every day. 

And it was life changing for me. 

So that’s why I’ve written my book and why I do the coaching and consulting I do now with distressed teams and toxic cultures, because we just spend way too much of our healthy adult life working. 

And it should really be good. It should be good for everybody.

Sarah E. Brown 

So how do you define love?

Kelly Winegarden Hall

I define love as the essential life force that powers our breath and our heartbeat. And it’s that natural connecting energy to each other, to nature and to our nature. 

And it’s this, not as big romantic love, but it’s more that feeling that you have when you’re where you’re supposed to be sharing space and time with another being.

Sarah E. Brown 

Hmm. Okay. And besides the experience, you described an experience you had in turning the business around that you were asked to lead. Do you have other evidence that Love at Work works to actually increase profits and to create a sustainable, profitable business? 

Kelly Winegarden Hall

Absolutely.

The more and more that I found that just like me, everyone else likes it better when things happen with you instead of to you. And when you bring people to the table to talk about difficult things like restructurings or policy decisions or other things, and you gather the input of many people across the organization instead of the very best intuitive thinking of the people paid the most, you actually not only have better policies and procedures that work for people, but you have deeper implementation. 

And so we started kind of really pushing that to a bit of an extreme at Niagara in the Netherlands where people hired their teammates. 

A manager didn’t go hire a new teammate and then say, surprise, here’s another person who has a lot of talent and a great CV. We actually had a beautiful process to go from 16 candidates, half men and half women, down to one, when the people who were going to have to work side by side with that person chose the person that they not only liked the experience of but had the best chemistry with, and then they felt responsibility for that person’s success in getting them onboarded and up to speed as fast as possible.

You also find when love is flowing and people feel that their well-being is being cared for, that they have more space to take chances and risks. 

And when there is a failure, it’s not hidden. 

Because the failure is followed by many people looking at the problem and correcting it instead of one person hiding from that pain.

Sarah E. Brown 

Hmmm, okay. So you’ve got a lot of tips and ways that organizations can implement this. And so give us an example. I guess one example is what you just shared with us about teams hiring their own teammates. But what are other examples of ways that you could implement this in a culture?

Kelly Winegarden Hall

One of my favorite things that an organization can do is get rid of the word delegation. 

And replace it with the word enrollment. Because if you start seeing everyone around you as an equal adult with 24 hours a day, and you know everybody is here with talent and they’re busy, and you say, ‘hey, there’s a project that needs a leader, and I have you in mind. Here’s the project. Is this something you could do? Is this something you would like to do? Is this something you have time to do? Is this something you feel like you’re the right person to do?’

And when you engage somebody in enrolling them in the project, when they choose to do that work of their own free will, and they have a little more autonomy to do it their way, you’ll find that they will do a better job when they have chosen to do the work. 

And when you ask people for help, they genuinely want to say yes. But also, if they say no, your next question is, why? Tell me more. 

Maybe they’re overwhelmed. Maybe they are already overbooked. Maybe they have someone sick at home or they’re going through a divorce or there’s something else that would keep them from doing the project the way it needs to be done on time. 

And when you have the caring space and the connection and the concern for people’s vibrance, then when they say yes, they really do take things to a new level. And when they say no, they appreciate the fact that they had a chance to choose. 

Sarah E. Brown 

Hmm. Okay. Give me another example. 

Kelly Winegarden Hall

Another example is being very thorough about things happening with people instead of to them. And that’s a matter of opening up conversations to say, we have a situation or we have to prioritize. 

Instead of me going through a project list of a hundred different things and try to figure out where the value is maximated and where the resources stretch the furthest, when you bring people together who know way more about those details and projects than you do, and you give the group the task to go from a hundred things to the three that move the needle the fastest and the most.

The three that get chosen and activated have way more power than one person making all of the choices.

Sarah E. Brown 

Do you get pushback that doing this as a group activity takes more time? 

Kelly Winegarden Hall

Absolutely. 

Sarah E. Brown

Does it take more time? 

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Kelly Winegarden Hall

It does take a different type of time because the highest quality time is happening up front to plan the work before you work the plan versus just trying to be fast, fast, fast, fast, fast and efficient. 

When you take the time up front to enroll people, to welcome dissent, to understand the challenges, to consider the fastest path from where we are now to where we wanna be in the future, that process of enrolling everyone and welcoming their concerns and their questions and identifying the risks and then activating it through them, the payoff is always there for deeper implementation, higher satisfaction, and greater results.

Sarah E. Brown 

Okay, and so are there any other tips we should talk about?

Any other examples that get the point across?

Kelly Winegarden Hall

One of the chapters in my book is about radical transparency. 

And this is about opening up meetings and decisions in tough times to much bigger groups of people. 

So instead of management teams going behind closed doors and making big decisions and springing the outcome on groups of people, especially in distress, if you even have your meetings on Zoom, but allow other people to listen in and being off camera and let them use the chat to give their input or questions or ideas or feedback. 

And when there’s way more transparency among the adults, we are adults, to what is happening and why and how and what options we’re considering, better ideas and better thinking can come from anywhere. 

And so, you know, we really pushed that to an extreme. And even when our company was sold from a Dutch chemical company to a German chemical company that had way different culture and practices, when we had to do our business reviews and share updates or ask for more investment, my whole team was on the phone listening. 

And that was very uncomfortable for people in the beginning to have that much participation, that many eyes on a question. 

But you quickly see the power of the collective being aware and activated out loud all the time instead of this tugging of a few people who know everything and everyone else is in the dark.

Sarah E. Brown 

So when you’re trying to implement a culture like this, because a lot of companies do not have it, so let’s say that they are in a different state of mind and they want to move towards this, does it have to start at the top or can it start in the middle?

Kelly Winegarden Hall

I think it can start in the middle, but it’s certainly more effective if the folks at the top are hungry to unleash the power of their whole company. 

And for me personally, I also experienced a difference between the exhaustion of being held responsible for everything at the lonely top, instead of the pleasure of coaching and supporting a lot more people with a lot more energy to activate change and deliver outcomes.

Sarah E. Brown

And so you’re helping organizations implement this now, yes? 

Kelly Winegarden Hall

Yes. 

Sarah E. Brown

Okay. What’s the driving force that gets somebody to come to you?

Kelly Winegarden Hall

There’s usually a very significant level of distress where people are quitting or the business is at risk. 

And a common situation that I’ve found myself in is a founder-led business that was like a family business is acquired by a private equity firm or acquired by an investor. 

And then the investor who’s usually coming from a bigger company or multiple companies will say, welcome to the family. Here’s how we do things around here. 

And the founders now gone from the smaller company and the team that was left there who loved their culture and loved that person, it doesn’t fit this new way of doing things and these policies coming from up down and the way the decisions are being made now. 

And when you can kind of come in and reconnect people and soothe the souls and talk about where do you find yourself in the current state? Where would we like to be in the future state? 

And where is the power in each of your cultures to get the best out of both instead of just becoming the bigger one? And it happens really quickly, to be honest with you. 

I mean, I frequently have engagements where I sell 30 working days of my time. And usually after a couple of weeks of getting people to reconnect to their love and reconnect to their passions and their energies, and we’re not as different as we think we are sometimes when we actually sit together and talk about hard things.

Sarah E. Brown 

Hmm. 

And what would you say are your takeaways or your number one tips for moving a culture from towards a more loving culture?

Kelly Winegarden Hall

Well, my father and grandfather were plumbers, and I sort of think it’s a bit of a gift for me that I see relationships as a series of pipes between people. 

And it’s only human and natural that sometimes there’s a little bit of junk in the pipes because we don’t see things the same way and we don’t approach things the same way and trust falls and when things start getting scary, we withdraw or we fight or some people will hide, some people will fight, some people will leave, some people will, we take all kinds of different paths to security and safety. 

But when you actually bring people back together to say, our lives are about the quality of our relationships. 

And if we get sideways with anybody at home, at work, in a friendship, it’s not always easy to figure out how to restore and repair and rebuild trust and to reset. 

But it’s always worth it. And when you can give people skills around nonviolent communication and give them skills around having trust talks and give them the power to pick the culture and climate that the most people thrive in, they’re really happy to make those changes because it feels so much better so quickly.

Sarah E. Brown 

So, Kelly, let me ask you this. 

Is there a question that I should have asked you that I didn’t that would help people understand why love at work is a good idea and they should be thinking about moving towards it?

Kelly Winegarden Hall

Well, one of the questions I get asked from time to time is, how do you frame this in today’s political environment in the United States, where D.E.I. is being thrown out the window and you either voted for this administration or you didn’t, but you probably feel really strongly about wherever you’re coming from. 

And now we have to work together. 

Like side by side, we have to coexist and work together with all this division that just seems to be growing by the hour sometimes. 

And I’ll usually sit with people and say, that is such an excellent question. 

And in any given room of 50 people these days, you’ll have 15 who voted for Donald Trump. You’ll have 15 who voted for Harris. You’ll have 15 who didn’t vote for anyone and five who voted for someone else. 

And yet. That is what it is, and all that passion and energy is pretty powerful. 

But for each individual you’re ever going to look at, no matter what their politics are, there are 995 other things to bond over. 

And so if we can sort of realize we get to be different about that, 

But let’s concentrate on the shared mission we have at work. 

Let’s concentrate on how we support our customers and our clients the best. 

Let’s concentrate on innovation. 

Let’s really figure out how to have those conversations in a safe way because you can’t help yourself from sharing a pain or a problem that’s in the big crazy world right now. 

But we don’t have to feed the division. We can feed the respect and the quality conversations and the dialogue and let it get messy. 

I think the biggest skill that we have these days as leaders is not to be perfect and not to keep people from fighting. It’s to repair and restore trust when people are being themselves and to really protect the well-being and psychological safety of the people in our care.

Sarah E. Brown 

Well, that is well said. That’s a good counsel to end on. 

Kelly, thank you so much for being with me today. 

Kelly Winegarden Hall

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me. 

Sarah E. Brown

Thanks for listening to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women. If you like what you are hearing, please go to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave a review. And if you would like more information on how we can help women in your organization to thrive, then go to www.sarahebrown.com. You can sign up for our newsletter, read show notes and learn more about our podcast guests, read my blog, browse through the books, or contact us for a chat. Goodbye for now.

Sarah E. Brown
Sarah E. Brown