Kelly Hall: The Radical Case for Transforming Business Through Love

Episode recap: 

Marcel and Kelly discussed the importance of love and compassion in leadership and the workplace, emphasizing how caring environments enhance performance and reduce turnover. Kelly shared her personal journey and experiences leading self-directed organizations, highlighting the benefits of treating employees as adults and activating their free will. They explored the shift from traditional leadership models to a more collaborative, coaching-based approach, where leaders focus on empowering and supporting others. Marcel and Kelly agreed that building a workplace culture centered on love and care not only benefits employees but also leads to better organizational outcomes and profitability. Marcel and Kelly also discussed the evolving landscape of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace. Kelly shared her personal experiences and insights, emphasizing that DEI is not about politics but about performance and participation.

Guest Bio:

Kelly Winegarden Hall is a leadership expert and business strategist who helps individuals and organizations move from surviving to thriving. As the founder of Live L.A.R.G.E., she brings 30 years of experience leading diverse teams and transforming struggling businesses into high-performing, self-directing organizations. Her new book is Love Works: Transforming the Workplace with Purpose and Authenticity. 

Quotes 

1. “When you start activating people’s free will and they know your hand is on their back, you will make more money. Your projects will happen faster, and those results are more sustainable over time.” 
2. “Inclusion isn’t about being cozy, it’s about being yourself and being supported in doing so. Fierce inclusion means mastering trust and supporting people even when they fail.” 
3. “The biggest payoff of loving leadership isn’t just profit, it’s filling your life with friends through your work, creating the joy of a life well lived.” 

Takeaways 

• Treat people like adults: ask more questions than you give orders. 
• Shift from delegation to enrollment, activate free will, not subordination. 
• Build psychological safety so trauma and life challenges don’t derail performance. 

Timestamps 

[04:30] Kelly Hall’s story 

[06:40] Why love at work 

[13:30] From commanders to coaches 

[15:15] Signs of a love-led workplace 

[18:30] The LIVE LARGE model 

[24:30] The pinnacle of power 

[36:45] Communicating with love 

[39:50] Advice for CEOs 

[51:00] Final reflections 

Conclusion 

Leading with love may sound unconventional in business, but it’s one of the most powerful ways to build trust, loyalty, and sustainable success. When leaders choose compassion over control and connection over command, they create environments where people feel safe to contribute their best. Love in leadership isn’t about being soft, it’s about being courageous enough to see people as whole human beings. In a time when workplaces are filled with stress and disconnection, choosing love can transform teams, strengthen culture, and unlock results that last. 

Links/Resources 

Website - KellyWinegardenHall.com 

Love Works Book: https://www.amazon.com/Love-Works-Transforming-Workplace-Authenticity/dp/1964508282 

The Empowerment Dynamic  https://www.amazon.com/POWER-TED-EMPOWERMENT-DYNAMIC-Anniversary/dp/0996871802 

Transcript

Marcel Schwantes  0:03   

Hey gang, welcome back. Let's get right to it. Okay. So, as you heard in my pre roll at the beginning, I got a book out called humane leadership. Now that book talks a lot about leadership concepts that some of you well, at least if you're in a power role or position may make you feel a little bit uncomfortable, right? But that's okay. It may not be for those people. We have an audience right that aligns with the principles that you that you hear about every, every single episode, okay? So the title of my book, by the way, has the word love in it lead with radical love, right? So for those of us, though, so many of you listening, who are open to the big idea that things like care and compassion and kindness, respect, authenticity and well being, by the way, we got to throw in well being, this whole mental health space, okay, that all those things help businesses and organizations outperform the competition, because they do. And by the way, if you want some data, DM me on LinkedIn, and I'll be happy to share some of some of the data with you. We need not go any further than than the available evidence and all the numerous case studies that are out there available, right, that show that a more humane and human centered way of leading organizations is the best way to go. That's the whole premise of the podcast and why we do it. That's why I wrote the book that I wrote. Okay, so I get excited when books, other books, come across my desk, from globally known thought leaders and experts that showcase everything I just mentioned. Okay, not only because it's good for making organizations flourish and businesses to profit, but folks, it's because it's just the right thing to do for humanity. Wow. You know, when there's so much suffering and toxicity and anxiety and fear still so prevalent in this day and age? So one of those books was released back in May, I'm sorry back in March of this year, and yes, it's got the L word in it. It's called Love works transforming the workplace with purpose and authenticity. It's written by Kelly Weingarten Hall. Kelly makes the radical case that companies that survive the coming years won't be slashing their way to greatness, they'll be the ones doubling down on human connection. So this book is 172 pages of pure goodness. Kelly shares some heartfelt personal stories and struggles. She bears her soul in that book, but also paints a clear picture that amidst all the chaos and confusion of the workplace, where we spend the majority of our awake hours, lifting up Humanity and increasing trust connection belonging is what will create dramatic and lasting change, and that's what we're after. We need to reimagine the workplace, because for some it no longer works. Okay? So who is Kelly Hall, all right. She is a leadership expert and business strategist who helps individuals and organizations move from surviving to thriving. She's a seasoned executive who led at the highest levels of corporate leadership as the founder of Live large. Large, by the way, is an acronym we'll we'll talk about that. She brings 30 years of experience leading diverse teams in transforming struggling businesses into high performing, self directing organizations. You know, I'm honored to be speaking with someone who so perfectly aligns with my own work, coaching, training, leaders, thought leadership, et cetera, and the love in action theme. So Kelly Hall now joins us. Welcome to the love in action podcast. 

Kelly Hall  4:26   

Thank you so much, Marcel. I'm really pleased to be here, and can't wait to see what unfolds. 

Marcel Schwantes  4:31   

You know, for those of us listening that are not familiar with with you. Okay, here's how we begin to show you. Ready? What's your story? 

Kelly Hall  4:44   

Well, my story begins in the middle of the cornfields in Iowa, where I was raised in a community of people that looked a heck of a lot like me. And I think the blessing of growing up in a tiny place like that, where you have a community, you kind of learn that success isn't. Really about the people that have the biggest bank accounts and the biggest houses. It's really about the people who live in families and communities where people help you when you fall down and when you have you feel the hands on your back moving through life, that even if you make a big mistake, it's a learning opportunity and it's a chance to grow. And those were sort of how I started, and that just stuck with me as I ended up working all around the globe. I've worked with teams in more than 35 countries. I lived overseas for a period of time, and I just think that those Midwestern roots really served me everywhere I went, culminating in one of the best assignments ever had, leading a self directed organization of people trying to change the world, and that last stop in my career journeys, which also span multinationals and private equity owned companies and board seats, that was the place where we really redefined what true power looked like. And it's not the traditional triangle and hierarchy and the stories we've all grown up with in corporate jobs. It's really about looking around to realize everyone around you as also an adult, and they're perfectly capable of using the gifts they came here with when you set them up for success. 

Marcel Schwantes  6:11   

Yeah, that? Yeah, that's a good icebreaker there for the rest of our conversation, you know. And by the way, we you and I can probably talk for hours about the things we're passionate about, and maybe be preaching to the choir here. But I want to, I want to maybe have you set the table for us, because here we are back to having the word love front and center, and so maybe we can start with addressing the skeptics, why love at work? 

Kelly Hall  6:44   

Sure, I would, I like to frame that question around a concept of safety, because every good company cares a lot about workplace safety, and they know what human physical safety looks like. You know, recordable incidences and lost time accidents and all those typical ways that we think about safety and having a zero accident culture, but we don't talk enough about mental health and psychological safety. And if you're not tending to people's motivation and their time and their fears and anxieties and struggles, not only are you not going to get the best out of them, you're also not going to have the attention it takes to make sure they're not doing jobs they shouldn't be doing on their bad days. And so after a stage four cancer diagnosis, I really realized how distracted I was by my own life situation, and yet I had the safety of a team I loved who loved me back, that I could tell them, hey, this is what I'm going through in my life. And not only do I have to take a little bit of time to go to my appointments and figure out what this means, but I'm also just might not be mentally present all the time, and so if I'm a little spaced out, I'm a little slow to respond, please give me that grace. And they absolutely did. But that made me realize everybody is living in a divided and increasingly chaotic world with full of uncertainty and pain and full of disease, and the more that I could use my voice to sort of ask people to rise to this occasion and say, care more, ask questions, get to know people's entire life and their dreams. Because not only should you be reaching for them and activating them while you're at work, you should be able to tell your boss when your wife asks you for a divorce, or your parents have prostate cancer or or your kid is has a drug addiction, because that means some days you shouldn't be on that fork truck. Some days you should be reassigned to something else. Sometimes you're just going to need a little grace before you come back full full fledged and in full power. And if we don't have the safe spaces for people to completely be themselves, we're never going to get the best out of our organization. 

Marcel Schwantes  8:46   

Yeah, well, there's so much care, care in that, in the way that you described, why love and that. I mean that goes back to what the evidence is saying, that in caring environment, you lift up people's performance, because when they feel like they matter, when they when they are seen and heard and feel included in discussions and decisions, etc, it just, I mean, you know, I'm not a neurobiologist or a psychologist, but I would imagine maybe you have a Take on this. I would imagine that it just naturally lifts up people's spirits. Maybe it reduces that. You know, I had Paul Zach here. He's actually going to come back on the show. You know, he is. He's been dubbed the love, I think, is the love, the love doctor. And he's talking about how when we are in cultures of care, compassion, and there's a higher trust level. The chemicals that are released in the brain are oxytocin and serotonin, oh, my goodness, doesn't it make sense that you would want to move in that direction and and help, help to organ? Your culture around principles of care and love? 

Kelly Hall  10:04   

Yeah, I do want to tie it directly to profit, because when you have turnover, why do people have turnover? Most of the time, it has a lot to do with the relationship with their direct supervisor. If there's a lack of trust or a high level of fear and anxiety, most people could be in the company with the very best overall mission and purpose, but if you're not feeling comfortable that you're supported and appreciated and respected by your direct supervisor, you leave. And the cost of those transitions are not only very expensive. To let someone go, you lose the productivity. You lose productivity while the team is not fully staffed, you have to bring the new person on board, and it gets very expensive to have turnover and have those constant transitions inside of organizations. The thing I got much more keen to in the self directed organization when we started treating everyone like an adult with 24 hours a day was what happens when people get to work from their free will, and we removed the word delegation from our team's vocabulary. In fact, when we were hiring people and they're like, Oh, I'm really good delegator, you should love me because I'm a really good delegate. I'm like, sorry, you can't use that word around here. We don't have subordination. You don't get to tell someone else what to do or assign them their work the way it sounds like in a really strong culture is, hey, we have this opportunity, or this project, this acquisition, or this thing we need to do, and we think you're the perfect person for it. Is this something you would like to lead? Is it something you're willing to do? Believe me, most people want to say yes, if it's a good alignment with their skill set or their ambitions or their motivation, and when they say yes, of their own free will, they're much more likely to take full accountability for it to be a part of defining the path to success and to doing the extra things that matter along the way. But when you ask somebody and they pause or they say no, and you say, Why are you hesitating? They say, Oh, I just told John yesterday that I would do his project. Or they might say, I have this thing happening in my life, and I'm not sure I can give this my best, and I don't want to let the company down. And that leads to more conversations. Or maybe they just don't understand the task and it seems really threatening. And they go, I don't know enough about it to say, yes yet. Tell me more, and then you can work out the path forward and let them know they're going to be supported taking a risk. But when you start activating people's free will, and they know your hands on their back, that if they do fall, it's just going to be a quick learning moment and not disaster and termination and doom, you will make more money. Your projects will happen faster. You'll hit more milestones, you'll deliver more results, and those resorts are more sustainable over time. So there's it's definitely profitable to be a loving leader. 

Marcel Schwantes  12:51   

I'm a big proponent of shared of the shared leadership model. Would you suggest or even extend what you just said to include the fact that not enough leaders are coming up through our pipelines, and that we have to change cultures from leader, follower model to leader leader model, where we're building up future leaders with, you know, with the understanding that, no, we're not, we're not talking about Building up future leaders to be more charismatic, or leads through overconfidence or things like that, but through the principles of care and compassion. 

Kelly Hall  13:29   

Yeah, one of my favorite chapters in my own book is from commanders to coaches, and that's where you talk about this big shift in your own mindset, from oh gosh, I've climbed all these years, and I'm finally at the top, towards the top of the ladder, and I get to see everybody, and I'm paid to make decisions about them, and everyone listens to me, because my voice is strong and my experience matters. And you can use all of your energy and all your life to shower your intelligence and your your deep wisdom on everyone else, or you can realize you do know a lot and spend all of your time understanding other people's gifts and activating their energy and aligning them with the goals and celebrating their successes and coaching them to think bigger. And so that shift from I got to this place where I'm the big dog and everyone else is smaller than me, to I am a big, powerful person, but my power is going to be used to empower others, 

Marcel Schwantes  14:23   

yeah, yeah, yes, absolutely. So this is a an interesting question, even for me to ask, because I like, I like visualization, I like to imagine what a workplace that that is is led through love, right, in the way that leaders lead others, but also in peer to peer relationships. If I were to walk in to any organization like, let's say it's my I don't know. I'm, uh, maybe it's my first day, or maybe I'm coming in for a job interview, right? Or. I am a vendor, like, how would I know, okay, this is a place that I would love to be a part of, right? That, how would I know that the love is permeating the air? I know that sounds kind of fuzzy, even saying it, 

Kelly Hall  15:14   

I'll give you three examples about what it would feel like if you'd been a part of the nyaga team. So one of the things that you would notice is we, we embraced radical transparency, yeah, and so there were no management team meetings where people go behind a closed door and they talk about important things, and then they spring new policies and things on you. We did have a source team where there was one member from every team and then me and the controller and this founder and a few other people, but whenever we had a session where we were meeting, it was a zoom call, or it was on Zoom, and everyone else could be listening in off camera, and they could be participating in the chat, and they could be hearing the dialog, and they could be challenging the dialog. And we respected that they were all adults, whether they were 30 or 65 and we that was really powerful. And when we got bought, we went from a Dutch owner to a German owner. And when that happened, you know, the German culture was not that way at all in this particular company. And I remember having asked my new boss like he wanted to do a business review. And I was like, he invited four of us. And I said, Would you mind if the whole team was listening into the call? And he's like, Well, I've never done that before, but I'm willing to try it. And it was great that he was willing to let us be ourselves, even though we ran a different environment. So the second example is what happens when you hold people accountable for hiring their teammates. Because in a typical organization, the manager in HR will go find some candidates, and then they interview them, and they're like, ta, da, here's your new teammate. In our world, the team had to hire their teammates, and we would find 16 candidates, half men and half women, and we would put them through this five or six week process that's detailed in my book, where you go from all 16 people in an online interview process through HireVue. Then we would have eight people who would start the process. We would have teams interviewing people from the team, from the source team. And over the course of those six weeks, we went from eight to four to two, and then those last two had to give a case study presentation to everyone they'd interviewed with. At the end of the day, the team decided who they were going to work with. The individual knew all the people they were going to be working with. They knew a lot about our culture. Half the onboarding was already done, and they knew they wanted to be a part of us. They knew they weren't going to have power over others. They knew you can't we use the word delegate. You have to use the word enroll. And and then the third thing I would say is I spent my time having one on ones with every single person on the team. We were a smaller business, so it was 30 people, but a big chunk of my calendar was in 20 or 30 minute bilateral meetings with each person every month. And sometimes it didn't happen, but they always had the comfort of knowing we were going to connect. I was there to support them and their performance plans, and the performance discussions were about their professional ambitions and their personal ambitions, because I was invested in both. That's what a loving leader does. 

Marcel Schwantes  18:15   

Yep, you nailed it. Yeah, okay, I want to maybe transition to just to get let's get into the model large. Live large model, okay? Because that's that's your own framework. Bring that down for us. Okay. 

Kelly Hall  18:30   

Live large is a coaching and consulting company to help distress teams and toxic work cultures to shift and the love stands for. Love, abundant, abundance respect, gratitude and equality. And the very first thing I talk to people about every team I've worked with for 20 some years, I say, to the best of my ability, things are going to happen with you and not to you. And when you go into a consulting world, you're not the boss, you know, you're not responsible for them, you're you're temporary, and you gotta build trust really fast. And I just share with people I hate disease. I'm a I'm a stage four cancer survivor. I hate fear and anxiety and stress and distress. And so my job here is to listen deeply to what you guys are going through, and to help you go from a current state of chaos and pain and craziness to a future state of deep respect, the capacity to restore and rebuild trust and to be a much healthier team that's sharing a mission and has much simpler priorities. And so we go to work on really getting honest about the current state. We learn about nonviolent communication. We learn about managing drama, and when I say loving leadership and this aspiration of living large, it's how I start every day. You know how? How's my live large day going to look at my own personal life? The The thing is, we're not trying to create these cozy, Kumbaya environments. Yeah, we're crying. We're trying to create safe spaces where, when the most passionate people you could ever find on the plane. That are in this mission together. They come to the table with different problem solving skills. They come to the table with some are loud and some are quiet, and some are introverts, and some are extroverts, and some are some are they just behave differently, and they are going to push each other's buttons, and they're going to step on toes. They're going to make each other mad. It's not that we're trying to stop that. It's that we're trying to fix it fast. When things go past the line, when it gets messy, it needs to be able to get messy and stay on course and be repaired and restored quickly. That's one more way that you would know that you're at Niaga. You would be so hungry for the future that you are pursuing that you would eventually cross paths with someone else and want to quit or not like them anymore. I wish they were gone. And that's when my role came most important as the head coach, was to say, Okay, let's sit down for an hour or two. Where are you coming from? Where are you coming from? Where are you coming from? Where are you coming from? Because I knew they all cared about each other. They just cared so much about the mission that they were willing to step on each other from time to time, and it was my job to re enroll them in who they were, who each other was, why we were here. And there was always this hard four week period after one of those interventions, where they're still kind of not totally trusting each other, but they I just said, Will you try again? And they'd say, we'll try. And then two or three weeks later, they're like, we're all good, we're all good. Thank you. Thank you. You know 

Marcel Schwantes  21:26   

I want to pick on one of those. So again, live large, large being. Love, abundance. What's the R? 

Kelly Hall  21:33   

Respect, 

Marcel Schwantes  21:34   

respect, gratitude, inequality  

Kelly Hall   

and equality. 

Marcel Schwantes  21:38   

and equality. Okay, I want to, I want to pick one of those out for discussion. That's the abundance piece. Can you elaborate on what the abundance is? 

Kelly Hall  21:47   

Yeah, abundance is, I think one of the things we're getting a little sideways with in the world is sort of hating on people that have more and you know, when you're in a self directed structure and you're trying to be as transparent as possible. The folks that have pushed that the farthest are also very transparent about salaries and about compensation, and we didn't quite get all the way there with that one, but I do think that we get to have respect for people who've invested more in their education, and people have more experience, and people have had bigger successes, and then have have just earned, you know, they've earned more, and it's got to be possible for everyone to share in the possibility for more, and that we win together. We lose together, we sacrifice together, we shape together. And in my life, some of the most abundant people I know are also, they also give the most. And so I like the idea of love flowing and abundance flowing. And if you actually help people to be successful, and you my favorite thing about capitalism is it lifts billions of people out of poverty when they participate in the world and they earn money, they spend money in their communities. They spend on food and arts and music and education and other things, and so the money that doesn't flow isn't helping anyone. And so I want people to feel abundant, that there's more coming. You don't have to sit on top of what you have right now. You can share it. You can enjoy it. You can participate in your life. Because there is more, right? It's got to flow. It doesn't work if it doesn't flow. 

Marcel Schwantes  23:21   

Yeah, that's the beauty of conscious capitalism. Yes, we are for living. I mean, I love capitalism, but you need to be a good steward of your the money that you're making to be able to distribute it. Well, right? So there's again, you and I, we speak the same language. There's too much suffering in the world. So if you're going to generate a great amount of wealth, what are you doing with it? Right? And yes, some of the happiest people that that I know, according to research, are the ones that are the most generous, that are giving of their wealth right to benefit other people. 

Kelly Hall  24:05   

So, yeah, yeah, Amen. 

Marcel Schwantes  24:11   

All right, we gotta, we gotta hop off the choir bandwagon here. Okay, so I want to transition to chapter six of your book. You present this idea of the pinnacle of our power. Yep, unpack what that is. Okay. 

Kelly Hall  24:29   

The pinnacle of our power comes from a New Year's Eve dinner party I had at my home, and one of my guests was a friend named Sean Kennedy. He's a fascinating guy, and he when we were going around the table, sharing what we cared about and what we were grateful for at that moment in our lives, he had just turned 60, and he said, I am grateful that I am at the pinnacle of my power. And like we all grabbed our phones like it was a mic drop moment, like, what does that mean? And he said, I'm at a point in my life where I. My health, I have my energy, I have my education and my experience, and I just, I'm having the time of my life aware that this doesn't last forever. And he's like, I just feel like I can do so much to help other people, and I want to be involved. And he volunteers in on on projects to restore homes in Ukraine. He's working on an energy project there. He's got a solar initiative happening in Iowa, and he's just a super person. And I was like, wow, so much of the time we are not operating in our power, or we think young people can't have this much power. We're all here with the gifts we were born with. Sometimes we just haven't found them yet. And so he really inspired me to think about this idea of power, well, why aren't people in their power on any given day? I've learned through research that about 70% of people have had trauma in their lives. That might be childhood trauma. It might have been something that happened as an adult. It might have been your own layoff or restructuring. It might have been something happened to your parents and when everybody is coming to work with this fear of doomsday or or they've got a lot of debt, or they've got other things going on, we kind of create situations where we set people play not to lose, instead of playing to win, because they don't want to take unusual risks. They want safety and security. And the more that we can really understand that and know that 70% of the people around us have this inherent pain that keeps them from going for it, we can say You're safe here. You get to try. You get to do that analysis and lead that project and take this chance and build that thing and challenge your neighbor and piss them off. Sometimes you're not going anywhere except up, 

Marcel Schwantes  26:44   

is getting to the pinnacle of your power, something that every generation say, I'm a Gen a Gen Z, er, I'm in my early, mid 20s, right? Can I get to the pinnacle of my power? On, on any given day, since I'm not 60, right? You mentioned your 

Kelly Hall  27:04   

friend Sean about it is the only thing that's real is this generous present moment. Anyway, most of us aren't living in the generous present moment. Our heads in the future the past, or energies in the future, the past, and our minds spinning. But the more and more that you actually learn to be here now, you only have the gifts you have in the education you have and the energy you have right now. It's the only thing that's real. And you can learn to start counting on it. You can count on I can only do what I can do today, because I only have what I have right now. But if I'm willing to give it to you, and I'm willing to apply it, and I'm also willing to learn while I'm here and read more books and learn more things and take more chances and have more experiences. It is true that with age, you have more wisdom. But why are you wiser? Because you've made more mistakes, and you can help people make less mistakes if you share your wisdom. And so I really feel that it is possible, but the hard part is those pauses, to learn to be in the present, to realize when you're not here. And that has been the biggest gift of cancer, to me, is really meditating and learning how to be here now. Yeah, thank you. Joe Dispenza, 

Marcel Schwantes  28:16   

okay, Kelly, I really want you to step on your soapbox for this one. Okay, because this is a hotly debated topic. And I speak of dei it's been so so politicized. A lot of brands are hopping off the DEI bandwagon. They're feeling pressures, you know, and so I want you to, I mean, step into the role of, you're a Caucasian female. And, I mean, you grew up in probably one of the most whitest parts of the country, right, Iowa, yeah, absolutely. But then you went, you've been exposed to different cultures, you've traveled the world, et cetera. So you have seen things through different lenses. All right, so in your opinion, what would you consider to be true dei in 2025 

Kelly Hall  29:11   

Well, dei is not about politics. It's about performance and participation. And I can tell you, I would not be here right now if my own company had not had a phase where they had metrics for the men to get more women into senior leadership roles and leader from other companies. What I watched happen was these corporations who were finally saying, Okay, it's time to react to all the having more women in leadership. And then they would say, Okay, next year, 22% of our women are going our jobs are going to going to be filled by women, and then they would put women in jobs. But then one of the companies I work for did a survey the next year, the employee satisfaction survey, and they said, How is it going to be a leader here? And the men are like 95% and the women are like 50. 2% because they had the jobs. But we don't speak the same language. We don't have the same tone of voice. We men are expecting women to be hairless men, and women are expecting men to be hairy women. And we really don't understand our differences and understand how to activate the women at work, until we really get into unconscious bias and we really destroy stereotypes. And I would say that I spent a good portion of my career on the male female stuff, but then Black Lives Matter happened, and in my own team in the Netherlands, we had 44% women. We'd nailed the diversity for gender equity across ages and generations. But when that happened, I had made this big assumption it was different to be black or brown in Europe. And then I realized I don't really have any black or brown people on this team, and I felt horrible. And so I read how to be an anti racist, and I found a black woman who was on our broader team, and I said, Hey, what's it like to be black in the Netherlands? And she was like, Oh Lord, like, we need to have a coffee. And I'm like, I'll have you over for happy hour. And she came to my apartment for two hours and made me cry. And then I was so embarrassed that I hadn't been paying attention to this. And then I started trying to get more balanced slates for future jobs, and they weren't applying. Why weren't they applying? They didn't think they were going to enjoy working in this corporation where white people, they want, they needed to be white culturally, the all this holidays and and the way people celebrate and the way people talk to each other. And I was like, this is awful. And I became an advocate overnight for wanting more than gender diversity. I want everybody to be in their power, and I'm so glad that happened. 

Marcel Schwantes  31:47   

Can you share some of the examples that maybe she shared with you that made you cry in that meeting you had with her? 

Kelly Hall  31:54   

I want to make sure I don't violate her own trust. But she told me a story about when she was a child in the Netherlands, they have a their their sort of child. Santa Claus version is the center class, and it's celebrated around December 5. And it's about this Black Pete coming to the Netherlands on a ship from Spain and and so there's, it's like this black folklore character, and even they would celebrate with black face in modern times when they were celebrating this particular holiday tradition. And when she was five years old, she's in her 50s now, she was with her mother in the grow in the grocery store there, and she there were another little girl looked at her said, Look mommy, there's a Pete, and her own mom just sort of scooped her under her arm and went on her merry way, instead of saying, instead of standing for her and defending her and telling her it was fine and explaining what was happening. And that was a mark as a child that stuck with her through her whole life, that she was different. Then she married a white person, and he, his his family never, ever let her or their children in their home. 

Marcel Schwantes  33:07   

Ever, can you imagine it? Oh my gosh, wow. 

Kelly Hall  33:12   

It was horrible. It made me so sad. Yeah, for Wow, horrible, horrible, 

Marcel Schwantes  33:21   

horrible, well, let me pluck the eye out of the EI here for just for discussion. I mean, when you talk about inclusion, even inclusion these days, Kelly can have, can be misconstrued and have multiple meanings. Talk about what inclusion means for you and expand, if you will, on what you call fierce inclusion. 

Kelly Hall  33:46   

Okay, wonderful. Inclusion is the magic. Inclusion is where diversity becomes that rainbow with pot of gold at the end. Amy Edmondson does some really great research at Harvard about diverse and homogeneous teams. And when she did her study, there's this plot of performance of teams, and it starts making you scared to death that diversity and inclusion is going away, because it shows, at first that the most homogeneous teams move the fastest and get the best results most consistently, because they're all like each other. They have no conflict, they just can go and get stuff done. But then there was this little scatter plot of the most diverse teams that had the most diverse or the highest performance. And she a lot of people would throw out those outliers, but she dug into them to find out that the one thing that made that work was psychological safety and inclusion isn't about being cozy. It isn't about being comfortable. It's about being yourself and being supported in doing so and fierce inclusion says we are committed to mastering trust. We're committed to having failures and getting back up in Niaga, that meant that if you made a mistake, you didn't hide, you went. Da, da, like, oh, like, I made a mistake, but then you counted on your team to look at that mistake with you and find your way forward, to pivot or persevere as fast as possible together. And if you've got people afraid that they're going to fail or afraid that they're going to be fired, they'll hide. They'll, they'll look the other direction. They'll, they'll try to, you know, scoot through it. But when you actually understand fear and failure and you you let it happen, but you manage it, and you support people it, you just keep going. Yeah, you just keep going. And then the other thing about fierce inclusion is you can extend it to your suppliers and your customers. We didn't call them suppliers and customers. We call them partners, and we treated them like partners, and we looked for Win, win outcomes. It wasn't this transactional, me and you against each other in a customer supplier relationship, like I gotta get a price decrease from you or I gotta bully you into something. No. It's like we want to be here for the long run as partners in this industry. And it was wonderful. I just, I've collected friends for life all over the planet by treating people with that kind of love and respect. 

Marcel Schwantes  36:08   

Yeah, that's good stuff. Okay, I want to talk about communicating with love, and especially as it relates to the giving of feedback. So that's one of, one of your your chapters in the book. You know it's a requirement for, for every, every manager. I don't care where you sit in the hierarchy, right? Giving good feedback. So and yet, so many of us don't, don't really know how to properly give feedback, all right? We might botch that process, and then it can lead to resentment, confusion, uncertainty, right? So how do I as a manager give feedback in a way to land squarely on people? Okay? 

Kelly Hall  36:50   

First of all, you should never give someone feedback if you don't have their best interest at heart, like you should just, just let someone else do it if you aren't honestly invested in that person and their their their success, and sometimes people are just in the wrong job, or they're not a good fit, or they're underperforming, or they're not where they're where they should be with their time and their talent. And it is loving to be honest and open about those concerns, but you need to do it in a way that you genuinely care that their future is better than the present, and so my guidance for feedback in my own practices, I've had signature leadership course led by Carol C Moore, and it's now a humongous network of women and men around the world. And we had to find our mantra or our tagline, and mine was memory making machine, and that extended to performance reviews, especially when I had to put someone on a performance improvement plan, because when I had to approach them with some really difficult topics, I still wanted it to be the best meeting they had that day, and that meant I had to show them that I cared. I had to be honest and complete. I had to listen and explore and ask questions and set them up for next steps that they had a possibility of achieving, and that ended up sometimes turning people they did it or they didn't, but they were in charge of the next steps, and I think that that is still loving and kind, while it's honest and open and inclusive and 360s need to be done In a way that gives actionable steps forward, not just, you know, just hard news and heart, tough love, tough love. That's such a dumb idea. So feedback is a wonderful, wonderful thing done well. And the last piece of advice I have about feedback is don't do it if you haven't traded places with the person that's going to be on the other side of the table. Put yourself through trading places and say, how would I want to be talked to if I was in their situation? Yeah, yeah. Don't threaten me. Don't make me feel small. Don't make me feel like a an idiot or a failure. Let me know I'm not where I need to be and show me how I can get there. 

Marcel Schwantes  39:00   

Yeah. All right, you and I, we both deal with high level decision makers. You know, when it comes to putting together a strategy in our consulting or coaching work, we're dealing with the highest levels the CEO. Okay, so speak to the CEO, or maybe the founder of a startup, and who is, say, interested in shaping their company culture to bring out more connection, inclusion and the things that we've been talking about, basically love principles, right? So people work more effectively, okay? So if I'm that CEO, how do I start transforming my culture without having to, you know, without all of these, these overhauls and restructuring and having to get rid of people or move people around the organization. What's a good starting point? 

Kelly Hall  39:54   

Well, if you were a CEO and you hired me as your coach, I would ask, what are the. Or five things that your company has to do this year, and what are the four or five things that keep you up at night? And then I would be listening for whether he is putting his organization in a place where things are happening with them or happening to them. Because if you're going to live in a world where all of the strategy comes top down and all the policy changes come top down, you're going to have half the people like them and half the people that don't, and it's going to cause a lot of drama and a lot of unrest. And there's also situations where your ambitions are huge, but the resources aren't aligned with the most important work, and then the mission and clarity. So I'm always listening for how many things are you trying to do? What is the state of them? And how much have you activated other people's energy and talent? It's your most precious asset. Is the energy of your team. Are you abusing it? Are you using it? Are you activating it? Are you expanding it? Is it abundant? And I would help them to make sure that any places where they're tucking yourself in a room and springing things on other people. You can do round tables to ask people how they're going to react to your big ideas. You can ask you can have customer councils to swing things that you want to try and build for them. Are they going to buy it when they get there? There's so many ways to have things happening with people instead of to them, that frees up your own time and frees you up to truly guide it and coach it, then deliver it. Yeah, yourself. That's my favorite. One of this topic is remote work, hybrid work and remote work, because I'm watching people who have, like, expensive real estate that's now losing its value and there aren't butts in seats. And so they're going to ask 1000 people to go back to 20 hours in the car so that they can have their butt in a seat when they really don't need to see each other, and I think that I understand why they're making those decisions, but they're not really thinking about the cost and the consequences. And so I like to tell people, since I love treating people like adults and activating their free will, department by department, let the leader of that department. Say, do you understand our work? Do you understand our milestones? Do you understand what we've signed up for? Yes, yes, yes. How are we going to do this? What makes your life and your work work? And then let's talk about the options we have for how this team is going to work. How much time should we spend face to face? How much time should we spend online? How much? How short could our meetings be? And you start asking the other adults to collaborate on how this team works best? Yeah? And that should look different if 20 different leaders have 20 different styles, yeah, but empower them to figure out how they do their best work. Yeah. 

Marcel Schwantes  42:37   

I again, it's this. It's so simple and yet we don't practice it often enough. 

Kelly Hall  42:44   

We weren't raised that way. We weren't right stories about how we were trained. 

Marcel Schwantes  42:49   

Yeah, yeah, I heard elements of shared leadership in there. I heard elements of situational leadership, adapting to other people's styles, right, and 

Kelly Hall  43:01   

coaching instead of commanding, that's a big idea, exactly. 

Marcel Schwantes  43:05   

Coach ask questions. Draw best ideas out of people. Draw solutions out of people, because they may have the answers within them. It's your in your role to pull it out of them, right? Yeah, that's great. Okay, as we wind down, here, is there 

Kelly Hall  43:25   

something that all day, 

Marcel Schwantes  43:28   

anything that we that we have not covered? You're like, Oh, your your listeners absolutely must know this, but we're running out of time. So here's your chance. 

Kelly Hall  43:38   

Anything I would really revisit that idea about trauma and disease. I don't. I've been shocked as I've dug more and more and more into that area. I kind of thought when someone asked me, How many people do you think I've had trauma in any given room? And I'll say 20% 30% no, 70. 70% of people have a very good reason to avoid taking risks until they're safe, and then when they're safe, they can play and jump and scream and and be themselves and reach for the stars, but you are in that room with people who are hurting over something 70% of the time, and so take that very Seriously. 

Marcel Schwantes  44:20   

Yeah, all right, put on your seat belt. We've arrived at our speed round. Here we go. What's a good book you would recommend? 

Kelly Hall  44:29   

My favorite book, which is required reading for not only my direct teammates, but anyone who touches my teams, is the empowerment dynamic by David emerald, and it teaches you how to go from the very normal, dreaded Drama Triangle of a boss or a bully, a perpetrator, a rescuer and sorry, a bully, a victim and a rescuer, to a creator, a challenger and a coach. And if you can wrap your head around this nomenclature and really taking any tough. Situation and figuring out what is the outcome we'd like to have instead, you get people around the pursuit of the outcome, instead of suffering in the pain, and when the whole team starts catching themselves in those difficult moments, instead of the drama festering around the water cooler, you're using your time together to go somewhere better. It's so good. And it's a little read about two guys that meet at the beach. It's it's quick, it's fun, it's easy, and it's effective. 

Marcel Schwantes  45:24   

I will put that in the show notes for you guys. Okay, if you weren't doing global consulting and coaching work, what would you be doing for a living? 

Kelly Hall  45:33   

I would be leading a struggling business through a turnaround, and I'll probably still do it again. Now, one of my favorite I'm an operating partner at Atlas holdings, and they they buy distressed businesses and transform them, and I love most that they're not only trying to fix that business to make their investors happy, they're very aware that they're also fixing the communities and protecting those jobs and protecting those schools and protecting those systems. And I really like that big thinking about their responsibility. 

Marcel Schwantes  46:03   

Someone that inspires you right now. 

Kelly Hall  46:08   

Heather Cox Richardson inspires me. She is a history professor who writes a daily blog. I read it on sub stack, but it's also on Facebook and other places, and she is bringing a level of calmness and and sanity to what's happening with our current administration here that keeps you informed and aware of what's going on, while putting it in a historical context, she's not here to make the news. She's here to leave breadcrumbs for graduate students. 150 years from now, and I start my day, I don't even get out of bed before I've read her post from the night before, because I just really, really appreciate her. 

Marcel Schwantes  46:44   

That's great. Okay, something nobody knows about you, and now 1000s of people are going to know this about you. 

Kelly Hall  46:52   

Oh, goodness, something nobody knows about me. I have a friend. That's his story. Like he always answers that question, like, I don't like ketchup, but I love ketchup, so that's not mine. That one's a little harder. I'm a pretty transparent person. I do my very best to say yes to doing anything I love with any person I love. So whenever anyone asks me to do something fun, I am going to try my very damn hardest to say yes. If you're out there and you know me and you want to have something fun, just ask Yeah, 

Marcel Schwantes  47:33   

that's great. Okay, we'll take that one. That's the one one question that stumps a lot of my guests as well. So you're not alone. All right, how? Yeah, how do you decompress after a hard day of work? 

Kelly Hall  47:46   

I meditate. I'm a very I'm a very dedicated meditator. I like to take a pause. I like to get really, really quiet and just sit see of how much silence I can find. Like, can I be so quiet that I can like, hear the grass grow, or hear the birds flying through the trees without chirping and and when, the more and more that I get better at that deep stillness, the more and more new ideas and new thinking fill that empty space. It's it's really important 

Marcel Schwantes  48:15   

to me. Okay, favorite superhero movie, 

Kelly Hall  48:19   

definitely the Incredibles. Whenever I consult, I ask people to send me a baby picture, a current picture and their favorite superhero. And then I make little stickers. Since I worked at Avery for 18 years, I make stickers of them, and then we use them on a lot of the things that we do. So we're talking about our inner child. We'll talk about where we are now, and then we'll talk about our superhero, and becoming our superhero, and mine is always Elastigirl incredible, because I can stretch in a lot of different directions and come back to space. And every day I find a rubber band in my path somewhere on the ground. This morning, I found two in Maine, so yeah, 

Marcel Schwantes  48:54   

I liked the first incredible, but the second one was just, it just blew my mind. I loved it so much. Yeah, all right, name a person dead or alive that you would like to have dinner with. 

Kelly Hall  49:08   

I want to have dinner with Donald Trump as soon as possible. And I This is always my answer, because I feel like you can't have that much power and not be in touch with your heart and not be in touch with your responsibility to leave the world better than you find it for everyone. And he's so off the rocker with focusing on the wrong things that I would just like to go and have dinner with him and give him my heart and talk to him about loving leadership, because you have this opportunity to make the biggest difference from the most abundant planet or abundant country on the planet, right? And you're really messing this up, 

Marcel Schwantes  49:45   

yeah, and it goes without saying, we have a lot of Donald Trump's that lead our organizations as well. 

Kelly Hall  49:54   

Yeah, I was hoping there was only one. 

Marcel Schwantes  49:58   

Okay, your biggest hope. Prefer the rest of 2025 

Kelly Hall  50:03   

My biggest hope is that we are being pushed to this edge of the chaos and the edge of what people can stand in this divisiveness and in the lies. And I really hope that this is happening for a reason. I tend to believe everything happens for a reason, and so maybe we're being pushed to the edges of our discomfort so that we can finally go Enough Enough. I actually want to be in community with all these people. I'm willing to be tolerant. I'm willing to share what I have with you. I'm willing to build a longer table instead of a higher fence. And I'm tired of all of this craziness. I'm exhausted by it, so I really hope it even as fast as 2025 not the 2026 midterms, but maybe the Epstein files or something else will finally like crack that divide wide open so we can get back to having a good time. 

Marcel Schwantes  51:00   

I love that. Okay, you have survived the speed round. Okay, Kelly, will you bring this home with two questions. The first one is, really, I mean, of all the themes of love and care, etc, that we've talked about, what would you say is a good one to start off with to lead through love, day in and day out. 

Kelly Hall  51:26   

The best one to start with is just that idea of, are things happening to people or with people in your care? Are you treating people like adults? Are you seeing them? Are you involving them? Are you giving them more statements or more questions? And the more that you can really pause and go, No, I'm willing to see them as adults. They're not my children. They're not my property. They're not pawns on a chessboard. I get to move around as I wish they're adults just like you with 24 hours a day and just let them be. Yeah. 

Marcel Schwantes  51:56   

Okay, Kelly, bring us home. What's that one thing you want people to take away from this conversation, 

Kelly Hall  52:01   

though, we talked about the relationship between capitalism plus love equals better profits. But that's actually not the biggest payoff. The biggest payoff to doing your work from a loving and open heart and an open mind and restoring and repairing trust as a competency in leadership, you're gonna, you're gonna basically fill your life with friends through your work, and it is the payoff of a life well lived, that all your relationships are harmonious and that you get to really get to know the people around you at work and enjoy the dinners and enjoy the rounds of golf and enjoy the factory floor and enjoy it all, because you're gathering your friends for Life, and they will be there after your title is gone and you've moved to a different company and you live in a different community, I have gathered friends around the world, and believe me, they were there for me when I faced that stage four diagnosis. They I had ideas from everyone around the world to help me navigate that, and that's probably why I'm here. Happy and healthy gang. 

Marcel Schwantes  52:59   

Grab this book again, it's called Love works. Kelly put it up on the screen so people see the cover. There it is available wherever books are sold. Love works, all right, if people want to connect with you, find out more about you, learn about what you do and the whole live 

Marcel Schwantes  53:19   

large. 

Marcel Schwantes  53:21   

Let me do that again. I'll edit that one out. Alright, if people want to find out more about you, connect with you and and learn more about your business. Where can they go? 

Kelly Hall  53:31   

They can go to www, dot Kelly Weingarten hall.com, and once you get there, there's plenty of tabs to learn about me and the book and the business, but it's also a call to action, because I've put all of the ideas from chapter 418 ways to activate loving leadership. But I'm asking people to share their ideas, because I want to make that list 100 and when people will share their idea, I'll send you a Starbucks gift card or something, but I really want the engagement to so to see people recognizing it, activating it, being it, and it will give me great joy when there are at least 100 ideas that came from other 

Marcel Schwantes  54:08   

people. There you go. Kelly, it's been so much fun talking to you. Thanks again. 

Kelly Hall  54:13   

Thank you for the opportunity. Lots of fun. Oh yeah, that's great. Again. 

Marcel Schwantes  54:16   

You can keep the conversation going on social media with hashtag love in action podcast, and look for my show notes, plus Kelly's info and YouTube link if you want to watch us banter back and forth. All of that can be found on my website. Marcel schwantes.com for Kelly and yours truly, remember, in the end, love wins. We'll see you next time.