Culture Pays – The 5 Ls of People-First Leadership with Margaret Brown

In this episode of Scale HER Up – The Female Entrepreneur Show, I’m joined again by Margaret Brown, executive leadership coach, organisational development specialist and now author of Culture Pays – a book that has been 20 years in the making.

With over 35 years’ experience working across engineering, energy, IT, construction, professional services and global corporates, Margaret has seen first-hand how much leadership and culture impact performance, profit and people’s lives at work. She shares why she believes we’re facing a global leadership crisis, and how the way leaders show up – in businesses as well as in politics and institutions – shapes everything from wellbeing to the bottom line.

Margaret introduces her 5 Ls leadership model from Culture Pays – Listen, Learn, Lead, Leverage and Live (your values) – plus a powerful final L: Legacy. She explains how listening deeply to employees, learning from what they actually say, leading with a compelling vision, leveraging people’s strengths and truly living your stated values can transform culture from “nice words on a wall” into a genuine competitive advantage.

We dig into the hard numbers behind culture, including Gallup research on quiet quitting and why disengagement is costing the global economy trillions. Margaret shares what she hears in confidential focus groups – staff who feel unheard, undervalued and disconnected from their organisation’s values – and how leaders can start turning that around with better feedback, recognition and everyday conversations.

This is a practical, optimistic conversation for founders and leaders who suspect their culture could be stronger, want to keep great people, and are ready to become the kind of leaders others would happily take a pay cut to follow. Margaret Brown

In this episode, we cover

1. Why Margaret finally wrote Culture Pays after 20 years of thinking about it
2. The business case for culture: engagement, retention, productivity and profit, not “fluffy stuff”
3. The global leadership crisis and why she focuses on leader, not party in any context
4. Gallup research on quiet quitting, the cost of disengagement and why over half of employees consider leaving
5. What Margaret hears when she goes “undercover boss” – running focus groups and one-to-ones with employees
6. The 5 Ls leadership model:
7. Listen – to the business, to your people, to what is and isn’t being said
8. Learn – from feedback, data and mistakes instead of defending or explaining them away
9. Lead – with a clear, exciting vision and everyday conversations that connect people to it
10. Leverage – people’s strengths, potential and diversity of thought so more than 9% of their talent is used
11. Live – your values in real decisions, not just in posters and elevator graphics
12. The final L: Legacy – how you want to be remembered as a leader and the impact you leave on people’s lives
13. Why most leaders are well-intentioned but unaware – and how awareness shifts everything
14. Promotion mistakes: elevating brilliant technical experts into people management with no support or training
15. The true cost of attrition and why people usually leave leaders, not jobs
16. Practical ways to make culture work “on Monday morning”: reflection questions, action tips and small everyday habits from the book