Let Go & Lead with Maril MacDonald Mary Berner | Turning Around a Toxic Culture
Mary Berner, president and CEO of Cumulus Media Inc., joins Maril to discuss transforming a toxic company culture into a major corporate asset. Drawing on her extensive background in media, Mary shares her journey of stepping into a struggling organization and using radical transparency to rebuild trust.
She details how open communication, regular employee surveys and vulnerability at the leadership level helped stabilize a massive workforce.
As Mary Burner's story reminds us, a leader's job has never been more complex. Each year, we publish Gagen McDonald's priorities paper to help leaders navigate this complexity and keep humans at the centre as they do. Download it on our site.
Key Takeaways:
00:00 Introduction.
01:58 Direct questions to employees uncover the real root of systemic issues.
05:08 Culture acts as a reservoir of trust when tough decisions arise.
08:29 Fixing a toxic culture requires a clear framework and measurable milestones.
13:59 Leaders build trust through honest answers and transparent survey results.
20:06 Organizational restructuring must reinforce the culture you want to build.
26:27 “Highest and best use” helps teams focus on what they can control.
29:35 Vulnerability from leaders strengthens connection and trust with employees.
Resources Mentioned:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-berner-a36b996b/
Cumulus Media Inc. | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cumulus-media-llc/
Cumulus Media Inc. | Website
https://www.cumulusmedia.com/
Gagen MacDonald’s Five Priorities in 2026 for Human-Centric Leaders
https://www.gagenmacdonald.com/blog/white-paper-five-priorities-in-2026-for-human-centric-leaders
ABOUT LET GO & LEAD
Let Go & Lead is a leadership community created by Maril MacDonald, founder and CEO of Gagen MacDonald. Maril brings together provocateurs, pioneers, thought leaders and those leading the conversation around culture, transformation and change. Over the course of the past 14 years, Let Go & Lead has existed in many forms, from video interviews to resource guides to its current iteration as a podcast. At its core, it remains a place where people can access a diversity of perspectives on interdisciplinary approaches to leadership. Maril is also working on a book incorporating these insights gathered over the past several years from global leaders and change makers.
Maril has interviewed over 140 leaders — from business to academia and nonprofits to the arts — through the years. In each conversation, from personal anecdotes to ground-breaking scientific analysis, she has probed the lessons learned in leadership. From these conversations, the Let Go & Lead framework has emerged. It is both a personal and organizational resource that aims to serve the individual leader or leadership at scale.
ABOUT GAGEN MACDONALD
At Gagen MacDonald, we are dedicated to helping organizations navigate the human struggle of change. We are a people-focused consulting firm and our passion is improving the employee experience — for everyone. For more than 25 years, we have been working with companies to create clarity from chaos by uniting employees across all levels around a single vision so they can achieve results and realize their future.
We have been a pioneer in bringing humanity to strategy execution, leading in areas such as organizational communication, culture, leadership and employee engagement. Our Vision is to lift all humanity by transforming the companies that transform the world.
Full episodes also available on:
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/let-go-lead-with-maril-macdonald/id1454869525
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/5Gaf7JXOckZMtkpsMtnjAj?si=WZjZkvfLTX2T4eaeB1PO2A
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Gagen MacDonald is a woman-owned, human-focused transformation consulting firm and trusted partner to the C-suite. We specialize in internal communications, employee engagement, culture change and leadership development. Learn more at http://www.gagenmacdonald.com.
#LeadershipDevelopment #OrganizationalChange #CorporateCulture #EmployeeEngagement