Advertise on podcast: Reflect Forward

This morning I talked to my mom before I came into the office. Business is hard right now. Our industry is getting hit, we’re making difficult decisions, and I was just telling her how things are. She hugged me and said she didn’t know how I navigate it without falling apart. And I told her: this stuff doesn’t stress me out the way it used to. I’ve been thinking about that conversation all day, because I certainly wasn’t always that way. Ten years ago, I associated stress with caring. If I wasn’t feeling the weight of everything, it meant I wasn’t working hard enough, wasn’t serious enough, wasn’t good enough. I equated intensity with effective leadership. And then someone I trusted told me I could be erratic. I went home and cried. And then I decided to own it. A lot of my urgency had nothing to do with making good decisions. I was trying to stop feeling bad, not actually solve anything. The faster I could fix something, the faster I could move on. And when the people around you are depending on your judgment, that’s a problem worth looking at honestly. This episode is about what I’ve worked on since then. I don’t want to call it a finished transformation, because it isn’t one. I’m still figuring parts of it out. But I’ve been a CEO for almost 20 years, and I think this is some of the most important work I’ve done. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

I’ve been a CEO for almost 20 years. And for most of that time, I’ve associated doing more with success. More opportunities, more initiatives, more growth. And that belief has driven a lot of what we’ve built. It’s also driven a pattern I haven’t been able to break. Every year we go through strategic planning. We say we need to simplify. We talk about focusing on fewer things. And every year we end up with a plan that’s bigger than we have the capacity to execute. Our people work incredibly hard and still feel like they came up short. I’ve had to own how much of that is on me. This year I had to get honest about what that pattern has actually cost us. People working hard, missing goals, going into the next year and doing it again. I can’t keep telling my team we need fewer priorities and then expect them to figure out what I’m actually willing to cut. Those decisions are mine to make. And I haven’t been making them consistently. I’ve been measuring ambition by how much we’re trying to accomplish rather than by how much we’re actually getting done. And underneath that is a belief I’ve carried my whole career: that doing more is how you achieve more. I’m working on changing that. But I’ve made this commitment before, and the list has always grown back. I know the pattern well enough to describe it in detail. Whether I’ve actually changed it is something I’m going to find out this planning cycle. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

I became CEO of StoneAge when I was 30. I was ambitious, I was driven, and I was determined to figure things out. And I did. People came to me with problems because they knew I’d engage, and I liked being that person. For a long time, I thought that was just what good leadership looked like. What I didn’t see until much later was what that pattern was doing to the people around me. There’s a real difference between helping someone and doing the work for them. And when you’ve spent years being capable and dependable, when being the person everyone relies on has become part of how you think about yourself, it’s not always easy to tell the difference from the inside. The founders at StoneAge gave me real decision-making authority when I was young and probably not fully ready for it. Some of those decisions weren’t right. That’s also how I learned. I’ve been working out how to do the same for the people I lead now, and it hasn’t been as straightforward as I thought it would be. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

I've been frustrated a lot lately. Not in a vague, general way. The specific frustration of watching decisions get made far outside my control that land directly on my business, my team, my revenue. What I've noticed is how easy it is to stay in that frustration. To vent about it. To find other people who are just as pissed off and talk about it together. And none of that changes anything. At some point I started asking myself what I actually wanted to do with that energy. And what I found is that I've been taking frustration and building things out of it my whole career. I just hadn't recognized it as a pattern. A fundraising campaign for a softball field that hadn't changed since I played on it in 1997. A book about difficult conversations because I spent years avoiding them and watching other leaders do the same. A reworked company strategy because the plan I built at the start of 2026 no longer matched the world we were actually in. None of those started with a creative impulse. They started with something bothering me. This episode is me working through that pattern out loud, and asking whether you're doing something useful with yours. My new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

I just got back from seven days in the mountains of Southwest Colorado, 200 miles on a mountain bike. 30,000 feet of climbing, no cell service, no email. Just me, the trail, and a lot of time to think. What I didn't expect was how much the ride would change how I see myself as a leader. Not because of some big revelation I planned to have. Because I crashed. Because I had to keep riding anyway. Because on a steep climb at elevation, the only thing that actually works is looking at the two feet of trail in front of you and making the next pedal stroke. Not the summit. Not the miles left. Just the next one. I've spent a long time building toward things. My career, my company, the person I want to become. And this trip made me honest about the cost of that. What happens when you spend so much time creating your future that you don't experience what you've already built. When growth quietly becomes another way of leaving the present. When fixing yourself becomes a habit that carries the message that who you are today still isn't quite enough. I'm done with that. This episode is me working through what presence actually means, not the bumper sticker version, but the version that shows up when you're hurt, scared, 18 miles from the finish, and still have to make a decision about what's actually true right now. My new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

Most leaders have been in one of these moments. You've caught yourself thinking something you'd never say out loud. You've sat across from someone who was crying and had no idea what to do with that. You've kept giving someone more time because you cared about them. You've backed out of a commitment you'd already made, and felt guilty about it even though it was the right call. These aren't the big, dramatic leadership failures. They're the quiet ones. The ones that happen in real time, with real people, when nobody's watching and there's no playbook for what comes next. This compilation pulls together five moments from past episodes that keep coming up in the conversations I'm having with other leaders. My new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

Most leaders have been in this situation. You made your case, you pushed back, and then the decision went another way. Now you've got a team looking at you trying to figure out what you think. What happens next is where it gets hard. When you leave the meeting and find someone who agrees with you. When part of you is quietly hoping the decision fails so you can say you were right. When someone asks you directly and you say “well, I didn't agree with it, but that's what they decided”. That moment is one of the more expensive moves you can make as a leader. This episode is about what you do with a decision once it's been made, and why that part is harder and more important than the debate that came before it. My new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

Most leaders I know have someone on their team right now that they know is not working out. I just went through this. And the reason I recorded this episode is because I think we talk about accountability in the abstract far more than we talk about what it actually feels like to sit with a decision you know you need to make but keep not making. I cared about this person. I believed in them. I kept giving it more time. And while I was doing that, other people on my team were quietly absorbing the consequences — fixing mistakes, picking up work that wasn't theirs, and watching me not deal with something they could all see clearly. That's where this one started for me. Not with a framework for accountability. With the specific discomfort of realizing that my compassion toward one person had a real cost for everyone else, and that I'd been calling it leadership when part of it was just avoidance. The episode works through the questions I ask myself to tell the difference: am I still trying to understand this situation, or am I looking for another reason not to do what I already know needs to happen? Where has my belief in someone started interfering with my ability to see what's actually there? And who's absorbing the cost of my hesitation while I figure it out? I don't have a clean answer. But I do have a question I try to end with: where are you waiting for more evidence because you don't like what the evidence you already have is asking you to do? My new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

My company is being hit right now. A war in Iran is affecting oil prices, customer behavior is shifting, and my employees are asking me questions I do not have answers to. How long will this last? Are there going to be more changes? Am I going to be okay? That last one is the one underneath all the others. And as the CEO, people expect me to have the answer. What I keep wrestling with is how easy it is to slide from optimism into false reassurance. You want your people to sleep at night. You want them focused on their work, not sitting in anxiety. And so you say things you are not fully certain of, and eventually you have made a promise reality may not allow you to keep. I have done this. I am talking about it because I think most leaders have, and the pressure to perform certainty is real and almost never discussed honestly. What has helped me is a distinction I keep coming back to. Certainty says I know what is going to happen. Confidence says whatever happens, we will face reality and respond to it. The first one I cannot offer my team right now. The second one I can. And that, I think, is what talking with trust actually looks like when there is no clean answer. Just telling the truth about what you know, what you do not know, and what you will do when things change. My new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

Something I keep seeing in my company, in the situations leaders bring to me, and honestly in my own life, is that the argument on the surface is almost never the actual conflict. Someone gets left out of a meeting and suddenly they are furious. Someone's idea gets overruled and now there is tension that feels personal. Someone misses a commitment and now they cannot be trusted with anything. None of those responses are really about the original event. They are about what the person decided the event meant. I caught myself in this not long ago. Someone questioned a decision I made, and I had a thought I would not say out loud: I'm the CEO. Just do what I say. I did not act on it. But that instinct was real, and it was useful information, not about the other person, but about me. About what I was afraid would happen if I lost control of that situation. That is what this episode is about. Not conflict resolution as a skill set, but conflict as information. What does it reveal about what you are protecting? Underneath most emotionally charged conflict, I have found a threat to one of three things, control, trust, or respect. Sometimes all three at once, stacking on top of each other until what started as a simple disagreement feels like a personal attack. My new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

Something I keep seeing in my own company, in conversations with leaders I know, and honestly in my own life is that almost every conflict has the same thing underneath it. Someone needs to be right. Not because the facts require it. Because something in their identity requires it. I had an employee recently who was frustrated that he was not being heard. And the more I watched how he showed up in meetings, the more I could see that his need to be right was the very thing making people stop listening to him. He would get angry, people would pull back, he would get disinvited to meetings, and then feel even less heard. A loop. Not caused by the people around him. Caused by the question he was never asking himself: do I want to be right, or do I want influence? That question is what this episode is about. Not as a simple call to be agreeable or let things go. There are facts worth defending, values worth holding, positions worth taking. But before any of that, there is a more honest question: what am I actually trying to accomplish here? Kerry’s new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

Kerry has been making high-stakes decisions and leading people through difficult situations for years. And even when she considers herself open to feedback and emotionally grounded, there are still moments when something hits a nerve and she can feel herself defending against things that have not even been said. That moment happened the same day Kerry recorded this episode. And it became the starting point for a deeper conversation about what emotional intelligence actually looks like under pressure. Not as an abstract leadership concept, but in the seconds after something triggers you. Kerry explores what happens when leaders misread comments, react to stories they have created, or let their emotions take over the conversation. Because when a leader cannot manage themselves, their team starts managing them instead. Kerry’s new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

Kerry has given a lot of difficult feedback over the years. And the conversations that went sideways almost never fell apart because she said the wrong thing. They fell apart because she stopped managing herself. The moment emotion entered the room, she started explaining too much or softening the message or rushing through because she just wanted it to be over. This episode is the final one in the SHARES model series, and it covers the last S: stay emotionally grounded. Kerry almost called it stay emotionally regulated when she was writing the book, because that is the language psychologists use. But she chose grounded because everyone knows what it feels like to lose their footing. And grounded does not mean you stop feeling things. It means you do not let those feelings run the conversation. The thing Kerry keeps coming back to is this: emotions do not always tell us the truth. When you are activated, you stop listening, you misinterpret, you react. The tiny pause, the moment before you respond, is the only thing that gives you enough space to choose differently. And that choice is where trust is actually built. Kerry’s new book, Talk With Trust, is now available: https://a.co/d/05mNRnJH To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

In her twenties, Kerry was struggling in a sales role when her manager sat her down and told her she was not getting in front of the right people. He asked her to come back with a plan. Her immediate reaction was: she already knew that was the problem. What she did not know was how to solve it. Rather than asking questions, understanding what she had already tried, or offering support, her manager handed the problem back to her without helping her build the skills or confidence to work through it. Already navigating a difficult period in her life, Kerry left that conversation feeling more discouraged than before, and eventually decided to leave the company. Years later, she found herself repeating that same pattern with the person who is now her COO. When he came to her with questions, she responded by asking why he was asking her to do his job for him. He had the experience to find his way, but Kerry realized she had not helped him think through the challenge. She had simply handed the problem back instead of creating a path forward. In this episode, the fifth installment of a six-part series on the SHARES model, Kerry explores the “E”: Endorse a Path Forward. Endorsing a path forward is not about solving someone else’s problem or giving them an answer disguised as collaboration. It is about creating enough clarity and support for someone to take ownership of the next step. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Her new book, Talk With Trust, is available for pre-order now. Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins

Kerry runs a company. People are constantly reading into things she does: a look she gives in a meeting, a question she asks, even her silence. And most of the time, what they conclude has nothing to do with what she was actually thinking. Kerry has learned over many years of leading that the most damaging relationship problems inside an organization rarely start with bad intentions. They start with a story someone told themselves that nobody ever thought to check. This episode covers the R in the SHARES model: Reflect with Questions and Dialogue. It follows directly from last week, when Kerry talked about articulating your experience. That step says: Here is what I experienced. This one says: Now help me understand what you experienced. Without that second part, articulating your experience becomes a speech. And nobody wants to receive feedback as a speech. The most important relationship problems do not start with bad intentions. They start with stories we told ourselves that we never bothered to check. And dialogue is the only thing that interrupts those stories before they become someone's reality. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Her new book, Talk With Trust, is available for pre-order now. Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins-166b66/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kerry.siggins/ TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@kerry.siggins