Kerry Siggins Podcast

Hosted by Kerry Siggins

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100

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Jun 2026

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About the show

This show is about exceptional leadership. Game-changing leadership. Learn from peers, experts, authors, and more on how to be an uber successful leader…one that stands out from the rest. One that inspires others to do great things. One that others want to follow. How does this podcast fit into exceptional leadership? You can only become great at what you do by deliberately creating your future by reflecting on the past and present…what you did well, mistakes you’ve made, and lessons you’ve learned. Kerry Siggins is the CEO of StoneAge, the global leader in the manufacturing and distribution of high pressure waterjetting tooling and automated equipment. Kerry is also a member of Young President's Organization (YPO) and sits on several boards. She is a sought-after speaker, thought leader, leadership blogger and podcast host.

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60 recent

June 16, 202611 min

If Everything Breaks Without You, You're the Problem | Kerry Siggins

Kerry Siggins ran one company for twenty years. She grew up inside it, ran every department, and built it into something that reflected her personality and her instinct to fix whatever was broken. For most of that time, she thought that being the person who held everything together was evidence of great leadership. What she eventually had to face is that it was not. Every problem she solved was one less chance for someone else to own their work. Every time she stepped in, she was teaching her team that ownership was optional. And the culture she was trying to build could not take root as long as she was the one holding the ground together. This episode stays inside that realization and the harder question it forced. Not whether her team needed her. Whether she needed her team to need her. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Her new book, Talk With Trust, comes out August 4th and 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

June 9, 202623 min

Why Goals Are Not What Actually Creates Success | Kerry Siggins

Kerry Siggins did not arrive at this episode from theory. She arrived at it from looking back at the last twenty years of her life and asking an honest question: what actually caused the change? Not the goals. Not the resolutions. Not the ambition. What caused the change was the moment she decided to raise a standard. The moment she said, this is how I am going to show up, not just this week or this month, but every single day, because this is who I am choosing to become. She has done this with drinking, with writing, with her body, with her leadership, with the way she communicates inside her company. And what she has found, consistently, is that goals pointed her in the right direction but standards determined whether she actually got there. Goals are external. Standards become part of who you are. This episode sits inside that distinction. Kerry talks through what standards actually are, how to identify the ones you are already operating with, and why the most dangerous standards are the ones you have stopped noticing, the behaviors you have quietly accepted as normal that are preventing the very thing you say you want. She also brings this into leadership in a way that reframes the entire conversation around feedback. Leaders do not have a feedback problem, she argues. They have a standards problem. And the SHARES framework she built is not another goal to add to the list. It is a communication standard, a repeatable way of showing up that makes honest, clear, trust-building feedback almost inevitable. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com You can pre-order her new book, Talk With Trust, and find The Ownership Mindset on her website. 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

June 2, 2026Episode 626 min

This Is the Most EXPENSIVE Problem in Your Organization | Kerry Siggins

Kerry Siggins has spent a long time watching talented people fail not because they lacked ability but because they could not hear what was being said to them. She has watched incredibly capable adults shut down completely over a single sentence of feedback, not because the feedback was cruel, not because it was wrong, but because somewhere underneath it, they experienced it as a threat to who they are. She has done it herself. She has gotten defensive. She has over-explained and justified and listened to respond rather than to understand. And she knows exactly what it costs, because she has seen what it does to a team when a leader cannot hear the truth. This episode follows that cost all the way through. It starts with how cultures accidentally train people to protect themselves, by punishing mistakes, by rewarding the appearance of competence over the reality of learning, by making the truth feel dangerous. It moves through what defensiveness actually looks like inside an organization: meetings that go political, conversations that get softer and softer until nobody says what needs to be said, leaders who over-explain their decisions because trust has already eroded. Kerry also shares the story of an executive she hired, demoted, and eventually promoted back into their original role after they did something most people will not do: they stopped defending themselves and started listening. The transformation that followed was not just personal. It changed the entire dynamic of the team around them. The thing Kerry keeps returning to is this: feedback frameworks matter, and she believes in the one she has built. But no framework in the world works if people cannot hear the truth without protecting themselves. Ownership is the foundation. Everything else is built on top of it. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com You can pre-order her new book, Talk With Trust, and find The Ownership Mindset on her website. 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

May 26, 2026Episode 526 min

The Six Steps That Changed How I Give Feedback as a CEO | Kerry Siggins

Kerry Siggins has gotten feedback wrong more times than she can count. She has fumbled it, blurted it out, and far more often, tiptoed around what really needed to be said because the discomfort of saying it felt harder than the cost of staying quiet. What she noticed, over years of leading people at Stone Age, is that the moments where she got it right had something in common. And the moments where she got it wrong did too. This episode is about what she built from that pattern. The SHARES model is a six-step framework Kerry developed for herself and eventually for her team, not from theory or consulting frameworks but from the accumulated weight of conversations that went well and conversations that did not. It was built from necessity. From the sleepless nights before difficult conversations. From watching someone shut down in real time after feedback she delivered poorly. From asking herself, afterward, what she would do differently. She walks through each step in this episode, from specifying the outcome you actually want before you walk into the room, to staying grounded when the other person becomes emotional or defensive, to asking questions rather than delivering a speech. She also shares a recent conversation where she used the model with someone on her team, a forty-five minute exchange that was emotionally charged and ended with real clarity, a path forward, and a relationship that held. The question she keeps coming back to is one worth sitting with: you are shaping your culture not just through the conversations you have, but through the ones you avoid, the ones you rush, and the ones you handle poorly. The SHARES model is her way of taking ownership of that. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com You can pre-order her new book, Talk With Trust, and find The Ownership Mindset on her website. 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

May 19, 2026Episode 410 min

Silence Is the Most EXPENSIVE Thing in Business | Kerry Siggins

Every communication breakdown Kerry Siggins has witnessed in business shared one pattern. It did not fall apart because someone said the wrong thing. It fell apart because nobody said the right thing for long enough that by the time they did, there was no trust left to hold the conversation. This episode is not about communication theory. It is about what silence actually costs, in dollars, in relationships, in credibility, and in the quiet internal weight of carrying what you are not saying. Kerry traces the full arc of avoidance: how it starts as rationalization, compounds into resentment, and ends with someone getting fired who should have been coached, while the leader feels both justified and guilty at the same time. She also brings this home through her own experience. A few years ago, she avoided a difficult conversation with a fractional executive on her team for six weeks. The fit was wrong, the team was losing stability, and the cost was visible. She still waited. When she finally had the conversation, it was over in minutes. He understood completely. The story she had built in her head bore no resemblance to what actually happened. The question she leaves with is a specific one: what conversation are you currently avoiding that is already costing you more than having it would? To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Both of Kerry’s books, The Ownership Mindset and Talk With Trust, are available on her website. 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

May 12, 2026Episode 318 min

How to Back Out of a Commitment Without Losing Your Integrity | Kerry Siggins

A few weeks ago, Kerry Siggins was talking with her boyfriend Shane about his thirteen-year-old son who plays baseball. The main issue is that the boy does not really want to play baseball, and wants to quit. Shane was wrestling with what that would teach him about integrity, and Kerry paused, because she has fought that exact question her entire life. This episode is about the story most of us inherited about commitment. That quitting equals weakness. That integrity means always doing what you said you were going to do, even when it no longer fits. Kerry traces how that story shaped her own decisions, staying in college programs, staying in relationships, saying yes to things she did not want to do, not because she was weak, but because she genuinely believed that saying yes was what a good person did. She also shares two commitments she backed out of in the weeks before this conversation. A board seat. A judging panel. Both things she cared about. Neither of which she had the capacity to do well. What she felt when she made those calls surprised her, it was not just relief, it was ownership. She did not ghost the commitments. She also did not ghost herself. The question underneath all of it is one Kerry is still working on: what does it mean to have integrity with yourself, and how do you know the difference between discomfort worth pushing through and misalignment worth acting on? To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Both of Kerry’s books, The Ownership Mindset and Talk With Trust, are available on her website. 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

May 5, 202617 min

How to Deal With Feedback That Challenges Your Leadership | Kerry Siggins

Some years ago, Kerry Siggins was sitting in her office when her COO said something that stopped her completely. He told her she was erratic. That she was the problem. That she was hard to work for. She did not argue. She thanked him, asked for time, and then got to her car as fast as she could. What followed was not a leadership lesson. It was a breakdown, and then, slowly, a reckoning. This episode stays inside that experience. The moment the feedback landed. The identity threat underneath it. The tension between arming up and spiraling. And the question her husband asked that cut through all of it: take what's true and let the rest go. Kerry walks through how she chose to examine the word erratic. Not because it felt fair, not because the feedback was delivered well, but because it was specific enough to act on and honest enough to matter. From there she describes what it actually looked like to change: three deep breaths before every meeting, giving her team explicit permission to call her out, building external accountability around a behavior she had been rewarded for her whole career. The conversation underneath this episode is one Kerry has been having for years, about the gap between how leaders see themselves and how their teams experience them, and what it costs when that gap is never closed. Her new book, Talk With Trust, opens with this story. It goes further into the conversations that leaders are avoiding and the trust that gets built when they stop. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Both of Kerry’s books, The Ownership Mindset and Talk With Trust, are available on her website. 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

April 28, 202646 min

What Happens When Leaders Balance Masculine & Feminine Energy | Randy Lyman

Kerry Siggins built her success the way many of us are taught to: through drive, control, discipline, and achievement. That approach delivered results and helped her grow her company, but over time, it also came with a cost. Burnout started to feel normal, and emotional distance crept in without her even realizing it. Randy Lyman followed a similar path. As a physicist and engineer, he built multiple million-dollar businesses by relying purely on logic, discipline, and force. But everything shifted when he was introduced to the emotional and spiritual side of the human experience. When he began integrating more connection, presence, and care into his leadership, his businesses didn’t just improve, they expanded thirtyfold. This conversation isn’t about abandoning what works. It’s about recognizing what might be missing, and what becomes possible when you stop leading from just one side. In this episode, they explore what it means to protect the more vulnerable parts of ourselves, the hidden cost of building identity around control, and how leadership changes when both masculine and feminine energy are present. To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com You can also find her book, The Ownership Mindset, on her website 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

April 21, 202623 min

Meet People Where They Are Without Lowering the Bar Reflect Froward Podcast Kerry Siggins

“Meet people where they are” is one of the most common pieces of leadership advice, and one of the most misunderstood. In this episode of Reflect Forward, Kerry Siggins breaks down what this phrase actually means in practice and why so many leaders get it wrong. Many leaders believe they are being empathetic, but instead lower standards or project their own way of thinking onto others. Neither approach leads to effective leadership. Meeting someone where they are is not about agreement or comfort. It is about accurately understanding their reality so they can be led forward without losing accountability. Kerry introduces a clear and practical framework, using a GPS metaphor, to help leaders diagnose where someone truly is, separate their own perspective from the situation, and adjust their approach without compromising expectations. This is the real work of leadership. It is precise, intentional, and often uncomfortable. In this episode, Kerry covers: •What it really means to meet people where they are •The leadership mistake of projecting your own lens •How to balance empathy and accountability •Why curiosity is the starting point for effective leadership •A practical framework to lead people through challenges For leaders who find themselves frustrated when others do not meet expectations, this episode offers a clear reframe and a more effective path forward. Connect with Kerry Visit Kerry’s website, kerrysiggins.com, to explore her book, The Ownership Mindset, and get more leadership resources. Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! Find Reflect Forward on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kerrysiggins-reflectforward Find out more about Kerry’s book here: https://kerrysiggins.com/the-ownership-mindset/ Connect with Kerry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins/

April 14, 202638 min

Empathy Under Pressure w/ Mimi Nicklin

What does real leadership look like when someone has to leave your organization? In this episode of Reflect Forward, Kerry Siggins sits down with empathy expert and bestselling author Mimi Nicklin to explore one of the most difficult decisions leaders face. Letting someone go while balancing accountability and humanity. This conversation moves beyond theory and into the reality of leadership under pressure. Kerry and Mimi unpack what happens in the brain during high stress moments, why empathy often feels inconvenient, and how leaders can stay grounded when it matters most. Mimi reframes empathy as a cognitive and biological capability, not a soft skill. Together, they explore the difference between empathy, sympathy, and compassion, and why understanding that distinction is critical for making clear, effective decisions. They also challenge a common leadership belief. That empathy weakens accountability. Instead, this episode shows how empathy, when practiced with discipline, strengthens performance, trust, and culture. Kerry reflects on her own leadership journey, sharing how she has learned to hold difficult decisions with clarity while staying present and grounded. Key topics include: • How to handle termination conversations with empathy • The neuroscience of stress and decision making • Empathy vs sympathy vs compassion • Holding high standards without losing humanity • Leading through pressure without becoming reactive This is a conversation about who you become as a leader when the stakes are high. Connect with Mimi Website: www.empathyeverywhere.co Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/miminicklin/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miminicklin/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/miminicklin Connect with Kerry Visit Kerry’s website, kerrysiggins.com, to explore her book, The Ownership Mindset, and get more leadership resources. Let’s connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok! Find out more about her book here: https://kerrysiggins.com/the-ownership-mindset/ Check out her new book, coming out in Fall 2026: https://kerrysiggins.com/talk-with-trust/ Connect with her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-siggins/ Subscribe for more conversations on leadership, ownership, and personal growth. #Leadership #EmotionalIntelligence #Empathy #Management #CEO #ReflectForward