Kerry Siggins Podcast

Kerry Siggins
  • 5.0 (36)
  • Business
  • Updated Biweekly

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.

  1. 5d ago

    How to Lead When Everyone's Looking at You for Answers

    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

    How to Lead When Everyone's Looking at You for Answers

  2. Sep 1

    Why Your Team's CONFLICT Isn't About What You Think

    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

    Why Your Team's CONFLICT Isn't About What You Think

  3. Aug 25

    Right vs. Accurate - What Great LEADERS Choose

    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

    Right vs. Accurate - What Great LEADERS Choose

  4. Aug 18

    What Happens When Leaders Get Triggered

    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

    What Happens When Leaders Get Triggered

  5. Aug 11 ·  Video

    How to stay calm when someone gets EMOTIONAL at work

    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

    How to stay calm when someone gets EMOTIONAL at work

  6. Aug 4

    The Leadership Mistake That Keeps People Stuck

    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

    The Leadership Mistake That Keeps People Stuck

  7. Jul 28

    The Biggest Lesson From Decades of Running a Company | 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

    The Biggest Lesson From Decades of Running a Company | Kerry Siggins

  8. Jul 21

    Your Team Isn’t Defensive. You’re Giving Feedback Wrong | Kerry Siggins

    Most leaders assume that when someone gets defensive during a feedback conversation, it means they cannot handle feedback. Kerry used to think that too. Years of leading as a CEO have taught her that defensiveness almost always has the same cause. The person sitting across from you has just been handed a conclusion about their intentions instead of a description of what you actually experienced. Those are two very different things to receive. Kerry is not sharing this as someone observing leadership from the outside. She runs a company and has these conversations every week, sometimes in situations where she does not know walking in whether someone will still have a job when the conversation ends. This is work she lives every day, not just something she teaches. In this third installment of the SHARES series, Kerry explores the A: Articulate Your Experience. She also shares a story about someone who repeatedly canceled meetings with her and the assumptions she built around why it was happening. What she discovered was a powerful reminder for every leader: your experience can be real while your interpretation can still be wrong. When you stop presenting your assumptions as facts, you create space for curiosity, understanding, and trust. Because that is where better leadership conversations begin. 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

    Your Team Isn’t Defensive. You’re Giving Feedback Wrong | Kerry Siggins
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5
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Kerry Siggins
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    Kerry Siggins Podcast

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