1192: How to Tackle Difficult Conversations to Build Stronger Relationships with Kerry Siggins

Pete Mockaitis
Kerry, welcome!

Kerry Siggins
Thank you, Pete. I’m so glad to be here. I can’t wait for this interview.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy, me, too. Well, tell us, Kerry, what is something fascinating and counterintuitive you’ve discovered about us humans and tricky conversations?

Kerry Siggins
Tricky conversations, yes. Well, I wrote a whole book on this because I hate having hard conversations. I’m a recovering people-pleaser, and I found myself avoiding difficult conversations because I was always worried about the consequence of having that conversation, “I’m going to make this person mad at me,” “They’re not going to like me,” “I’m going to damage the relationship.”

And what I’ve learned is that when you don’t have that conversation, you’re actually avoiding consequences that are far worse. And if you want to build trust with people, you need to have those conversations. You need to trust enough in yourself and in that relationship to be able to lean into it.

And if you don’t, truth withheld, usually makes things worse in the end. So that is what I’ve learned is really digging into, “What consequences am I avoiding? And what consequences are there going to be when I don’t have this conversation?” And that helps give me the courage to go say what needs to be said.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Far worse consequences, could you give us an example story here?

Kerry Siggins
Yes. so I just had something recently happen of an employee who was a great cultural fit, came into a role, she was struggling for a bit, I really wanted it to work out. I was trying to help her and I would see these little improvements. And so I was like, “Oh, I think we’re getting there. I think we’re getting there.”

And what I didn’t have was a bigger conversation around, “If these things don’t get fixed, if I don’t see market improvement, then there’s going to be bare consequences. Like, maybe this isn’t the right fit for you.” But I kept just hoping that she would get it, hoping things would turn around.

And then, ultimately, when they didn’t, I had to have a different conversation. And that was, “I don’t think this is the right fit, this role is the right fit for you.” And she was so upset with me because she was like, “Why didn’t you just tell me that from the beginning? I didn’t realize that my job was on the line.”

And I realized that I was avoiding having that conversation because I believed in her, I wanted her to succeed, I didn’t want to demoralize her. And if it didn’t work out, then I was going to have to take something on. I was probably going to have to take her direct reports.

And so I was avoiding these consequences, couching it under, “I’m just giving her more time. I’m just giving her a shot.” And she felt really blindsided when I actually told her, “Hey, this isn’t working,” because I didn’t have that direct of a conversation. And trust broke down.

And so that is an example of something that we all do as leaders in trying to help people who are struggling, but not just coming right out and saying, you know, “There are serious consequences if this doesn’t…if we don’t see a turnaround.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, I think that’s a really good nuanced distinction piece there in that you shared a portion of the key messages that needed to be shared with regard to, “This is what’s not working and needs to be adjusted,” but not the entirety of the messaging, which was, “And, in fact, this is so important if you don’t fix it, you’ll have to leave.” So that is the harder part to say.

Kerry Siggins
It is, and I didn’t say it. I didn’t want to say that. And then, ultimately, that’s what happened. And then that person was blindsided and it completely breaks down trust because, like, “We’ve been having these conversations for six months now. Why didn’t I know it was so serious?” And I had to say, “You’re right. And I’m sorry.”

And it made me feel like a really crappy leader because I know better than that. But it was one of those things that just snowballs. And the next thing you know, you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I haven’t been having the conversation that really needs to be had. And now I’m going to blindside this person. Why didn’t I just have that conversation the first time?”

It would be so much easier if the expectations were clear and the consequences were clear, then somebody has a choice, right? At this point, though, I took away that choice of, “Can I really step up into the role?” because I wasn’t having the full conversation.

So, truth, when you come right out and you say it and you just put it on the line, it gives people options, it gives people choices. It doesn’t mean that it’s always going to work out, but truth delayed, it usually is hurtful.

It usually damages relationships because that person feels like, “Why didn’t I know this? I could have done something about it. I could have done something differently if I would have known.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so great perspective there in terms of you are avoiding something in the short term, but it could be far worse in the long term. Alrighty. Well, tell us then, what are the best practices for finding the courage, for finding the words to go ahead and go in there in conversation?

Kerry Siggins
So I think the key is preparation. And it doesn’t have to be this long preparation, but, oftentimes, we go into conversations that are difficult and we haven’t really thought through, “What am I trying to get out of this? How do I make sure that I have accurate information? How do I get the other person’s perspective? How do I make sure that there’s a path forward so that it’s clear what expectations are going forward? And how do I stay grounded in this conversation?”

We just go in and we wing it. Or, maybe we spend a few minutes, like, writing down what we’re going to say. But if you have a process to prepare for these conversations, it makes all the difference in the world.

And that’s why I wrote my book, Talk with Trust, is that I have this model that I was just using intuitively. And then I had someone tell me, “You’re actually really good at having these difficult conversations and, like, making people feel good when they walk out of your office. How do you do it?”

And so I started to think about it and I was like, “Oh, I have a process that I do,” and that’s what is in my book Talk with Trust, which is the SHARES model. So the secret is going in with preparation and always seeking to understand, always going, “What is your perspective on this? What is going on?”

Help people stay in dialogue, and it’s so much more productive than you just coming in hot, giving the feedback, and then letting the person go. They don’t feel seen, they don’t feel heard, they don’t feel safe. And that’s our job as leaders is to be able to have the difficult conversations, but do it in a way that builds relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so the SHARES model, let’s hear it.

Kerry Siggins
So the first S is specify your ideal outcome. So that is, “What do you want from this conversation? What behavior change? What outcome do you want? What do you want the relationship to look like?” Know that going in because it helps keep you grounded, especially if things do get emotional.

The H is have your facts and feelings ready. You need to be able to have observable facts. People want that, “Give me an example.” You need to be able to state that, and you don’t want it to be your opinion, right?

You can say, “You were late for a meeting,” that is an observable fact. “You were late to this meeting because you don’t care about the team,” that is your opinion. And then the feelings piece of it is really important because they need to understand the impact.

So, “You’re late for this meeting, and the impact of the team is that we’re waiting for you, and it’s really frustrating for people. And then we have to go back and repeat what we had just talked about. That’s not working for the team.” So you have the observable fact and the impact. So people really understand what’s going on when you’re trying to give that feedback.

The A is my favorite, it’s articulate your experience. So we’re taught to use I statements, “I feel,” “I think,” as a way of owning your perspective. But, usually, the statement that comes after “I feel” still is a judgment, “So, Pete, I feel that you were disrespectful.”

And it’s like, “Whoa! Wait,” you know? So that sets people back. It creates defensiveness in people. But when you articulate your experience, and you say, “Hey, Pete, in this situation, when you said X, Y, Z, I experienced that as disrespect. And a story I told myself is that you don’t respect me. But I want to own that that’s my interpretation. Can we talk about this?”

Now you’re owning that it is the story that you told yourself, and you open it up for the next one, which is reflect with questions and dialogue, “Okay, is the story that I’m telling myself true? Is that what you intended? What was going on?”

When you have questions, it allows the other person to be in dialogue, where you could say, “Oh, Kerry, no, that wasn’t what I meant at all. I’m really sorry. I have X, Y, Z going on in my life and I was distracted.” Or, you say, “Yeah, Kerry, actually, I do respect you, but I am struggling with you right now because X, Y, Z happened. “

And now, all of a sudden, you’re in dialogue and you’re really understanding what’s happening. And that is such an important piece of creating psychological safety that the other person gets to be able to share their own experience, too.

The E is endorse a path forward, which is make sure that you have an out, like what success looks like, “What do you want from this?” So you have your outcome, “I need this behavior changed. Now, how do we get there?”

When you come and give someone feedback, especially an employee, and you don’t have a path forward and you just expect them to go do it, a lot of times you’re going to be disappointed.

And a lot of times when you’re giving somebody feedback, you’re giving that feedback because they’re struggling and they probably need help designing a path forward, getting to that successful outcome. So our job as leaders isn’t just to give them the feedback, but it’s also to be able to have them, help them see a path forward, a way forward.

And then the final S is stay emotionally grounded. And this is the thread that goes through all of these things because, oftentimes, when we’re giving feedback, we can feel emotional, we can feel upset about something, and then we might show up emotionally charged, which makes a person defensive.

Or, we may be grounded, but the other person gets emotional. And, oftentimes, we want to either fix it or we get defensive ourselves, we meet them where they’re at. And our job as leaders is to stay grounded. And so that’s the final S in the SHARES model.

So this is a whole process that you can walk yourself through to be able to have a difficult conversation in a way that builds trust rather than just winging it and hoping for the best.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Lovely. And how do you stay emotionally grounded if you are frustrated, annoyed, enraged during the course of the conversation? How do you stay grounded?

Kerry Siggins
So the biggest thing that I do is take a deep breath. When you take a deep breath, you calm yourself and it calms the other person, too. And as leaders, we have to hold ourselves accountable to managing our emotions. But it’s not always easy to do.

So if I am in a meeting with somebody and it gets heated, I put my feet on the ground and I just lean forward like this and I just take a deep breath. So I’m just going to pause for a minute, right? There’s power in the pause.

And I remind myself, “What is the outcome that I want? The outcome is that I want this relationship to be better. And so what do I need to do right now in this moment?” And taking that breath or two deep breaths is enough to help you reground yourself in that moment.

If you can’t, if you feel yourself getting angry and you’re going to say something that you are going to regret, I, 100%, think it’s okay to say, “You know what? I need time to process this conversation. I really don’t want to. I want to be thoughtful in what I want to say. And so can we circle back in an hour or back tomorrow?”

I did this when I got some of the toughest feedback I’ve ever received in my life. Several years ago, my VP of operations, who was my right hand man, told me that I was erratic and hard to work for. And my initial reaction was, “Get out of my office. If you don’t want to be here, you don’t have to be here. You can go.”

But I didn’t want to react that way. I wanted to understand what he was saying, but I was emotionally charged in that moment. And so I said to him, “Well, that was a lot. and that really stung. And I want to be able to have a conversation about this, but I can’t do that right now. I need to go process what you just said. Let’s circle back tomorrow.”

And if I would have had my initial reaction, it would have been really bad. By giving myself, you know, 18 hours to calm down, to process, to be thoughtful in the conversation that I wanted to have with him, the next day, it changed the path forward.

So there’s really important power in the pause and just saying, “Hey, I need a minute.” That’s okay. It’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. So you’re pausing and you’re breathing. Understood. With regard to the endorse a path forward, It’s funny, I really like the use of the word endorse, and not just because it makes your acronym work, but because it’s not the same as dictating, like, “And this is what you need to do, pal.”

Kerry Siggins
Exactly. Yeah, it encourages a shared path forward, and I think that that’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
And so could you, perhaps, give us some examples of how a full conversation cycle might unfold here?

Kerry Siggins
Sure. So I’ll give you an example why this is so important and why I put this into the model. I’ll give you a story of me in my 20s. So I had been in a sales role in my early 20s, really successful, left that company, went to another one, similar role, and, all of a sudden, I was struggling.

I wasn’t getting in front of decision-makers. I wasn’t closing deals. Everything that I had done in the previous company wasn’t working. And my boss called me into his office and he said, “You know, Kerry, we’re not seeing the sales numbers. And looking through your call logs in Salesforce, you’re not getting in front of the right people. You’re not getting in front of the decision-makers.”

And in my head, I was like, “Yeah, I know. Duh!” But I was like, “Yes, I get that.” He’s like, “So I need you to put together a plan and come back to me by the end of the week of how you’re going to change your approach,” and excused me from his office.

And I was so demoralized because I knew I wasn’t successful. I knew what was working in the past wasn’t working now, but I needed help. But there was no conversation about, “Hey, let’s brainstorm. Why don’t you role-play with me? I’ll be the client, you be you, and let’s walk through how you’re approaching this. Let me go on some calls with you to see.”

There was no collaboration or curiosity around how we do this better. And I left eventually. I left the company. And if he would have said, “Hey, I know you’re struggling. I want to help you. You are responsible for you,” because that’s what he was doing, he was creating accountability.

“But let’s do this. Let’s talk about how you can be more successful. Let’s get you some coaching. I’m going to go on a ride with you. You know, I would like to see a list of decision-makers. Let’s brainstorm this together,” I would have walked out going like, “Okay, I have a plan now that I can go execute to,” and it would have changed the entire experience.

So I think it’s really important to say, “This is what success looks like. Now let’s come up with a plan to help you get there,” and not just put it all onto the employee. They’re struggling for a reason.

So brainstorm with them, “What is it that you need? What are you trying that isn’t working? What roadblocks do you have? Do you not have clear expectations?” Those types of questions can help you put together a plan that when that employee leaves your office, they know what they need to go do. And then it’s up to them to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s a real nice illustration of, perhaps, extremes. One could be, quite simply, “Do X, Y, and Z, and that’s it. You know, here’s the answer. I dictate, I direct. And I pontificate, and that’s that.”

And then there’s the other extreme, which we saw you demonstrate from that manager, it’s like, “Give me a plan.” It’s like, “Okay, it’s all on you to generate the thing.” And, in a way, that’s nice. You’re not being micromanaged, but it’s not so nice, it’s like, “Do you care? Are you in this with me? Are we a team?”

So, yeah, I like that a lot in terms of being collaborative and helpful but also saying, like, “Yes, that thing you said, this is the one that I endorse,” because it’s quite possible that you could come back with a plan that was no good.

Well, so you said at the very end of the story, you left the organization. But maybe before that, tell us what happened when you came back with your plan?

Kerry Siggins
I came back with my plan, and he told me, “I think that this is okay. You need to do these three other things.” And so he dictated it, but I was actually grateful for it. And, at that point, though, I was already planning to leave the company.

And so I only gave it, like, I didn’t put very much effort into it because, at that point, I was like, “This isn’t going to work.” And so I think I quit, like, two weeks, two or three weeks later, like, “Okay, this isn’t working.”

So, by that point, I was pretty frustrated and I could see the writing on the wall. I was either going to quit or they were going to fire me, and I was like, “Okay, I’m just going to quit.”

So he gave me some feedback on it and then gave me, like, three additional things to add to the plan. But neither one of us were very invested in it at that point. So it didn’t really matter.

And it’s really interesting that that part of the story doesn’t stick in my head, like, how frustrated I was when I walked out of his office with no support. Yeah, good question. I got to think about that, like, “What did I do?”

Pete Mockaitis
I think we’re considering these things and we avoid the discomfort, the unpleasantness, there’s fear, all kinds of uncomfortable, you know, going maybe the back of the neck and your belly or wherever you feel it.

I’m curious, how much of our fear or perception of risk about whatever terrible consequences we imagine by going into these conversations, how much of that is real versus just entirely just a goblin of our imagination?

Kerry Siggins
I mean, it depends is the answer. You know, the better that you know the person, I think the better read you can have on the situation. But I found that almost every conversation that I had going in with a perception of how it was going to turn out, something was inaccurate about it, because you just don’t know, right?

We’re so sure that we know how things are going to go, that what people are going to say, how someone is going to react, and I always find myself surprised at what I learn in those conversations.

So, sometimes, I’m like, “This conversation is going to go really poorly.” And sometimes that is true. It does go really poorly because I know that person and they don’t like feedback and they’re going to get defensive and I have to give them their response.

But it’s almost not always as bad as I thought it was going to be. Sometimes, it was worse than what I thought it was going to be. But because I try to stay in dialogue and create that curiosity around, you know, “What are your experience? What do you feel? What happened?” I always gain some type of insight.

So I’ll give you an example. I had to have a conversation with an employee. She didn’t report to me, but something happened and it involved me. And so I debated on giving her feedback, “Should I give it to her or should her boss give it to her?’ And I was like, “You know what? I’m going to give it to her because I’m the one who is part of this story.”

And I, honestly, thought like, “I’m going to fire her. She’s probably going to get emotional. And like what happened was a breach of confidentiality. And so I’m probably going to let her go, but I’m going to ask, I’m going to seek to understand. I’m going to use my SHARES model.”

And so I did. I had the conversation and she immediately owned it. And I was expecting her to deny, to try to figure out how to deflect, and she just came in and she owned it, which changed how I felt about it.

People make mistakes all the time, and when you own it, for me at least, I’m so much more willing to be forgiving and to help that person through it. And so she owned it. And so I was like, “Okay, I don’t think I’m going to fire her. But this is all in my head. And I could see that she was just really scared.”

And I was like, “Why don’t you just tell me what was going on with you at that time? I’m trying to understand why you made the decision that you made.” And she told me this, like, really personal story about something that was going on in her life.

And I realized that she made a huge mistake, she didn’t handle it well, and she needed help. So the conversation went like I thought it was going to, in fact, that she did get emotional.

It didn’t go the way that I thought I was going to fire her because she did own it. I didn’t expect her to own it. And I learned something really important about her that helped me help her get some help. And at the end of the conversation, she gave me a big hug and she was like, “Thank you so much for not firing me, and thank you so much for listening to me.”

And six months later, she’s thriving. We were able to support her with this personal thing that was going on. And so that surprises me, right? And so part of my expectations were accurate and part of them weren’t. And because of the way I handled it, I now have a personal, a better relationship with her that I wasn’t expecting to have.

Those kinds of things happen all the time in these conversations, but we have to seek to understand. We’ve got to make sure that we just don’t come in hot, say what we need to say, and do not give that other person a chance to be able to talk through it with you because there’s always going to be something that you learn.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s great advice when you’re on the receiving end of these conversations as well, that owning it is the right answer.

Kerry Siggins
Yes. Always.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, you were expecting, “Okay, well, she’s going to get defensive, then I’m going to fire her. That’s how this is going to go.” So, one, you were surprised that that did not happen. And I suppose, I was also recently talking to someone who was in a position of, you know, thinking, “Oh, I might need to fire someone shortly.”

And I said, “Well, you know what, I’m going to raise the concerns with her and we’ll you know see what happens.” And I was so struck by how, and maybe I’m just, like, spoiled because I’ve had over a thousand of these conversations with experts on workplace matters, such that he had some thoughts about what he noticed and what he would like to see differently.

And she just, basically, you know, argued that he was wrong, that he was mistaken in his perception. And I was just like, “Oh, that’s just the wrong answer.” It’s like, “Even if you believe it,” I was like, “It’s so the wrong answer. I think ChatGPT or Claude could have told you what to say. And it, off the shelf, no knowledge of deep context could tell you the right words or words that would be far better than those words.”

So there’s that. You’ll be surprised. And, yeah, owning it just always goes better.

Kerry Siggins
Always. Always. Always. Always. The cover-up is always worse than the crime. Nobody wants to work with a victim. Nobody wants to work with somebody who is defecting or blaming. And we do it because we’re protecting ourselves, right?

When we deny, blame, say that, you know, argue with somebody about why they’re wrong, it’s because they’re brushing up against what we believe about ourselves and we feel the need to defend who we are.

But my philosophy is that there’s always something to own in every piece of feedback that you ever receive, even if it’s just perception management. So, like, this woman didn’t, you know, didn’t agree, but it’s the other person’s perspective.

So it’s their perception. So maybe I should be curious about why they have this perception so that I can go, “Huh, okay. Is this just an image management issue, a perception management issue? Or is there actually something that I should dig deeper?”

And human nature is that we want to be right. And that’s why we argue, “I want to be right. I would much rather be accurate.” And so when I feel the need to protect my point of view, I pause and say, “Do I want to be right or do I want to be accurate? I want to be accurate.”

So I should stop and listen and ask more questions and make sure that the way that I’m seeing this is actually correct, because if it’s not, I might make a decision or I might continue to do something. And based on this idea of, like, “I’m right” versus “I’m accurate.” So it’s a great tool to just pause when you feel yourself getting defensive because it’s usually we want to be right.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Kerry, tell us, in your experience, what are some top do’s and don’ts that you’ve seen over and over again that make all the difference?

Kerry Siggins
So the number one do is prepare. Always prepare, even if it’s five minutes, you can just use the SHARES model, just quickly jot down, “What outcome? Here’s the facts. Here’s my feelings. Here’s the five questions I’m going to ask. Here’s the path forward that I would like to see.” Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. Like, you preparing is so important.

The next do is make sure that you are grounded. If you are upset, it’s not the time to have the conversation. Don’t go into a conversation when you’re already angry. It is probably not going to go well because you are not in control of your emotions.

So pause. Take a day, take a night, take a shower, go for a walk. Whatever you need to do to calm your nervous system down to prepare to have that conversation, you’ve got to make sure you’re grounded.

My first don’t is don’t argue with the person. That almost never is going to get you anywhere. It doesn’t get you anywhere with your spouse. It doesn’t get you anywhere with your employees. It doesn’t get you anywhere with your boss.

And so if you feel the need to argue, it’s really good to just say, “I’ve got to pause. I feel like I need to defend myself here and I’m falling out of curiosity. And so I just need to ground myself.”

But whenever we start to go into our respective corners, that is when conversations fall apart and that is when trust falls apart. So when you feel yourself going into that corner because you want to argue a point, that’s a really good time to pause and just stop.

And then the other don’t that I would have is don’t assume that you are accurate. We humans think we have it all down, and we don’t. So seek to understand. Be curious. Don’t assume that your perception of what’s going on is accurate.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think that’s a tremendous lesson for all humans at all times. Yeah, don’t assume that your perceptions are accurate, I think, is a tremendous mantra, lesson, to hold firm. And I heard of that term recently, the cognitive bias is called naive realism, the belief that you see the world objectively, and anyone who disagree with you must be uninformed, irrational, or biased, coined by psychologist Lee Ross.

And I think that’s so perfect. It’s, like, I think that’s almost just like the air we breathe, the water we drink. It’s, like, “Well, yeah,” like you don’t even stop to question that you might be totally off base with your perception. So I love that.

Kerry Siggins
Yeah, we do. Just because you think it, doesn’t make it true. Well, I mean, let’s face it, like we are getting hit  with something like 11 million bits of information per second, and the brain can process something like 50. Your brain is filtering out the vast majority of input that it’s receiving in a given moment.

And so, of course, your perception of reality is not the same as the person next to you. They are processing different information. Those 50 bits can be completely different than your 50 bits.

And so it just comes down to science. Like, your version of reality is simply your version, and it doesn’t mean that it’s accurate, and it doesn’t mean that it’s the next person’s. In fact, it’s not.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s dead on. And so when you talk about don’t argue, the notion of spouse, partner, sort of peers, or, you know, you’re the junior to manager, I totally get how not arguing there is great.

Now let’s say, though, you are the boss and, you know, you say, “Hey, I observed dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah,” and then, yeah, I don’t know, the person, more or less, says, “Uh-uh.”

And so it’s funny, like, when emotionally, it’s like you’re hooked. It’s like, “Excuse me? Like, this is night and day. I observed this thing. How can you say, you know, the sky is not blue?”

You know, it feels very alerting when someone just, like, straight-up contradicts you, and maybe it just seems like a total unambiguous, unassailable, like fact, you know, rooted in truth and data, how do you not argue when someone just denies what you sure think is true?

Kerry Siggins
Yeah, that’s a really tough one. So here’s the difference. There’s a difference between arguing and debating. And arguing has this sense of emotion in it. And when you argue, people go to their corners and then they get more entrenched in, “No, I’m right,” “No, I’m right.”

And that does not mean, though, that you don’t have a healthy debate. So what I do when somebody says something to me that I believe is simply just not accurate, not true, does not in align with what I perceive it to be, I ask questions, “Okay, you know, that is absolutely not how I see it, but I want to understand from you. Like, where did you come up with that? Help me understand.”

That is such a powerful way to reframe it, “Help me understand,” because then, the person then is going to have to defend their point of view. And then it’s so much easier to say, “Okay, what you just said there, like that’s where I see it differently. Let’s talk about that.” So you can still have a conversation and you can still debate, but when you argue, that is when emotions rise and that’s when people go into their corners.

So when somebody comes back at me as the boss and says, “You know, I disagree with you,” I’m not going to argue with it. I approach it with curiosity, “Okay, tell me why. Give me an example. Show me how. Give me your thought process there.”

And, oftentimes, I can get them to my side because we just talk through it. And sometimes, I’m like, “Oh, you know what? I can see that point of view. I still might not agree with it, but I can accept that point of view.” Curiosity is the antidote to defensiveness, to arguing, to going into your corners.

So that’s how I approach it, is be curious. Because we as leaders, we don’t want to shut people down, we don’t want to make people feel stupid, even when somebody says something stupid, which happens all the time.

Like, you don’t want to make that person feel that way, right? They’re learning, they’re developing, they’re growing, they have their different worldviews. So ask questions and have a dialogue about it. It’s okay to debate. It’s okay to say, “I disagree with you,” but going back and forth and arguing, it’s going to diminish trust and it doesn’t feel good for anybody.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Good deal. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Kerry Siggins
I love Brene Brown and, “Clarity is kindness,” is my favorite quote because I have to remind myself, like the example that I gave you of the very first time when I was dancing along the fringes of feedback, the tactical part of feedback, instead of the whole consequence.

I always need to remind myself that clarity is confidence, or clarity is kindness. If I am not being clear in my expectations, in the way that I feel, the way that I think, then how can I expect somebody else to be able to live up to those expectations, meet those expectations, somehow understand me better?

So my favorite quote is, “Clarity is kindness” from Brene Brown.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Kerry Siggins
I think my favorite book, I use it all the time, is, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. It helps you define strategy so well. And I use it in all the boards I sit on with the CEOs, and I use it in my own company.

And so, as a CEO, you know, or as a leader, you need to define good strategy and have everybody aligned to it. And I think Good Strategy, Bad Strategy is the best.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Kerry Siggins
I mean, ChatGPT, hands down. My life has been changed by AI. Oh, my gosh, I am so much smarter because of the power of that kind of information and automation at my fingertips. It’s amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Kerry Siggins
Exercising. I love to exercise.

Pete Mockaitis
And a key nugget you share that seems to really connect and resonate with folks, they quote it back to you often?

Kerry Siggins
“Seek to understand,” that phrase is used here throughout my organization. And I said it probably 18 years ago when I started. I was like, “Well, I’m just going to seek to understand here.” And I think it is so powerful.

Before we go and spout our opinion, or get angry about something, if we just said, “No, I’m going to seek to understand,” it would change the dynamic of everything. So seek to understand.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Kerry Siggins
You can go to my website, KerrySiggins.com. Everything is there, my book, Talk with Trust; my first book, The Ownership Mindset, which is back here; my podcast, the Kerry Siggins podcast; and everything about speaking, advising, the company that I run, Stone Age, everything is there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their job?

Kerry Siggins
Yeah, so I have this amazing Talk with Trust Leadership experience that I do. I can do it virtually and it is game-changing. The companies that I have worked with on it have changed the way that they have difficult conversations and how they lean into them and how they prepare for them.

And so if it’s something that you’re interested in learning more about, reach out to me because I think that there’s nothing more important than learning how to have difficult conversations. So much of the world’s problems come down to crappy communication, and not having difficult conversations well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Kerry, thank you.

Kerry Siggins
Thank you. It’s been so much fun, Pete.