Women Leaders Difficult Conversations: The SHARES Framework Kerry Siggins Uses to Build Trust

Last updated: August 27, 2026 Trusted by leaders at Stanford University, Ernst & Young, Autodesk, MGM Grand Resorts, and Farmers Insurance Executive Summary: Most women leaders avoid difficult conversations to protect relationships — and that avoidance is what actually destroys trust. StoneAge CEO Kerry Siggins built the six-step SHARES framework after a piece of brutal feedback changed her leadership. Here's exactly how it works. Quick Takeaways: Difficult conversations delayed almost always get harder, not easier, over time The SHARES framework has six steps you can prepare in under ten minutes Organizations with regular feedback see 14.9% lower turnover rates Wanting to "be right" is the single biggest killer of workplace trust Feedback without a credible next step leaves people hopeless, not motivated Jump to: Why It Happens · The SHARES Framework · Examples · Action Plan · FAQ As an executive leadership coach with over 30 years of experience (MA, MFT, PCC) working with Fortune 50–1000 companies, I hear the same confession from brilliant, accomplished women leaders almost every week: "I know I need to have this conversation. I just keep putting it off." If you've been carrying a difficult conversation you haven't had yet — with a direct report, a peer, a boss, even a spouse — you are in very good company, and it is costing you more than you think. On this episode of the Women's Leadership Success Podcast, I sat down with Kerry Siggins, CEO of StoneAge (an employee-owned manufacturer of high-pressure water jetting equipment) and author of the new book Talk With Trust: How to Own Feedback, Spark Growth, and Build Stronger Teams. Kerry built her career on hard conversations — including one that nearly ended her leadership before it began. What she learned from it became the SHARES framework, a six-step system for women leaders navigating difficult conversations without torching the relationship in the process. Take the 2-minute survey at WomensLeadershipSuccess.com/survey Why Women Leaders Avoid Difficult Conversations — And What It Actually Costs Nobody avoids a hard conversation because they're lazy. Women leaders avoid difficult conversations because they're afraid of the consequence: a damaged relationship, an angry reaction, a reputation for being "too much." As Kerry put it on the show, "We're all not having a conversation that we know we need to have because we're afraid of the consequences." The problem is that the consequence of silence is almost always worse than the consequence of speaking. The research backs this up. Recent workplace data shows organizations with regular employee feedback see 14.9% lower turnover, while highly engaged teams — the kind built through honest dialogue — report 21% greater profitability (Careertrainer.ai, 2026). On the trust side, the numbers are sobering: employer trust fell to 76% in the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, and a 21-point gap now separates how much executives trust their organizations (91%) versus how much individual contributors do (70%). Every unspoken conversation widens that gap. Kerry's own turning point came from a conversation she didn't get to control. Her COO — her right-hand operational partner — had been quietly building resentment for a year. It came out in a blowup: "You think you're this inspiring CEO who disrupts the industry, but really what you are is erratic, and you're really hard to work for." Kerry's instinct was to fire him on the spot. Instead, she went home and sat with it. That single piece of painful, poorly-delivered feedback became the foundation for Talk With Trust — and for the SHARES framework she now teaches leaders everywhere. Your team is asking themselves this question constantly, whether they say it out loud or not: can I trust you? I broke this down recently on LinkedIn into three pillars — and it's the exact groundwork that makes a framework like SHARES actually work, instead of just sounding good on paper. Trust isn't built in o