Maryanne Katsidis

Maryanne Katsidis Private Advisor to CEOs & Keynote Speaker | I identify what's shaping your leadership before you've named it | Clarity. Steadiness. Precision.
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Sometimes leadership asks us to care deeply.But what happens when caring deeply becomes something we carry?This week on ...
28/08/2026

Sometimes leadership asks us to care deeply.

But what happens when caring deeply becomes something we carry?

This week on More Than You're Saying, I’m joined by Jaylee Cooper, who has spent more than two decades working in the not-for-profit sector and the last nine years with Catherine House.

We talked about service.

About what it means to lead when the needs around you feel bigger than the resources available.

About the difference between empathy and taking someone else's pain home with you.

About the adaptations that can sit underneath capability.

And about something Jaylee sees every day in her work with women experiencing homelessness:

Sometimes dignity begins with being asked a very simple question.

What do you want?

This conversation reminded me that leadership isn't just about knowing what needs to be done.

Sometimes it's about being present enough to see the person in front of you and asking what matters to them.

Jaylee, thank you for such an honest and deeply human conversation.

🎙️ More Than You're Saying — now available.

You're lying in bed, and the conversation from three years ago starts playing again. Word for word. Like you could still...
25/08/2026

You're lying in bed, and the conversation from three years ago starts playing again. Word for word. Like you could still win it if you just found the right thing to say this time.

Resentment.
The adaptation loves it.

It wants to feast on it. It wants to stay attached to what happened because somewhere underneath it believes that letting go means forgetting.

Or worse, that it means what happened didn't matter.

So we keep the case open. We replay it. We explain it. We think about what should have happened. What they should have done. What we should have done.

And somewhere underneath all of that is the hope that one day justice will finally make everything feel different.

But what if the adaptation is holding onto resentment because it thinks resentment is protecting you?

How will you remember what happened if you let it go?
How will you make sure it never happens again?
And what does it cost when part of your attention is still occupied by a conversation, relationship or decision that happened years ago?

Staying resentful was never really about protecting the relationship. It was about protecting yourself from ever being fully in one again.

That's where I think this gets interesting.

Because remembering something and continuing to carry it aren't the same thing.

You can remember. You can have a boundary. You can know exactly what happened. And still decide you don't want to give it your life anymore.

I think this matters in leadership too. Because sometimes we think we're making a decision about what's happening now, when we're actually responding to what happened then.

That's a very different decision.

And perhaps freedom isn't always about forgiving someone. Sometimes it's about no longer making what they did the place you keep returning to.

I've carried resentment long enough to know exactly what it costs. Not the big, obvious cost. The quiet one, the attention it takes without ever asking permission.

If there's a decision, relationship or moment you're still carrying, a Recalibration Session is often the fastest way to see what it's actually costing you. Link in comments.

Anger has a bad reputation.Picture this. You're in a meeting, or a hallway conversation, or scrolling a message that jus...
24/08/2026

Anger has a bad reputation.

Picture this. You're in a meeting, or a hallway conversation, or scrolling a message that just landed wrong. Someone says something unfair, and before you've even decided how you're going to respond, something in you goes hot.

Most of us do one of two things next. We stay in the injustice of it, let it run the room. Or we swallow it, smile, and carry on, especially if we've never really felt allowed to have it in the first place.

That second one, the swallowing? That's not anger management. That's just making yourself smaller so nobody has to deal with you.

Here's what I've noticed instead, watching this in myself and in the leaders I sit with. When you actually look at what the anger is pointing at, rather than just managing the reaction, it starts to soften. Not because you talked yourself out of it. Because you finally saw what it was showing you.

Anger and compassion can live in the same room, once you know what you're actually looking at.

There's something else too. That fire, the fierceness, isn't asking to take control. A lot of the time it's asking you to hold a boundary you've been avoiding, or come back to something true you've been quietly ignoring. Maybe even something you're frustrated at yourself for not catching sooner.

And instead of hearing that, most of us shame ourselves for feeling it at all, like fierce and failed are the same thing.

So next time it shows up, before you push it down or let it drive, try asking:

What am I actually angry about?

What is this showing me?

What am I being asked to see here?

What is true?

I wonder how differently we'd see the people around us if we looked at them with a little more compassion too. Not to excuse anything. Not to make what happened okay. Just to actually see what's happening.

Because what we don't see in ourselves has a way of showing up in how we lead, decide, and relate.

I've lived this. Anger dressed up as control. As silence. As a decision made too fast to actually feel anything.

If anger's something you've been managing alone rather than actually looking at, a Recalibration Session is built for exactly this. Link in the comments.

One of the things I notice with leaders is that they often know exactly what they want to say.But somewhere between know...
14/08/2026

One of the things I notice with leaders is that they often know exactly what they want to say.

But somewhere between knowing and speaking... something changes.

The message becomes softer.
The difficult conversation waits.
The truth stays inside.

We often call it strategy.

Or timing.

Or diplomacy.

But what if something much more human is happening?

In this episode of More Than You're Saying, I sit down with Jacqueline Brooker to explore the hidden fear that quietly shapes our communication, our leadership and our relationships.

After spending ten years researching public judgement and the psychology behind it, Jacqueline arrived at a surprising discovery.

We're not simply afraid of being cancelled.

We're afraid of being misjudged.

Of being cast out.

Of losing our place with one another.

It's one of those conversations that stayed with me long after we finished recording.

If you've ever found yourself softening a truth, delaying a difficult conversation or wondering why speaking honestly can feel so difficult...

I think you'll find yourself somewhere in this conversation.

🎙️ Listen now.

We often assume we’re choosing between protection and possibility.I’ve started wondering if that isn’t the first questio...
05/08/2026

We often assume we’re choosing between protection and possibility.

I’ve started wondering if that isn’t the first question.

The first question is this:

What if the protection stopped being something you do…

…and became someone you believed you were?

That’s what I mean when I talk about adaptations.

The identities we build to survive, belong and succeed.

This is the work I do with leaders every day.

Not changing who they are.

Helping them recognise what they’ve mistaken for who they are.

Because once you can see an adaptation…

it no longer has to lead.

The most perceptive leaders I work with are often the ones least able to apply that clarity to themselves.I know this pa...
31/07/2026

The most perceptive leaders I work with are often the ones least able to apply that clarity to themselves.

I know this pattern because I lived it.

For years I could see what was happening underneath for everyone around me. And privately I was running, capable, effective, and carrying more than I was saying.

This episode is about that. The specific blind spot that lives inside genuine insight. What it costs. And what finally shifts it.

This is the most personal episode I've recorded.

I noticed something.This week I could feel an old adaptation quietly asking,"When will it be my turn?"At first I thought...
28/07/2026

I noticed something.

This week I could feel an old adaptation quietly asking,

"When will it be my turn?"

At first I thought it was about success.

Then I realised...

It wasn't asking for success.

It was asking for certainty.

It wanted reassurance that I wasn't too late.

That the work mattered.

That we were going to be okay.

I realised something else.

The adaptation wasn't trying to hold me back.

It was trying to protect me.

Once I recognised that...

I stopped arguing with it.

I noticed something.This week I realised my creative attention had quietly become occupied by irritation.I kept returnin...
24/07/2026

I noticed something.

This week I realised my creative attention had quietly become occupied by irritation.

I kept returning to it.

Checking it.

Thinking about it.

Replaying it.

Then I put a boundary in place.

And something unexpected happened.

There was space again.

It reminded me that attention is one of our most precious creative resources.

Where we place it shapes what we create.

There's something I've noticed in people doing original work.

There comes a point where they have to decide:

Am I going to spend my energy tracking the echoes...
..or creating the source?

The echoes will always exist.

They aren't the work.

The work is returning to the field.

Returning to the observation.

Returning to what only you can see.

So today...

I returned my attention to the work.

Perhaps that's your invitation too.

21/07/2026

Your body knows the truth before your mind has the language for it.
The question is: do you listen?

🎙️ Season 4 Episode 14: The Body Knows Before You Do
Out now.

I've been thinking a lot about one word lately.Adaptation.Not in the evolutionary sense.In the deeply human sense.I beli...
20/07/2026

I've been thinking a lot about one word lately.

Adaptation.

Not in the evolutionary sense.

In the deeply human sense.

I believe every one of us adapts.

We adapt to survive.

We adapt to belong.

We adapt to stay connected.

We adapt to succeed.

We adapt to feel safe.

These adaptations aren't flaws.

They're intelligent.

At some point in our lives, they solved a problem.

Perhaps we learned to become the capable one.

The achiever.

The peacemaker.

The one who never asked for help.

The one who carried everything.

Those adaptations may have helped us navigate our families, our workplaces, our relationships and our lives.

The problem isn't that we adapted.

The problem begins when we mistake those adaptations for who we are.

When "This is how I learned to survive" quietly becomes "This is who I am."

That's the conversation I'm increasingly interested in.

Not how we become someone new.

But how we recognise the adaptations we've mistaken for identity.

Because I don't believe the greatest limitation on human potential is capability.

I believe it's the adaptations we mistake for who we are.

And perhaps...

transformation isn't about becoming more.

Perhaps it's about remembering who we've been beneath those adaptations all along.

I'd love to know...

What adaptation has served you well, but may no longer be serving you now?

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