The Yes That Changed Everything
I said yes before I'd thought it through.
A colleague, a friend, asked me to MC the Waikato Secondary Schools event. And before the sensible part of my brain could catch up, I'd already agreed.
Then the panic set in.
What had I done? I was the person who sat quietly in staff meetings. The one who chose her words carefully and said as little as possible. Standing up in front of a room full of people and holding the whole thing together was not something I did. It wasn't who I was.
Except apparently I'd just said I would.
I don't think she knew how terrified I was. She just asked. Straightforwardly, like it was obvious. Like she could already see me doing it. And something in that - the way she asked without hesitation, without wondering if I could handle it - made me say yes before I could talk myself out of it.
So I did it. Terrified. Probably not perfectly. But I did it.
And something shifted. Not overnight. Not dramatically. But that yes opened a door I didn't know was there. It started me on a path of public speaking that I couldn't have predicted and wouldn't have chosen on my own. Not then.
Here's what I've been thinking about since. She didn't give me confidence. She couldn't. Confidence isn't something someone else can hand you. But she gave me something just as important. She gave me an opportunity I wouldn't have given myself. And she believed I could do it before I did.
That's a kind of leadership that doesn't get talked about enough.
Because we spend a lot of time thinking about the big calls. The strategy. The decisions. The hard conversations. And they matter. But sometimes the most significant thing a leader does is notice something in someone that they can't yet see in themselves. And then ask. Simply. Without making a big deal of it. Just — I think you could do this. Will you?
Most people are waiting for permission they'd never give themselves.
And you might be the person who gives it.
Look around your team right now. Who are you not asking? Who's sitting quietly, saying little, choosing their words carefully - and capable of so much more than they're showing you?
Ask them. Don't overthink it. Just ask.
Because you might not know how terrified they are. And that's ok. Neither did she.
The Conversation
Who in your world needs someone to believe in them before they believe in themselves?
And what's stopping you from being that person for them?
Arohanui
Mary-Anne 😊
The Voice Inside Your Head
The Voice Inside Your Head
I drove home from a workshop once and didn't hear a single song on the radio.
Two hours. And my brain was too busy replaying every moment that hadn't landed the way I wanted. The bit that felt clunky. The question I fumbled. The energy in the room at that one point that I couldn't quite read. By the time I got home I'd practically talked myself into never delivering a workshop again.
Then I didn't sleep. Because apparently two hours of self-critique wasn't enough.
The feedback came back a few days later. It was great. Genuinely good feedback. People had valued it. Things had landed. And do you know what my inner critic did with that information?
Found a way to hold on anyway. Yes but you could have done that bit better. Yes but imagine how good it could have been.
That voice. We all have one. And for a lot of us, it's the loudest one in the room.
It doesn't show up when things go wrong. It shows up when we've done something that matters to us. When we've put ourselves out there. When we've tried. That's when it gets busy. Picking apart the edges. Replaying the moments. Measuring the gap between what happened and what we'd imagined.
And here's what I've come to understand about that voice. It's not trying to destroy you. It's trying to protect you. It's the part of you that cares deeply about doing good work. About showing up well. About mattering.
But left unchecked, it doesn't make you better. It just makes you smaller. Too scared to try again. Too focused on the gap to see what you actually did.
The work isn't silencing it. You won't. I haven't. The work is learning not to hand it the microphone.
Because that voice will always find something. Always. If you let it run the show it will talk you out of the workshop, the conversation, the decision, the room. And the world will lose something it actually needed.
The feedback was great. And I could probably do better next time. Both things are true. The difference is which one I choose to lead with.
The Conversation
Where is your inner critic running the show right now? And what would it look like to hear it, acknowledge it, and then put it back in its place?
Go with confidence this week
Mary-Anne :)
The Hunger Games Effect
There's a pattern I keep seeing in organisations right now. And it worries me.
Two leaders pulling in different directions. Not because they don't care. Not because they're not capable. But because the external message about what was expected wasn't clear enough. And in that gap, the confusion found somewhere to land.
Not on the system that created it. On each other.
I see this play out in a lot of contexts. And it almost never starts with the people. It starts with the pressure.
External change that isn't well communicated. Shifting expectations that leave people guessing. Competing demands that force impossible prioritisation. Comparison that pits teams against each other. Blame that rolls downhill and lands on the people closest to the work.
And when that pressure arrives without clarity, without context, without enough support to make sense of it, teams do what humans do under stress. They look for certainty where they can find it. They protect their patch. They lead from their own interpretation because nobody has given them a shared one.
And suddenly people who were previously good together are working at cross purposes. Not because they don't care. Because they're trying to navigate something genuinely unclear, and doing it without a shared map.
That's the hunger games effect. When external pressure creates internal competition. When the real disruption is coming from outside but it's playing out inside. When the culture you worked hard to build starts fracturing not from the inside out, but from the outside in.
And the tragedy of it is this. The team often doesn't realise what's happening until the damage is already done. Until the trust has eroded. Until the shortness and the distance and the quiet pulling apart have become the new normal.
So what does it take to stop it?
It takes someone being willing to name it. To stand in front of the team and say, the disruption we're feeling isn't us. It's coming from outside. And we're not going to let it take our culture with it.
That's a leadership act. A quiet, deliberate, powerful one.
It means getting clear internally even when the external message is muddy. Agreeing on what you know, what you don't know, and how you'll move forward together until the clarity arrives. Not waiting for permission to be a coherent team.
It means protecting the relationships. Especially when the pressure is highest. Because the relationship between colleagues, between leaders, between a team is the thing that holds everything else together. And once it fractures under pressure it takes far longer to repair than it did to build.
And it means resisting the pull to compare, to blame, to turn inward in ways that cost the culture. Because other organisations are not your competition. Other teams are not your benchmark. The only question worth asking is, are we doing right by the people in front of us and the people beside us?
External pressure is real. The demands are real. The confusion is real. But so is the culture you've built. And it's worth more than any external expectation that wasn't communicated clearly enough to be worth fracturing over.
Don't let the outside in.
The Conversation
Is this pattern showing up in your team right now? How are you managing it? I'd love to hear.
Go with Care this week
Mary-Anne
The Identity Shift No One Talks About
I remember stewing on a conversation for days.
Someone in my team had dropped the ball. It needed addressing. Pretty straightforward, except for one thing. That person was my friend. Had been long before I became their leader.
So I wrote it down. Revised it. Rewrote it again. Ran through how it might go in my head about a hundred times. Then finally had the conversation.
And it didn't go perfectly. Turns out I'd been unclear on a couple of things myself. I had to own that. We worked through it together and got to a good place. But what stayed with me wasn't the conversation itself. It was everything that came before it.
All that stewing. All that second-guessing. Not because the issue was complicated. But because I hadn't quite figured out who I was supposed to be in that moment.
Because something shifts when you move from being part of a team to leading one. And it's not what most people expect.
It's not the skills that catch you out. It's the identity.
One day you're a colleague. A friend. Someone who does the work alongside people. Then suddenly you're the one responsible for having the hard conversation when the work isn't good enough. And the friendship that used to make everything easier is now the thing making it harder.
That's the shift nobody really prepares you for. From doing to developing. From being one of the team to being responsible for the team. And it doesn't happen in a day. It's a slow recalibration of who you are in the room.
What I've come to understand is this. Letting go of the old identity isn't disloyalty to the friendships or the work you loved doing. It's what the role actually asks of you. Because what you hold onto, you limit. And what you release, you multiply.
The conversation I'd been dreading? It worked out. Not because I got it perfectly right. But because I showed up to it as a leader rather than a friend trying to avoid an awkward moment.
That's where it starts.
The Conversation
Think about the role you're in now. Is there a version of your old self you're still holding onto? A relationship, a habit, a way of showing up that used to serve you but might be getting in the way?
What is leadership asking you to release?
Arohanui
Mary-Anne 😊
Why Do We Make Excuses For People Who Treat Us Badly?
I've worked with someone who made me scared to ask a question.
Not because I didn't know what I was doing. Not because the question wasn't valid. But because I never quite knew what reaction I'd get. Would they snap? Dismiss it? Make me feel like I should have already known the answer? So I'd think about it. Weigh it up. Wonder if it was worth it. And more often than not, I'd stay quiet.
And here's the thing. I wasn't alone. Everyone around me was doing the same thing. Tiptoeing. Carefully choosing their words. Softening their approach. Bracing slightly before speaking.
We all knew. Nobody said it.
Instead we said things like, that's just how they are. You get used to it. Once you get to know them you'll like them. They mean well. They're just direct.
And I've been thinking about that ever since. Because those phrases sound like understanding. Like generosity. Like giving someone the benefit of the doubt.
But sometimes they're just a way of making peace with something that isn't ok.
Because when we normalise behaviour that makes people scared to ask a question, we don't just protect the person doing it. We silence everyone around them. We send a message, this is just how it is here. Adjust yourself accordingly. And people do. They get smaller. They stop contributing fully. They save their best thinking for somewhere it feels safer to share it.
And the cost of that is enormous. Not just to the people tiptoeing. To the whole team. To the work. To the culture.
So why do we do it? Why do we make excuses for people whose behaviour isn't ok?
Sometimes it's about power. When someone is more senior, more established, more certain than us, it feels easier to adapt than to name it. The risk feels too high. And the fear of their reaction, of being dismissed, humiliated, or making things worse, keeps us exactly where we are.
Sometimes it's about loyalty. We know the person. We know they're not bad. We separate their behaviour from their intention and give the intention the benefit of the doubt.
And sometimes it's simpler than that. We just don't have the language. We don't know how to name it without it becoming a bigger deal than we feel equipped to handle.
But here's what I've learned. When we don't name it, it doesn't go away. It just goes underground. And underground it does more damage, not less.
So what do you do when you're scared of the reaction? Here are some approaches that protect you while still moving things forward.
Name the pattern, not the person. In a team setting, raise it as a general question rather than about anyone specific. Something like, how do we make sure everyone feels comfortable raising ideas and questions here? It opens the conversation without anyone feeling targeted. Including you.
Use curiosity instead of critique. Rather than naming the behaviour directly, approach it as wanting to understand. Something like, I want to make sure I'm communicating well with you. Can I ask what works best when I need to raise something? It puts the framing on you rather than them, which lowers the defensiveness immediately.
Find one trusted person first. Before you do anything, say it out loud to someone you trust. Not to gossip. Just to reality check. Am I reading this right? That alone reduces the isolation and helps you figure out your next move.
Write it before you say it. If you need to raise something directly, write it down first. Not to send, just to get clear on what you actually want to say and what outcome you're looking for. It slows the emotional brain down and helps you find the words before you're in the room.
Choose your moment carefully. Timing matters enormously with reactive people. Catch them when they're settled, not rushed or stressed. A quieter moment one on one is almost always safer than raising something in a group.
None of these are guaranteed. But all of them are better than staying quiet and getting smaller.
Because the behaviour that goes unnamed gets permission to continue. And everyone in the room pays the price.
The Conversation
Is there someone in your world whose behaviour you've been making excuses for?
And instead of staying quiet, what's one small move you could make this week?
Go with confidence this week
Mary-Anne