The Quiet Cost of Avoiding Honest Conversations: Kati Peterman on Male Leadership

Mind Over Masculinity · Jul 6, 2026 · 23m

There's a quiet cost to being the man in the room who's expected to hold everything and say nothing. Most male leaders are still being taught that composure is strength and that hard conversations should be avoided rather than had. And the bill for that arrives slowly, in burnout, in stalled teams, in companies that should be thriving but aren't.

In this episode of Mind Over Masculinity, Sayan sits with fractional executive Kati Peterman, who has worked with over 1,200 business owners, the majority of them men, to talk about what she keeps seeing in male-led companies: the misconception that…