Sarala Life — Life in Chapters: Careers, Canines, Cabernet & Courage

Serious Faces, Silent Advocacy, and Other Curious Leadership Lessons

A conversation this week took me somewhere unexpected.

Someone told me they had recently experienced insecurity from another woman in leadership — and they said it quietly, almost apologetically, as though this kind of behaviour must surely be an anomaly.

It stopped me.

Not because it surprised me.
But because it reminded me how many of us still think these dynamics are isolated incidents rather than patterns.

Right now there’s a lot of conversation about ally leadership — particularly encouraging men to sponsor women, advocate for them in rooms they are not in, and move beyond passive mentorship.

And that is important.

But there is also a quieter, more uncomfortable truth we do not always talk about:
sometimes the resistance comes from other women.

Not always. Not even most of the time. But often enough to matter.

Women who refuse to advocate for other women because:

• they dislike you
• they see you as competition
• you trigger something unhealed in them
• or they simply cannot control you

I once had someone tell me — six months after the fact — that they could not advocate for me in a leadership conversation because my facial expression was serious during a serious meeting.

Apparently they “couldn’t tell what I was feeling.”

Six months.

Six months of silence.
Six months of withheld advocacy.
All because my face looked… serious.

In a serious meeting.

I wish I could say this story was unusual.

But as more millennials begin re-evaluating their relationship with work — and Gen Z enters the workplace with radically different expectations — these conversations are happening more openly.

People are asking questions like:

• What does leadership actually look like?
• Who is advocating for whom?
• And why does culture stay broken even when the people change?

Someone said something to me recently that has stayed with me:

“Culture doesn’t change just because people do. It lives in the bones of an organisation.”

And unless someone consciously chooses to rip out the bad and replace it with something healthier, people simply cycle through and adopt what already exists.

The problem is that culture change rarely shows up neatly in a KPI.

You cannot easily measure:

• psychological safety
• quiet advocacy
• or the courage to support someone who might outshine you

So the conversations stay theoretical while the behaviour stays the same.

Meanwhile… in the very human chapter of this week

This was a harder week for me.

I was achy.
Not sleeping well.
Fatigued in that annoying way where your body feels like it is negotiating with gravity.

I came down with an acute case of food poisoning that left me questioning the need for sanity.

Still — life continued.

Workouts happened.
Meetings happened.
Life happened.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I realised something very simple:

I miss my best friend.

She’s off living an incredible adventure right now, and for the first few months it almost felt normal — schedules get busy, weeks pass, you don’t see each other.

But in the second rotation of time, you feel it differently.

You suddenly realise that you cannot send a random message saying:

“Drinks tonight?”

And actually make it happen.

So naturally, I informed my husband that he needed to start doing “cutesy things” with me instead.

Bless him — he asked what exactly that meant.

We are still working through the definition.

The Mentorship Question

This week I also had a call with a mentee.

She showed up with an honesty and strength that honestly blew me away.

Later my husband asked me something that made me pause:

“How do you show up like that for people when you’re not feeling your best?”

It is a fair question.

The truth is, I am no longer a big advocate for the old autopilot push-through culture that defined so many of our careers.

But there are still moments when you show up because the responsibility matters.

The key difference now is this:

You do not sacrifice authenticity to do it.

You show up honestly.
Presently.
Without pretending everything is perfect.

Because ironically, the thing we all say we dislike — the “what looks good” culture — is often the thing we continue performing.

But what if something looks good…
and nobody has anything genuinely good to say about it?

That’s when living more honestly becomes the better metric.

The Big Question

Of course we cannot all abandon corporate life tomorrow and run off into private ventures (although some days that does sound appealing).

But something is shifting.

People are asking harder questions about:

• culture
• leadership
• self-worth
• and the cost of staying in environments that ask too much of your spirit

Sometimes the biggest change is not leaving.

Sometimes it is simply deciding:

“I will make the choices that are right for me before I am forced to.”

And now… the weekend.

As I write this, Isabella is sitting in the corner arguing with me for reasons known only to herself.

Last weekend was very social, so this one will be slower.

My ambitious plans include:

• pajamas
• watching My Lottery Dream Home (a personal weekend ritual if I’m honest)
• a soft workout
• Pilates and a walk
• and the most exhausting task of the weekend

Washing my hair.

So wherever you are in your own chapter this weekend — thriving, surviving, questioning, resting — I hope it unfolds exactly as you need it to.

Preferably in a way that carries you gently into Monday…

with absolutely no Monday scaries.

About the Author

Sarala writes about leadership, life transitions, corporate culture, and the messy human realities that sit behind professional success. When she isn’t advising organisations on governance and strategy, she is usually walking her dogs, reflecting on life’s chapters, or searching for the perfect glass of wine.