The Unbelievable Truth About Advocacy Leadership
Updated: Aug 24
Written by Janet Vantriet, Certified Organisational Ombudsman, Conflict & Culture Strategist and Founder
Janet Vantriet is a Certified Organisational Ombudsman and conflict‑resolution specialist who supports leaders, human resources (HR) teams and boards to navigate workplace conflict, drive culture transformation and conduct risk management with independence, confidentiality and clarity.
Have you ever been in a team meeting when an uncomfortable topic has been raised and the leader has simply brushed past it? Or worked in an environment where subtle bullying has been passed off as humour? Leadership is most visible in moments of discomfort, conflict or tension. While traditional leaders might default to avoidance, control or compliance, there’s an emerging practice that sees conflict as information and opportunity. Let’s talk advocacy leadership.
Discomfort happens, avoidance shouldn’t
For every leader, no matter the industry, the role, the team or the organisation, there will come a time when things get uncomfortable. You will almost certainly have experienced this yourself. (No, I’m not talking about the awkwardness of a video conference goodbye.)
In those uncomfortable moments, everyone feels it, but most are afraid to tackle the issue head-on. Nobody wants to be the one to shake up the status quo or open themselves up to attack. Most leaders want the tension to dissipate and the team to stay focused on their goals. So, they redirect, the moment passes, and the team moves on. Only, they don’t really.
As any aspiring pop-psych influencer with an Instagram login will tell you, avoiding an issue doesn’t mean it goes away. It simply goes underground. This can lead to major problems down the line.
Fast-forward a few months, and you’ll find a team that nods in agreement during meetings but holds the real conversations in hushed whispers afterward. A team whose trust is slowly eroding, not just in the leadership, but in the organisation as a whole. Fundamentally, that’s a fractured team.
When leaders advocate for themselves instead of their team
This isn't just a theoretical concept. It plays out in workplaces every day, often in ways that aren't immediately obvious. Consider the following example.
I once had a colleague who was hired into a team with a charismatic leader who had really impressed her at first. He was friendly and charming and appeared to be brimming with knowledge. But it wasn’t long before the cracks began to show, and she started to realise that it was all a façade to hide the fact that the leader’s focus was on advocating for himself, not for his team.
At first, the warning signs were subtle. There were rude comments thinly veiled as jokes or sarcasm. Team members were hired and promoted because they fell in line with the leader’s approach and kept any complaints or negativity to themselves. Worse, the achievements of individual team members were downplayed, and the achievements of the team as a whole were fully attributed to the leader alone.
Then came a situation that changed everything. An issue arose between her team and another, and a project key performance indicator (KPI) fell through the cracks. My colleague still isn’t sure exactly what happened because it wasn’t handled openly. Facts weren’t gathered. Assumptions replaced conversations, rumours were believed over facts, and, before long, the issue had escalated far beyond the original concern.
The leader was approached to determine what went on, but instead of being open and backing his team, he threw them under the bus. He completely undermined team trust, and things went from bad to worse. This was the opposite of advocacy leadership.
The leader senior to him challenged the accusations made against the team. When confronted with this hard truth, this leader made a second mistake, he didn’t acknowledge his misstep but made further attacks on the entire team. Despite earning accolades throughout the company for their work performance, this leader tried to performance-manage several members of his own team out of the business. The bullying then spread to other team members and eventually tore the team apart.
When leaders advocate for their team
Eventually, the concerns reached senior leadership. Rather than accepting one version of events or rushing to defend a senior leader, they took a different approach. An impartial investigation was initiated, team members were invited to speak openly, and the evidence was carefully reviewed. As individual accounts were compared, a clear pattern of behaviour began to emerge.
Importantly, the investigation wasn't about finding someone to blame as quickly as possible. It was about understanding what had happened, ensuring every voice was heard and restoring confidence in the integrity of the process. Advocacy leadership isn't about protecting individuals from accountability. It's about making sure accountability is applied fairly, consistently and without bias.
When the investigation was complete, the behaviour was addressed directly. The leader was held accountable for actions that had undermined trust, and it was made clear that leadership positions come with higher, not lower, expectations of integrity and conduct (as they should!). The consequences were significant, including the possibility of losing the leadership role if meaningful behavioural change did not occur. Poor leadership and workplace bullying were not excused simply because someone held a position of authority.
For the team, this mattered just as much as the outcome itself. Seeing inappropriate behaviour acknowledged rather than ignored demonstrated that complaints would be taken seriously and investigated fairly. It reinforced that psychological safety isn't created through policies or slogans. It's created when people see leaders willing to confront difficult behaviour, uphold shared standards and act with integrity, even when those conversations are uncomfortable.
That's what advocacy leadership looks like in practice. It advocates for people over position, accountability over avoidance and fairness over favouritism. It reminds every member of the team that respect isn't optional and that no one, regardless of title, is above the standards expected of everyone else.
How did leadership get here?
I’m not sure why this leader felt prompted to act the way he did. However, this was clearly not advocacy leadership. But most of the time, a lack of advocacy leadership shows up in a quieter and even more subtle way.
That’s because most leaders don’t ignore conflict or tension because they don’t care or because they’re wilfully ‘out to get someone’. They ignore it because that’s what we’ve all been taught good leadership looks like.
Most of the time, leaders fail to embrace advocacy leadership because they’re simply doing what they’ve seen their models and mentors do countless times in the past. They’ve been taught, implicitly and explicitly, that good leadership is about smoothing things over, staying focused on the big picture, and keeping things moving forward for the entire team. So, they’ll give a generic soothing response, they might even step in quickly to ‘resolve it’, but without taking the time to reflect on the real underlying issue.
This is where the mistake lies. Because it’s in these uncomfortable moments that golden opportunities arise to step up and show real leadership.
The conflict paradox
Conflict isn’t the problem. Not creating space for the conflict is. Researchers describe this as the ‘conflict paradox’. While we traditionally think of conflict as a negative, good leaders can use this conflict for the betterment of themselves and their entire team. That’s because they treat it as data to reach a better place for their team.
It’s when conflict isn’t addressed at its source that it creates a problem. The room might stay silent, but eventually that frustration will be expressed somewhere else.
Real problems arise when teams don’t feel enough psychological safety to say what needs to be said aloud. They’re afraid that speaking up will make them vulnerable to negative repercussions. This doesn’t only lead to more destructive conflict, it also undermines the performance of your team overall.
When teams and individuals feel safe, they’re able to raise concerns earlier, challenge ideas constructively, admit mistakes and learn from them (and work to remedy them), contribute more fully to the organisation as a whole, and show higher levels of learning, innovation and team effectiveness overall.
How advocacy leadership creates psychological safety
This is where the emerging practice of advocacy leadership comes in, because leadership behaviour is one of the biggest factors shaping whether a team feels safe to speak up and engage with conflict.
Advocacy leadership creates the opportunity for leaders to be fair without becoming distant, to be curious about what’s really going on without losing direction, and to hold space for different ideas or opinions without rushing to resolution.
Advocacy leaders treat conflict as information, not a problem to eliminate. They also recognise that conflict and bullying are not the same thing. Healthy disagreement should be explored. Harmful behaviour should be addressed. Advocacy leadership creates space for the first while taking decisive action on the second.
Tension in a team is rarely random. It usually points to something that needs attention. This might be a lack of clarity in a role, competing expectations between teams, poor communication from leadership, or a decision that hasn’t been fully explained.
Rather than trying to shut down the conflict, advocacy leaders look at what the conflict is telling them. What is sitting underneath the reaction? What isn’t being said? What does the individual or team need that they aren’t getting? This tells the leader where and why the pressure is building and where to focus their attention before a small issue becomes a much larger one.
Advocacy leadership challenges the traditional leadership structure that prioritises authority and compliance. Instead, it’s about leaders who stand up for their team by seeing conflict as information, inclusion as strength, and open, even uncomfortable, communication as a pathway to building more trust overall. Advocacy leaders want to protect and elevate their team.
Advocacy leadership in practice
At its core, advocacy leadership is simple. But in practice, it requires leaders to be able to acknowledge the uncomfortable and to really sit in it, embrace it, and learn from it. Most leaders aren’t ever taught how to do that. (Let’s be honest, most humans have no idea how to do that!)
Leadership isn’t just found in performance reviews and strategy sessions, it’s there in the small, uncomfortable interactions that most people want to avoid. In those moments, true leaders can step up and respond in ways that shape not only outcomes, but also mindsets, culture, psychological safety and trust.
If you want to embrace advocacy leadership, start implementing the following ideas into your own leadership behaviours and watch the magic happen. When tension or conflict appears, pause. Most leaders want to move on too quickly. But advocacy leaders pause, name what’s happening and give space for the conflict.
When someone raises a concern, get curious. Traditional leaders will immediately try to explain or justify. This is what we were taught, after all. But advocacy leaders get curious. They ask questions and then follow-up questions. Information is the key to understanding.
When opinions clash, slow down. Many leaders will try to resolve disagreements quickly. While you can, and should, try to de-escalate big emotions, don’t try to find an agreement or resolution too quickly. Slow the conversation down instead.
When conflict feels uncomfortable, sit with it. Don’t try to immediately reduce the discomfort. Stay with it long enough to understand it. This does get easier with time and practice, I promise!
Advocacy leadership isn't measured by how comfortable your meetings are. It's measured by what happens when things become uncomfortable. Do leaders listen before they judge? Do they investigate before they assume? Do they hold themselves to the same standards they expect from everyone else?
Leadership built on integrity and accountability doesn't ignore difficult conversations. It creates the confidence that those conversations will be handled fairly. That's what builds psychological safety, strengthens culture and ultimately earns the trust every leader hopes to have.
Embrace the tension
The biggest misconception about leadership is that we have to have all the right answers right now. But really, it’s about how you handle the moments where there perhaps isn’t a right answer at all. These are the moments that define your leadership, that shape the culture of your team and that build safety and trust.
Most leaders avoid conflict. The best ones use it not only to advocate for their team, but also to ensure they’re acting with the greatest level of accountability and integrity. Which type of leader are you going to be?
Learn more about Janet Vantriet’s approach to leadership at EquipMe Coaching and Consulting.
Read more from Janet Vantriet
Janet Vantriet, Certified Organisational Ombudsman, Conflict & Culture Strategist and Founder
Janet Vantriet is one of Australia’s few Certified Organisational Ombuds, supporting HR leaders, chief executive officers (CEOs) and boards with workplace conflict, culture and conduct risk. With more than two decades in people and culture roles, she founded EquipMe Coaching & Consulting to address issues traditional HR cannot resolve early enough. She is an accredited mediator, certified coach and senior HR professional whose work is grounded in neutrality, independence, confidentiality and informality. Janet brings an advocacy‑led and multicultural perspective to helping leaders navigate difficult conversations with clarity and fairness.
