The strongest foundations are built before the storm

Five months ago, I was diagnosed with stage 1 ovarian cancer. And with it came everything that word carries: surgery, six rounds of chemotherapy, and a kind of exhaustion, both physical and emotional, that makes you question everything. 

I’m okay now, chemo is (hopefully forever) behind me, and I’m now preparing to embark on the next round of treatment.

But this post isn’t about my cancer journey (I’m writing plenty about that over on Instagram.)

This post is about what these last few months have taught me about leadership, culture, and the responsibility that comes with showing up for others – especially when you are struggling to show up for yourself.

Leading Through Uncertainty

Alongside the medical recovery came a very different kind of reckoning:

If I talk about it, do I risk burdening the people around me?
If I don’t talk about it, do I set an example that battles should be fought silently?
Is empathy in leadership about being open? Or is it about protecting your team from your own chaos?

These were the questions that kept circling in my mind for weeks.

And here’s the thing: I still don’t have neat, packaged answers.

But I did make the decision to be transparent about what I’m going through.

Not because it was easy. And definitely not because I wanted to be the centre of anyone’s attention.

Part of that decision was about raising awareness. The particular type of ovarian cancer I was diagnosed with (Low-Grade Serous) makes up just 2-5% of all ovarian cancers. It’s rare, it needs research, it needs attention. And one of the ways you get that is by talking about it.

But just as important was something else. I wholeheartedly believe that kindness belongs in organisations. It’s the foundation of any culture worth building. And if we say we lead with empathy, we can’t only do it when things are going well.

Pretending I was fine would have been hypocritical. One of the most important things I want to teach my son is that you should never hide parts of yourself to make other people feel more comfortable. And I cannot teach him that if I am not willing to live it myself.

Culture goes beyond what we see when everything is easy.
It’s what holds you when things fall apart.

When Culture Becomes Tangible

These past few months have been some of the hardest of my life – physically, mentally, and emotionally.

There were days when I couldn’t find the strength to get out of bed, let alone open my laptop or jump on a call.

But even on the darkest of days, I had something that every person in any organisation deserves to have: the peace of mind that I would be supported, fully, even when I couldn’t show up.

What struck me most during those moments was this: I was never met with pity or sadness. There were no awkward silences to fill. No uncomfortable conversations to tiptoe through. Just strength. Flexibility. Care.

And that doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design. 

This is what we mean when we say culture isn’t cosmetic – it’s structural. It’s the thing that holds, even when everything else shakes.

Storms test structure. And I couldn’t be prouder of the one we’ve built together at Switch; a culture shaped by intention, held together by care.

For years, we’ve prioritised our deeply ingrained core values to guide every decision we make – whether it’s about the business or about our people.

We’ve made space for real conversations. About purpose. About what we stand for. About what makes us show up and feel fulfilled. 

So when I shared what I was going through, I got to experience (yet again) that those values aren’t just words in our brand book. They became tangible. They showed up in how the team responded. In how the work continued. In how I was treated – not as a manager in crisis, but as a human being navigating something hard.

A strong foundation doesn’t mean you won’t face storms. It just means you won’t be swept away by them.

The Test of Strong Foundations

Here’s the tricky part about having strong foundations: 

Living by your brand fundamentals doesn’t always feel comfortable. In fact, the strongest, most authentic values an organisation can have are the ones that push us out of our comfort zones by making us ask the hard questions. Again and again. 

For me, that meant showing parts of myself that don’t fit the polished, curated version of leadership we’ve been taught to portray.

What I’ve learnt though is that by showing up as our whole, authentic selves, we model something vital.

We show our teams that being human is allowed. That strength and struggle can co-exist. That we don’t need to compartmentalise who we are from what we do.

I can’t stress this enough: culture isn’t a line item on a spreadsheet.

It’s not a yearly quota measured by how many team-building events you’ve organised.

Culture is the invisible infrastructure that holds everything together – or lets everything fall apart.

Storms will come. In life. In business. In leadership.

The question isn’t whether we can avoid them. It’s whether we’ve built a culture strong enough to stand in the middle of them.

So I’ll leave you with this exercise. Get your team together and ask yourselves:

• Have you built a culture in your organisation that could carry you through both a business and a personal storm?
• Are your values known, lived, and visible — or are they just words on a wall?
• What version of yourself are you hiding at work — and what would it take to let a little more of it be seen?