Most leadership decisions are made before the meeting even begins.
They happen during smoke breaks, late-night drinks, and informal conversations long before anyone opens a deck.
This surfaced repeatedly during a roundtable convened by Vikram Chopra , founder of Cars24, where 14 women leaders from across industries came together to discuss a simple question: What would it take to see more women rise into leadership — not just at CARS24, but across the ecosystem?
One moment stayed with me. Someone said she often feels she has to become aggressive even abrasive, just to be seen as assertive. The room went quiet. Not because it was surprising. Because everyone in that room recognized it.
That tension reveals something structural. Leadership systems still operate around a masculine template of influence: not just in behavior, but in where relationships and trust are built.
Informal bonding rituals: late nights, smoke breaks, unstructured time, none of this was designed to exclude anyone. But it quietly determines where influence begins to form and who is present when it does.
A second pattern: sponsorship. Women often receive mentorship. What they often lack is active sponsorship. Leaders who recommend them for stretch roles, advocate in promotion discussions, and bring their names into rooms they are not in. Without that, many women remain high performers but invisible to the people making decisions.
A third, more structural reality. For many women, the years when leadership opportunities expand overlap with caregiving years. Crèches. Pumping rooms. Flexible schedules. Thoughtful re-entry roles. These are often framed as benefits. They are actually leadership infrastructure.
I work at the intersection of systems thinking and organizational learning, and what I keep coming back to is this: Leadership capability grows through exposure and osmosis, not perfect readiness. The people who grow into leaders are usually the ones who enter the room early enough to see how decisions are actually made.
Leadership cultures are rarely neutral. They quietly reward certain behaviors, rhythms, and social patterns. Leadership pipelines don't just emerge. They are shaped by who gets invited in before the meeting even begins.
When those systems evolve, something shifts. Women don't need special programs to lead. They simply stop being quietly excluded from the rooms where leadership begins.