Utkarsh NarangFounder, IgnitedNeurons · Your best doers become your worst managers as you scale. I turn them into leaders so your best people don’t leave.

What Does Being an Ally Really Mean?

17 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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1:25

Utkarsh Narang and others argue that real allyship starts with accepting yourself, including your vulnerabilities. Leaders need to pause and reflect before launching initiatives, or risk performative gestures that help no one.

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I'm always telling people that before you start creating an allyship charter for your organization, or before you come out and go like, okay, you know, Feroza, I would like to be an ally, what can I do? You know, but my friends think if I'm an ally, then they will assume I'm gay, or how can we do this? I'm like, you know, like, not a lot of people understand this, and maybe this is really one of my life's mission as well, that the first place where allyship originates is within. If you are not in alignment with the hard parts of you, with the dark parts of you, if you are not accepting the diversity within, then you are not going to be authentic in spite even of your vulnerabilities and not because of them. This is very deep. This is very where I am always urging leaders also To go like— let's pause before we move on. Let's pause.
Let's pause. I want us to pause. Let's create some space and silence.
The first place where allyship starts is within.
Totally.
That hits really hard.