Drive Sponsorship & Mentorship for Women in Your Organization
All leaders must advocate for themselves if they want to move their careers forward. But women leaders in particular face leadership challenges that are embedded within larger systems. As a historically marginalized group, women often face additional barriers based on their intersecting social identities, including gender, race, class, age, religion, sexual orientation, caregiver status, etc.
To succeed, women can’t go it alone. They need to build a network of champions — including mentors and sponsors.
And organizations must help. To offset the pandemic’s recent hit to women’s progress in the workforce — when the gains made over 3 decades were erased virtually overnight — organizations must provide women leaders with the resources they need and address the systemic imbalances they face.
A key step organizations can take towards supporting women leaders is to prioritize sponsorship and mentorship for women — particularly by influential leaders, who are often men.
As noted in our book, Kick Some Glass: 10 Ways Women Succeed at Work on Their Own Terms, the people around an individual have the ability to either support or hinder their growth toward becoming the best leader they can be. Access to influential leaders and supportive work relationships is critical to career advancement — especially for women.
Both mentors and sponsors are important for gaining the perspective and connections required to take on larger roles.
What’s the Difference Between a Mentor & a Sponsor?
By the time they reach mid-career, most leaders can name a handful of advisers — bosses, coaches, colleagues, and friends — who’ve helped them build confidence and develop needed skills.
These advisers may be mentors or sponsors. Leaders need both for professional development. They just need them for different things at different times.
Mentorship vs. Sponsorship in the Workplace
Mentors provide guidance and support, whether around a specific need or for ongoing development, while sponsors are advocates who actively work to advance the career of their “sponsoree.”
Here’s a summary of the differences between the roles of mentor and sponsor:
| Mentor | Sponsor | |
|---|---|---|
| Role | Experienced person at any level | Senior leader in the organization |
| Goal | Provide guidance for career choices and decisions | Use influence to help employee obtain high-visibility assignments |
| Who drives the relationship? | Both mentee and mentor; requires mentor to be responsive to the needs of the “mentee” | The sponsor, who chooses to advocate for “sponsoree,” including behind closed doors with other leaders |
| Actions | Helps mentee determine paths to meet specific career goals | Advocates for sponsoree’s advancement; champions her potential |
Mentors listen and give constructive, direct, and honest feedback, and their “mentee” benefits from this guidance and support in several ways. Our research has found that people who are mentored:
- Are better prepared for promotions and have higher success rates;
- Stay with their organizations longer;
- Feel more satisfied with their jobs and careers; and
- Rate higher on performance measures.
We also found that “mentees” have greater impact in their organizations, are perceived as being more innovative and creative, show higher resilience to setbacks, and have stronger networks.
A mentor may also be a sponsor — but not necessarily. A sponsor is a specific type of mentor who goes above and beyond giving advice.
Sponsors work to advance the career of their “sponsoree” by touting their accomplishments and potential, connecting them to others in their network, and recommending them for bigger roles. A sponsor pushes their “sponsoree” to take on challenging assignments and actively advances their career progression — including in off-the-record or closed-door meetings with other leaders.
Since the people who can advocate and create opportunities for others have some level of authority in an organization, they are likely upper-level leaders — people in power. And, in most organizations, that pool of influencers continues to skew male.
Even before the pandemic, women were underrepresented in senior management roles, even though they outnumbered men at almost every educational level and made up about half the workforce in most countries. For women of color, the gap is even wider.
Yet while more women are now advancing to the top tiers of their organizations than ever before, with women comprising 29% of C-suite roles in 2024, according to Lean In, that still means that over 70% of executives are men.
Given this, it’s critical that male sponsors speak up for talented women leaders at their organizations. Without sponsors who take that next step to advocate on their behalf, women are at a disadvantage.
Yet men are more likely than women to have sponsors.
Why Women Are Less Likely to Have Sponsorship in the Workplace
Research points to several reasons why this occurs.
1. Like attracts like.
Since people naturally tend to gravitate to other people who are like them, male leaders may be unconsciously more inclined to mentor and champion other men.
Similarly, women may not feel comfortable asking somebody several levels up in the organizational hierarchy — especially someone who doesn’t look like them — for advice or sponsorship. So even with no other factors at play, more men than women are sponsored, and leadership power structures remain largely unchanged.
2. The double-bind also plays a role.
Historically, images and ideals of leadership have been associated with stereotypically masculine, not feminine, qualities, and so women are less likely to be perceived as “leadership material,” as compared to men.
Research shows that women face a double-bind of being seen as either competent or likable — but not both.
Studies have also found that women receive fewer stretch assignments and more vague, personal, and unhelpful feedback than men — preventing them from getting clear information about their performance that would push them to learn, grow, and improve.
3. Assumptions are problematic.
Often, women have the right qualifications and personal readiness, but attribute their successes to “luck”, or struggle with overcoming impostor syndrome, and allow these assumptions to hold themselves back.
In addition, well-intentioned senior leaders may make assumptions about women’s capabilities and interests and make decisions for them, so that they aren’t considered for promotions or critical assignments. Without asking her to confirm, they may think:
- She’s too nice; she wouldn’t want this job …
- She has young children; the travel schedule will be too demanding …
- She won’t want this promotion; she’d have to relocate her family …
- She hasn’t done this before; she won’t feel up for the challenge …
These assumptions may not be conscious or spoken, but they cause women to be overlooked for roles they would be great at.
4. “Queen Bee Syndrome” contributes, too.
The few women who have broken through the glass ceiling often still find themselves feeling stuck because of gender bias that exists within the larger systems at play. While many women do sponsor, promote, or support the career advancement of other women, those who don’t are sometimes called “queen bees” and are considered unsupportive of other women.
But our research has found that when women executives do advocate for diversity and promote other women, they receive lower competency and performance ratings. So it’s understandable that senior women may hesitate to promote or advocate on behalf of more junior women — it may feel as if it comes at too great a personal cost.
Men who sponsor or promote women aren’t similarly penalized — and may even be rewarded for their support of diversity.
To mitigate this, both men and women in positions of power should mentor and sponsor talent — regardless of gender.
Why Men Are Critical Allies & Benefits They Gain From Mentoring & Sponsoring Women
Can men provide impactful sponsoring and mentoring for women? Absolutely, yes!
Gender parity in the workplace should not be pegged as merely a “women’s issue” and be left to women to address. Men in leadership roles are ideally positioned to strengthen the leadership pipeline in their organizations by helping to retain and advance talented women.
Serving as a mentor or sponsor offers benefits to both parties. Our research has also found that individuals who engage in mentorship and sponsorship in the workplace can build and enhance their own networks, more quickly access job-related and organizational news, and become better leaders themselves. We found that those who mentor and advocate for others have:
- A stronger commitment to their organization;
- An enhanced perception of their leadership by others; and
- A greater sense of wellbeing, including increased job and personal satisfaction.
Some men think they wouldn’t be good at mentoring someone who’s different from them. Others may be wary of perceptions or misinterpretation of their work relationships with women.
Organizations should help combat this hesitation by encouraging all leaders — including men — to explore our resources on sponsoring & mentoring women, which includes a section with specific tips for male executives when supporting talented women colleagues.
In addition, men can learn more about social identity to understand the power and privilege they have, as well as what allyship is.
Access Our Webinar!
Watch our webinar, Beyond Mentoring: The Critical Need to Sponsor Women in the Workplace, to learn the importance of sponsoring women and elevating them to more prominent leadership roles to leverage their talents and experience.
Advice for Women Leaders
Women leaders often view the responsibility to advance their careers or succeed in a new role as strictly their own. In our custom women’s leadership development programs, we often hear things such as:
- “If I do a good job, people will notice. If I do just a little more, work a little harder, it will happen. I don’t need a mentor or sponsor.”
- “I want to earn that promotion myself; it feels like cheating or pulling rank if I have a senior decision-maker on my side.”
- “The timing isn’t right, right now; I’ll go for the next opportunity.”
Many women wrestle with these concerns and feel uncomfortable about self-promotion at work.
While networking tips for women can help, they’re just the beginning. Without direct access to the people who can set women leaders up for the experiences they need — and the support to help them through inevitable challenges — their career progress is likely to stall, leading to short-term frustration and long-term consequences.
How Organizations Can Provide Sponsorship & Mentorship for Women
Help your women leaders establish a network of champions, wherever they are in their careers. Doing so will ensure they’re surrounded by people who can help them shift the way they think and act and lift them up to higher levels of influence within the organization.
Providing formal organizational support for Employee Resource Groups, inviting emerging leaders to senior leadership meetings, and investing in formalized leadership development opportunities for women are all great ways to help your women leaders start to build strong networks.
Ideally, women would have the mentors they need to help them navigate their careers, and senior leaders would see their skills and potential and enthusiastically sponsor them. But, since this isn’t happening by default in most organizations, there’s a leaky pipeline of talent.
Change is complex. Organizations that want to support women need to start by looking at the larger systems in which they operate to find the root causes of women leaving or not being promoted.
Encouraging sponsoring and mentoring for women is a great place to start. Communicate to everyone in your organization that this is a priority, and provide the resources and space to put plans into action. Don’t leave it up to individual women to establish mentorship or sponsorship arrangements. Learn more about why we recommend implementing mentoring at work, and how to get started.
Together, we can help create a network of champions for talented women, because when more women lead, individuals thrive — and organizations are better able to embrace the challenges of the future.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
Are you looking to drive sponsorship and mentorship for women in your organization? We invite you to download our complimentary resources on sponsoring & mentoring women. Or, commit to establishing a workplace environment that supports your talented women leaders with a customized women’s leadership development program.
