EngineerHer

I was less than five years out of engineering college, still building my confidence, still trying to prove myself in rooms where I was usually the youngest person and often the only woman. A senior manager had taken an interest in me — or so I thought.

We had been having a series of conversations about a new project. An exciting one. The kind of project I genuinely wanted to work on. I was giving him everything — sharing my knowledge, demonstrating my thinking, letting him see exactly what I could do. I believed I was making a case for myself. I believed he was watching and thinking: she’d be good on this team.

I wasn’t chosen for the project.

A senior engineer pulled me aside afterwards. Gently, kindly, and with the clear sense that she’d seen this before. She explained what had actually been happening. He wasn’t assessing me. He was using me. The knowledge I’d been sharing so freely in those conversations had been making its way into his own presentations, his own conversations with leadership, his own positioning on the project. I had been making him look better informed than he was. And apparently, this was known. He had done it before — particularly with younger colleagues who hadn’t yet learned to recognise the pattern.

That was the day I started paying attention to the difference between people who were genuinely investing in my career and people who were simply benefiting from proximity to my ability.

It’s a distinction that has served me ever since. And it’s one that I think every senior woman engineer needs to understand clearly.

The difference between a mentor and a sponsor

These two words get used interchangeably. They shouldn’t be.

A mentor is someone who advises you. They talk with you, share their experience, help you think through decisions, and offer perspective. Mentors are valuable. A good mentor can change the way you think about your career. But a mentor’s influence operates in conversations with you — it doesn’t extend into rooms you’re not in.

A sponsor is different. A sponsor is someone who advocates for you when you’re not there. They say your name when opportunities come up. They recommend you for projects, promotions, and roles before you’ve had a chance to put your hand up. They put their own credibility behind your name. They don’t just believe you’re capable — they demonstrate that belief by attaching it to their own reputation.

That distinction matters enormously, because most career-changing decisions are made in rooms you’re not in.

The meeting where the project lead is chosen. The conversation where the promotion list gets finalised. The moment when someone says ‘who should we put in front of this client?’ You are not present for these conversations. Your CV is not present. Your most recent project isn’t present. What is present — or isn’t — is whether someone in that room thinks of you, trusts you enough to say your name, and is willing to stake a little of their own credibility on the claim that you’re the right person.

Mentors help you get better. Sponsors help you get further.

Why most women have mentors and almost no sponsors

This is not accidental.

Sponsorship is built on trust, and trust is built on relationship — which means it is inevitably shaped by the same social patterns that shape everything else in organisations. People tend to sponsor people who remind them of themselves. Who they feel comfortable with. Who they socialise with, work alongside closely, and whose abilities they have witnessed directly over time.

For many senior women engineers, that network of close, trust-based relationships with senior decision-makers is thinner than it should be. Not because of a lack of effort or ability — but because of the accumulated effect of being on the outside of the informal networks where those relationships develop. The after-work drinks you didn’t go to because you had to be home. The golf day you weren’t invited to. The lunches and coffees and corridor conversations that happen more naturally between people who already feel like they belong in the same category.

On top of that, women are often steered toward mentorship as the solution to career challenges — and mentorship is genuinely useful, so it’s accepted gratefully. But mentorship, however good, doesn’t move you into rooms you weren’t already going to be in. It makes you better prepared for opportunities that come your way. It doesn’t create the opportunities.

Sponsorship does. And for most women, it is significantly harder to come by.

How to tell whether someone is actually sponsoring you

After that early experience, I developed a very simple way of testing whether a relationship was genuinely sponsoring my career or simply benefiting from my proximity.

Here are the questions I learned to ask:

Have they ever said your name in a room you weren’t in?

This is the core question. You may not always be able to answer it directly — but you can often find out. Have opportunities come to you unexpectedly, with someone saying ‘X suggested I talk to you’? Has your name come up in contexts where you hadn’t put yourself forward? If the answer is consistently no, the relationship is not sponsoring you.

Are they investing their own credibility in you?

A sponsor doesn’t just recommend you — they stake something on it. They say ‘I think she’s the right person for this’ in a meeting where their judgment is on the line. If someone only ever says positive things to your face but stays quiet when it counts, that’s not sponsorship.

Does the relationship flow both ways?

A genuine sponsorship relationship involves mutual respect and genuine investment — not extraction. If you find yourself consistently giving — your knowledge, your time, your thinking — and the person is consistently receiving, without anything tangible flowing back toward your career, pay attention to that pattern. What happened to me early in my career was an extreme version of this, but the subtler version is more common than most people realise.

Do they know what you actually want?

A sponsor can only advocate effectively for opportunities that match your goals. If the person you’re thinking of as a potential sponsor doesn’t know what kind of role you want next, what projects excite you, or what your career looks like in five years — they can’t do that job properly. If you haven’t had that conversation, the relationship isn’t there yet.

How to build a sponsorship relationship deliberately

Sponsorship is not something that simply happens to you. At a senior level, it needs to be built — deliberately, patiently, and with a clear understanding of what you’re trying to create.

Here is how to approach it.

Identify who has the access you need. Think about where the decisions that affect your career are made. Who is in those rooms? Who has credibility with the people who decide on promotions, project leads, and high-visibility opportunities? These are the people worth investing in a relationship with — not because you’re being transactional, but because proximity to decision-making is where sponsorship becomes possible.

Make your ambitions visible. You cannot be sponsored for something the other person doesn’t know you want. This means being direct — not aggressive, not desperate, but clear. ‘I’d really like to be considered for a role like X when it comes up. I think my background in Y positions me well for it.’ That sentence, said once to the right person at the right moment, can do more for your career than a year of quietly hoping to be noticed.

Give them something to work with. A sponsor needs to be able to make a case for you. That means they need to know not just that you’re good, but specifically why you’re the right person for a particular opportunity. Be visible about your work. Share what you’re delivering, what you’re learning, what you’re building. Make it easy for someone who wants to advocate for you to know exactly what to say.

Do excellent work in their orbit. Sponsorship is built on witnessed evidence of your ability. A potential sponsor who has seen you handle something difficult, solve something complex, or lead something well has a concrete foundation for their advocacy. Look for opportunities to work alongside senior people you respect — not to perform, but to let your actual work speak.

Protect yourself from extraction. What happened to me early in my career was a lesson I’ve never forgotten. Be thoughtful about what you share, with whom, and in what context. Sharing your thinking and expertise is how you build relationships — but there is a difference between a genuine exchange and a one-sided situation where your ideas are fuelling someone else’s advancement. If you notice that pattern, trust it.

A word about what sponsorship is not

Sponsorship is not a transaction. It is not about finding a powerful person and attaching yourself to them strategically. The best sponsorship relationships are genuine — built on mutual respect, real investment, and the kind of trust that develops over time through shared work and honest conversation.

It is also not a guarantee. A sponsor can open a door. They cannot walk through it for you. What they give you is the opportunity to be considered — the chance to be in the room, to be on the shortlist, to be thought of when the conversation happens. What you do with that is still entirely yours.

But for a senior woman engineer who has spent years delivering excellent work and still finding that the recognition, the progression, and the opportunities don’t quite arrive at the rate they should — the absence of sponsorship is often the missing piece. Not a lack of ability. Not a lack of effort. A lack of someone in the right room, saying the right name, at the right moment.

You can change that. Deliberately, over time, by building the relationships that make it possible.

Start with one name

If you’ve read this far and you’re already thinking of someone — a senior person you respect, whose judgment you trust, who has shown genuine interest in your career — that’s your starting point.

Think about what they know about what you want. Think about whether you’ve made your ambitions clear to them. Think about the last time you gave them something concrete to work with.

And if you’re reading this and realising that you don’t have anyone who comes to mind — that’s useful information too. It means building that relationship is the work. Not networking in the uncomfortable, badge-swapping sense. But finding one person whose career and judgment you genuinely respect, investing in that relationship with intention, and making yourself someone worth advocating for.

Mentors will help you grow. Sponsors will help you move. You need both — but if you only have one, I’d argue you’re missing the more important one.

If this is resonating — if you’re recognising a gap between the advice you receive and the advocacy you need — the Leadership Load Diagnostic is a useful place to start thinking about where the weight is sitting in your career right now.

➡️ Take the Leadership Load Diagnostic here

And if you found this useful, I’d love to know. The mentorship conversation is one that comes up again and again with the women I work with — and the sponsorship piece is almost always the part that nobody warned them about.