Why Being Liked Does Not Get Women Promoted
Support Is Not Sponsorship
A Female Shift Journal article on why appreciation feels good - but advocacy, visibility and political capital move careers.
The sentence that sounds good - until nothing moves
A woman leaves a performance conversation with words many people would call positive. "We really value you."
She smiles. Of course she smiles. She is professional. She knows this is meant as appreciation. It says: we see you, we like working with you, we know you contribute. And still, something in her does not fully land.
Because the next role was not discussed. The pay increase stayed vague. The strategic project went to someone else. Her name did not appear in the room where the real decision was made.
This is one of the quietest career traps I see in coaching. Many women are supported, appreciated, encouraged and liked - but not sponsored in a way that actually moves their careers.
Support feels good. Sponsorship changes careers.
And on International Equal Pay Day, that distinction matters. Equal pay is not only about the conversation where salary is negotiated. It is also about the months and years before that conversation: who gets visible work, who is named for bigger roles, who is positioned as ready, whose value is translated into business language and whose name travels when she is not in the room.
This blog is not about being liked. It is about whether your value travels when decisions are made without you in the room.
Support is not the problem. But it is not enough.
Support can be generous. Support can matter deeply. A supporter may encourage you, give you feedback, help you prepare, listen to your concerns or tell you that you are doing a good job. A mentor may go further. She may reflect with you, help you think through your next step, give advice, share experience and open your view. But a sponsor does something different. A sponsor is someone with access to decision rooms who actively advocates for your advancement - especially when you are not there.
Support says: "You are doing great."
Sponsorship says: "She should be considered for this next opportunity and here is why."
That difference may look small in language. In a career, it can be enormous. Many women do have people who like them. They have people who say kind things, trust them with difficult work, ask for their help and appreciate their reliability. But liking does not automatically become advocacy. And being valued does not automatically mean your value is being translated into promotion, pay, influence or strategic opportunity.
The problem with "she is great"
"She is great" is a lovely sentence. It is also almost useless in a promotion room. Not because it is untrue. But because it is too vague to carry a career decision. A decision room needs more than warmth. It needs evidence, relevance and a clear reason to act.
A sponsor cannot only say: "She is great." A sponsor needs to be able to say: "She should be considered for this role, project or pay increase because she has created measurable value by doing X, has shown readiness for Y and is already operating at the level of Z." That is advocacy language. Not decorative. Not self-promotion theatre. Not a polished sentence for the sake of sounding impressive. Career-relevant.
This is where many women get stuck. Their work is felt by others, but not named clearly enough. Their contribution is appreciated, but not translated into business value. Their reliability is praised, but the strategic pattern underneath remains invisible. So the issue is not always that nobody sees them. Sometimes the issue is that people see them too generally.
Why this shows up so often for women
The research around women and advancement has been pointing to this distinction for years. Herminia Ibarra, Nancy Carter and Christine Silva famously argued in Harvard Business Review that many high-potential women are over-mentored and under-sponsored: they receive advice, but not enough active advocacy for advancement.
Catalyst also distinguishes sponsorship from mentoring by highlighting that sponsorship increases visibility and access to opportunities, while mentoring is more often about guidance and development. This matters because career movement rarely happens only through individual performance. It also happens through interpretation.
Who interprets your work as readiness? Who connects your contribution to business value? Who says your name before the decision is already made? Who is willing to spend political capital on your future?
At the same time, women are often rewarded for work that keeps the system comfortable without necessarily moving their careers. Research on non-promotable work has shown how women are frequently asked for, and often volunteer for, tasks that matter to the organization but do not support career progression.
The result is a familiar pattern: women become useful, appreciated and trusted - but not always strategically positioned.
My lens: your value needs a Tech Pack
After 30 years in international corporate life, including 23 years at adidas, I know how much value can be visible in the work and still remain strangely absent from the sentence that travels into a decision room.
My corporate background is in apparel and product creation, so I often think in product systems. A product idea does not travel through a complex organisation simply because someone says: "This is nice." It needs a Tech Pack. The material. The construction. The fit. The measurements. The details. The standard. The intended use. The information that allows other people to evaluate, build, improve, cost, produce and sell it without the original idea getting lost.
Career value is similar. If your value is only felt, but not named, it may be appreciated - but it will not travel. This is why I call the practical tool behind this article the Value Tech Pack. It is not a confidence exercise. It is not a branding trick. It is a way to check whether your contribution is clear enough to be repeated, remembered and advocated for when you are not in the room.
The Value Tech Pack: three questions to start
Start with three questions. Not because they solve the whole sponsorship question. But because they show where the translation gap may sit.
First: What are people currently saying about me?
Collect the actual language you hear: "You are so reliable." "You always help." "You are great to have in the team." "We really value you." "You always make things work." Then ask: is this appreciation language or advocacy language? Appreciation language feels good. Advocacy language can move your career.
Second: Who needs to be able to say something stronger about me?Not everyone who likes you is a sponsor. Ask: who has access to the rooms where pay, roles, strategic projects, succession, visibility and influence are discussed? Then sort the people around you into three categories. Supporters like you, encourage you, ask for your help or appreciate your work. Mentors advise you, reflect with you and help you think. Sponsors can actively advocate for your advancement in decision rooms. The sharper question is not only: who supports me? It is: who could move my name, my value and my readiness into the rooms where decisions are made?
Third: Is what they can say about me career-relevant from a business point of view?
A positive description is not automatically a career-relevant one. "She is reliable" may be true. But a business-relevant version might be: "She creates stability in complex projects because she anticipates risks early, aligns stakeholders and keeps decisions moving." "She is helpful" may be true. But a business-relevant version might be: "She enables others to perform better by clarifying priorities, removing friction and creating shared direction." "She is great with people" may be true. But a business-relevant version might be: "She builds trust across different stakeholders and makes difficult conversations easier to navigate."
That is the shift: from appreciation to advocacy, from personality praise to business value, from "she is great" to "she should be considered."
Whole Person x Role x System
Sponsorship is not only a networking question. It sits at the intersection of the whole person, the role and the system.
The woman needs language for the value she creates and clarity about where she wants that value to travel. The role creates the criteria: which evidence signals readiness for greater scope, pay or influence? The system determines whose contribution is discussed, whose potential is interpreted generously and who has access to the rooms where opportunities are allocated.
If we ignore the system, sponsorship advice becomes one more instruction for women to solve inequality more skilfully. A Value Tech Pack can make contribution legible. It cannot replace fair decision processes or leaders who are willing to advocate.
Sponsorship is also an organisational responsibility
This is not only the woman's translation task.
Leaders and organisations decide whose names are discussed, who receives stretch assignments, which work counts as advancement evidence and whether sponsorship depends on informal affinity.
A fair sponsorship culture asks not only whether talented women are supported, but whether influential people are actively moving their value into decisions about pay, roles and opportunity.
This matters because women should not have to turn themselves into better translators simply so broken decision systems can remain comfortable. Individual clarity matters. Value language matters. But organisations also need to examine which contributions they reward, whose potential they make visible and which rooms remain closed unless someone powerful opens them.
How my program CREATE supports this work
The CREATE programme is the deeper coaching space for women who know that appreciation alone is no longer enough, but are not yet clear what they want their value to travel toward.
We clarify what fits next, translate experience into credible career direction and identify the conversations, experiments and allies that can help move it.
In a Career Clarity Call, we can look at one current state and decide whether CREATE would be a useful next step. You do not need to arrive with the answer. That would defeat the point. You can book a Clarity Call here .
Stay courageous,
Katharina
It's in you!
A closing thought for Equal Pay Day
Equal pay is not only decided in the salary conversation.
It is shaped much earlier, in the way value becomes visible, credible and sponsor-ready. It is shaped when strategic work is allocated, when names are discussed, when readiness is interpreted, when potential is sponsored and when business value is either translated clearly or left as a warm feeling.
If your organisation appreciates you but does not move you, pay attention. If people like you but cannot explain your business value, pay attention. If your name is not travelling into the rooms where roles, pay and influence are decided, pay attention.
Support is beautiful.
But support is not sponsorship.
And being liked is not enough to get women promoted.
Your value does not need decoration. It needs a Tech Pack.
Ready to make your value travel?
If you receive a great deal of appreciation but not enough career movement, book a Clarity Call here .
We can look at what you want to be known for, where your value needs to travel and what is happening across you, your role and the system around you. You do not need to choose a programme before we speak.
I am Katharina Engelhardt, founder of The Female Shift Atelier.
I help high-achieving women shape career success that fits - with clarity, courage and a career form that belongs to the woman they are becoming.
Stay courageous, Katharina
Sources and further reading
United Nations: International Equal Pay Day. https://www.un.org/en/observances/equal-pay-day
International Labour Organization: What is 18 September Equal Pay Day? https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/what-18-september-equal-pay-day
Ibarra, H., Carter, N. M. and Silva, C. (2010): Why Men Still Get More Promotions Than Women. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2010/09/why-men-still-get-more-promotions-than-women
Catalyst: Build Effective Workplace Sponsorship & Mentoring Programs. https://www.catalyst.org/en-gb/insights/featured/sponsorship-mentoring
Babcock, L., Peyser, B., Vesterlund, L. and Weingart, L. (2022): Are You Taking on Too Many Non-Promotable Tasks? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/04/are-you-taking-on-too-many-non-promotable-tasks
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