How to get into the room where the real vote happens

By the moment the steering committee gathers to cast its ballots, the decision has typically already been made. It was decided in a corridor, through a chain of messages, and across a couple of brief calls during the week before, and the meeting simply makes it official. When you refine your best argument ahead of that session, what you are truly writing is the record that will be read afterward. That isn't cynicism. It's simply how organizations operate, and it explains why, beyond a certain level, sponsorship counts for more than performance. According to the 2025 Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and LeanIn, 31% of women at the entry level have a sponsor, while the figure for men stands at 45%. In practice, a sponsor is the one who tips you off about what is coming up before the discussion even begins in Milwaukee or anywhere else.

The tally

Think back to the most significant decision that shaped your job or your team. Answer yes or no to each question below, then tally how many outcomes you only learned about afterward.

Question 1. You could tell which two or three people would in practice settle the outcome.

Question 2. Before the agenda went out, you had already talked privately with at least one of those people.

Question 3. You anticipated the objection most likely to come up and knew who would raise it.

Question 4. In the days before the meeting, you asked a senior colleague, "What's your sense of this?"

Question 5. You understood what the decision maker's own supervisor hoped to achieve.

Question 6. You arranged for one ally to agree to speak first on your behalf.

Question 7. You brought your proposal to someone willing to push back on it before anyone in a formal setting did.

Question 8. You could tell whether the matter was still open or had already been resolved.

Question 9. Instead of a slide deck, someone took you through the plan in a casual conversation over coffee.

Question 10. You were pulled into a discussion that never showed up on anyone's schedule.

Reading your score

Eight to ten: established. You're part of the circles where things get decided. What you need to do now is bring another person up alongside you.

Four to seven: right beside the city core. You often hear about developments, sometimes in time to act. You handle the work and some of the politics, though you're still caught off guard by a vote now and then.

Zero to three: peripheral. You put serious preparation into meetings that, in reality, were over before they started. That's not a personal shortcoming. No one told you that the agenda comes last rather than first, and women are more often left to figure this out alone, since fewer of them have a sponsor who would have explained it.

Recommended next steps

Between eight and ten, pick someone two levels beneath you and let her know what is actually happening before the next big decision lands. This is the role a sponsor plays, and you are now able to fill it yourself.

Between four and seven, before you present your next proposal, block off twenty minutes with the person most likely to disagree and ask them to hunt for the weak spots. Concerns raised in private tend to become public endorsement, since people stand behind what they had a hand in shaping.

Between zero and three, this week, ask one senior person a single pointed question. Try asking, "What's being said about this before it gets to the committee?" and then pay close attention to the response. Their reply points you toward who to talk to next, and simply having asked tells them you grasp how decisions really get made here.

Tally how many of these you already do, and share this with the woman who always seems to learn things first.