Part 1 of 3 | The Support Gap Series
Here’s something I wish someone had told me earlier in my career path: the lack of support you’re feeling isn’t a personal failure. It’s a structural one.
I remember being promoted into my first management role and having exactly zero idea what I was doing. Nobody handed me a playbook. Nobody pulled me aside and said, “here’s what this actually requires.” I was good at my job so they promoted and I was just… expected to figure it out. I didn’t even know I could say no to the promotion. I took it, was grateful for it, and then spent months messing things up for my direct reports while trying to look like I was effectively leading.
What I didn’t know then — and what the research now confirms — is that this experience is the norm, not the exception. And for women, the challenge starts even earlier than the promotion itself.
The Broken Rung Is Real
McKinsey’s annual Women in the Workplace report identifies what they call the “broken rung” — the step between individual contributor and first-time manager as the point where the gender gap in advancement is widest. In their most recent data, for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 93 white women are promoted. For women of color, the gap is even wider: 82 for Asian women and Latinas, and just 60 for Black women.
The support gap is most acute at the exact moment it matters most: during that IC-to-manager transition, when you’re learning how to lead without a net.
That gap has persisted in this report for eleven consecutive years. In a world where it should be 100, those numbers aren’t good enough.
So let’s say you’re one of the 93 — or the 82, or the 60. You get the promotion. Now what?
Getting the Promotion Doesn’t Mean You’re Ready For It
Here’s where it gets harder. Because even when women do get promoted, what awaits them on the other side is often a management role with no preparation, no training, and no real support.
According to CareerBuilder, 58% of new leaders receive no training whatsoever when they’re promoted into their first leadership position. And for those who do eventually receive training? They wait an average of 12 years (Zenger Folkman). Most people step into their first management role in their late 20s — which means the training, if it comes at all, arrives in their 40s. That’s over a decade of figuring it out alone. These are costly mistakes for both the individuals and their company. Missteps in management can have far-reaching consequences.
It’s also not just about being underprepared. It’s about what new managers are walking into. 71% of current middle managers report feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and burned out (PeopleBiz, 2025). The next generation of workers is watching this in real time. 52% of Gen Z say they’d refuse a promotion to middle management (Robert Walters). Not because they lack ambition — but because they can see exactly what they’d be signing up for, and they’re opting out.
That’s not apathy. That’s information.
The 70-20-10 Problem
The Center for Creative Leadership has long described how leaders actually develop: 70% comes from on-the-job experience and challenges, 20% comes from relationships with other people, and 10% comes from formal courses and training.
Here’s the problem: companies invest almost exclusively in that 10%.
When a new manager does receive development resources, it usually comes in the form of a training program, a workshop, or maybe access to an online course library. Useful? Sure. Sufficient? Not even close.
That leaves the other 90% — the on-the-job learning and the relational development — largely on the individual. Which means most early and mid-career women are being set up to learn by trial and error, on a team of real people, without the relationships or support structures that would actually make that learning stick.
The mistakes you make while learning to manage people aren’t just costly to you. They affect your team. They ripple outward. And they’re largely avoidable — or at least the ripple effect can be tampered — if you have the right support.
What Women Are Actually Saying about career path support
I wanted to know what early and mid-career women were experiencing firsthand, so I surveyed 49 women and interviewed 20 more. Here’s what they told me:
-
56% have been actively searching for peer support — and can’t find it
-
54% can’t find the mentors or sponsors they need
-
The #1 gap they identified? Accountability and consistent support
This isn’t a story about women who aren’t trying. It’s a story about women who are trying hard — and hitting a wall that shouldn’t be there.
And the research backs them up. Employees with a sponsor are promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without. Yet at the entry level, only 31% of women have a sponsor, compared to 45% of men. Mentors are hard to find. Sponsors are even harder.
And for the first time in eleven years of McKinsey’s research, there’s a documented ambition gap — women are less likely than men to want a promotion. But here’s the part that got buried in the headlines: when women receive the same career support as men, that gap disappears entirely. This isn’t a story about women wanting less. It’s a story about women making rational assessments based on what they’re seeing.
There are excellent programs for executives. Chief is designed for women VP and above. Vistage and YPO serve senior leaders and CEOs. All of them are valuable — for the people who are eligible.
But what about you, right now, in the middle of it?
You’re Not Behind in your career path. You’re Under-Resourced.
I want to say that clearly, because I think a lot of women internalize the struggle as a personal shortcoming. They wonder if they’re not smart enough, not tough enough, not strategic enough. They hustle harder. They take on more. They try to prove their way through it.
But the data tells a different story. The system was not designed with meaningful support for this stage of your career. The training comes late, if at all. The mentors & sponsors are hard to find. Peer support doesn’t exist at scale for this level.
Knowing that doesn’t fix it. But it reframes it — and that matters.
In the next post, I’m going to break down every type of support that’s available to you: what each one does, what it doesn’t do, and where the gaps still are. Because once you understand the full picture, you can start building something that works.
Sources: McKinsey & Company / LeanIn.Org, Women in the Workplace 2025; CareerBuilder; Zenger Folkman; Center for Creative Leadership; PeopleBiz 2025; Robert Walters.