I’ve witnessed sponsorship change lives. I’ve also seen it go terribly wrong.
I’ve been sponsored, and I’ve been a sponsor.
And as an immigrant to Canada, I had to discover the hidden landmines of sponsorship on my own—without a map, without a guidebook, and often without being fully aware that a different game was even being played.
That’s why I’m incredibly grateful to Women of Influence+ for publishing their 2025 report, Closing the Sponsorship Gap: How Purposeful Advocacy Accelerates Women’s Careers. If you are in HR, leadership, or responsible for talent development in your organization, this is a report you cannot afford to overlook.
It’s brave, thorough, and full of truths many whisper behind closed doors.
But it also left me with something that reports don’t always provide: urgency to catch up on pre-work.
Sponsorship in theory? Brilliant.
Sponsorship in practice? Bias, proximity, and culture clash.
Let me be blunt: career-defining sponsorship is not going to happen in most Canadian workplaces tomorrow just because we agree it’s a good idea. Not because we don’t care. Not because leaders don’t want to lift others. But because we haven’t done the pre-work to make it land.
We’ve built entire systems where self-advocacy is equated with potential, familiarity is mistaken for readiness and silence is read as disengagement instead of cultural nuance.
The Women of Influence+ report notes that 92% of sponsorship decisions are based on “perceived potential.”
Let that sink in.
Perception & Potential.
And perception is never neutral. It’s always cultural. The Real Barrier Isn’t Talent. It’s Translation.
The Real Barrier Isn’t Talent. It’s Translation.
Like the expectation that a “high-potential” person should speak confidently in meetings. Or pitch their ideas with authority. Or network over drinks after work. Or say “yes” to visibility, even when they haven’t had time to acclimate to the environment.
These are not neutral career behaviors.
- They exclude those who were taught to lead through consensus, not dominance.
- They penalize those who believe respect must be earned before influence is granted.
- They confuse those who come from high-context cultures, where silence is thoughtfulness—not passivity.
- They overlook calm leadership as lacking drive—or assertive leadership as aggressiveness.
- They mistake self-protective discretion for lack of confidence.
- They stereotype older employees as too rigid to invest in—or younger ones as too green to trust, regardless of actual ability.
So when we build sponsorship models without cultural intelligence, we end up reinforcing the very power structures we claim to be disrupting.
I’ve seen talented immigrant professionals “matched” with sponsors who never understood their cultural lens—then quietly moved on because “chemistry wasn’t there.” I’ve seen leaders mistake indirect communication for lack of leadership presence. And I’ve seen sponsorship programs that turn into another form of performance theatre—where the same type of people get lifted, just under a more diverse banner.
And What About the 97%?
Here’s the part we don’t say out loud: Most workplaces in Canada are not ready for sponsorship programs.
Why? Because 97.5% of Canadian businesses are small or medium-sized. Many don’t have a dedicated HR person, let alone a DEI lead. Some are still learning what inclusion even means beyond compliance.
We can’t build sponsorship pipelines in organizations where basic culturally aware feedback and communication processes are broken—or don’t exist yet. We can’t expect inclusive leadership from people who’ve never been trained to notice what culture even is. And we can’t just import an Ontario corporate bank playbook into a construction company in Saskatchewan or a dental practice in Nova Scotia and expect it to transform lives.
That’s not cynicism. That’s context.
So if we want to make sponsorship real—not just aspirational—we have to start with what’s actually possible.
What’s Possible Right Now?
First, we teach people stay culturally curious – across all dimensions – beyond ethnicity, helping them understand how trust, power, and voice are shaped by many factors.
Then we ask every manager:
“Who do you naturally advocate for? And who might you be missing?”
We train people to notice who gets invited to stretch projects—and who doesn’t. We teach sponsors to recognize potential that looks different from their own past. And we coach immigrant professionals not to simply “perform” North American norms, but to translate their brilliance in ways decision-makers can understand.
Do we only lift those who remind us of ourselves? Or are we brave enough to reach beyond what’s familiar—risk being culturally curious, and allow ourselves to be changed by what we find?
We can’t do it all at once. But we can start. Right?
Never stop learning.
P.S. If you are an internationally educated professional (immigrant) and want to better understand the concept of professional sponsorship in Canadian workplaces, we’ll be diving into this topic in our upcoming email. Subscribe here to get access to the content.