Accelerate Your Career

Accelerating your career means increasing the speed of your growth, visibility, and opportunities at work. For women, this requires more than strong performance: it requires strategic visibility, the right relationships, and knowing how to navigate a workplace that doesn't always make advancement easy. Studies consistently show that women who take intentional, proactive steps move up faster and earn more than those who wait to be recognized. This guide maps out the best research-backed steps to help women like you get into leadership—so that you can make the workplace better for the women who come after you.

1. Why is aligning with my manager important, and how do I do it best?

The person most responsible for this decision is your manager, so you should be in close conversation with them about your goals.

• Ask them directly: "What are the two or three outcomes that matter most this year?" Then build your priorities around the answer
• Co-create written criteria for your next promotion with your manager: ask "What would I need to accomplish to be promoted in the next 12 months?" and confirm the answer in writing. Reducing ambiguity in how you're evaluated reduces the room for bias to influence the outcome
• Focus your best energy on work that is both visible and directly tied to business results
• Volunteer for cross-functional projects that expose you to senior leaders
• Document your impact in concrete terms: revenue influenced, costs reduced, problems solved, and metrics moved
• Deprioritize low-visibility tasks that don't factor into how your performance is evaluated. Research shows women are more likely than men to be assigned support-function work rather than strategic, revenue-generating projects

2. Why is visibility important, and how can I make my best work visible?

Visibility is important for everyone at work, but especially for women. Research shows women tend to be rewarded less often for their accomplishments, and less likely to be assumed "high potential" than men with equivalent track records—making documentation and visibility especially important.

• Share project updates and results proactively with your manager and team — don't wait to be asked
• Send brief recap emails after major milestones that name your contributions and your team's
• Present your work in team meetings and company forums whenever there's an opportunity
• Keep a running record of wins, metrics, and positive feedback — and reference it in performance reviews and check-ins
• Ask colleagues to amplify your contributions in meetings, and do the same for them, as research shows women are significantly less likely than men to have their contributions recognized in group settings

3. How do I build the relationships that lead to advancement?

Sponsorship has a more direct impact on promotions. Employees with sponsors are promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without, yet only 31% of entry-level women have a sponsor compared to 45% of entry-level men.

• Seek out mentors and sponsors, and know the difference: a mentor advises you, a sponsor advocates for you. Both matter, but women are more likely to have mentors and less likely to have sponsors
• Identify senior leaders who already know your work and look for ways to deepen those relationships: offer concrete help on projects they care about, share relevant ideas, solve problems before they ask
• Consider joining a Lean In Circle–small groups that meet regularly for peer mentorship and skill-building. Participants report getting promoted at twice the rate of employees in general, according to LeanIn.Org research

4. What skills should I focus on to move up faster?

• Develop fluency with AI tools relevant to your field. Men are 22% more likely than women to use AI daily or constantly, a significant gap that can compound into lost skills and missed opportunities
• Build communication and influence skills: the ability to persuade, present, and lead conversations is what signals leadership readiness to decision-makers
• Ask your manager: "What skills would make me most valuable to this team in the next two years?" — and then act on the answer
• Seek out training in areas your company is actively investing in, and make that learning visible
• Invest in your soft skills through coaching and leadership development programs

5. Why do I need stretch assignments, and how do I get them?

These assignments matter: An estimated 70% of leadership development happens through on-the-job experience, particularly stretch assignments.Research consistently shows women are less likely than men to receive challenging stretch assignments — not because women are less capable, but because assignments are unevenly offered.

This means you need to ask: When a high-stakes project comes up, volunteer

• Explicitly tell your manager you want challenging, high-visibility work: "I'd like to be considered for [project or type of assignment]"
• If you're passed over for a stretch opportunity, ask directly: "What would I need to demonstrate to be considered for something like this?"
• Track the stretch assignments you take on and the results you deliver. This is critical evidence when it's time to make a case for your promotion–and objective evidence is often more important to women’s advancement than men’s

6. Why do I need to communicate my career goals clearly?

Men are more often assumed to be ambitious and "high potential" than women, which can mean they’re offered more opportunities that lead to promotion — so expressing your goals and advocating for yourself explicitly is essential.

• Tell your manager explicitly that you want to advance, repeat this often, and revisit your goals regularly so advancement stays on your manager’s radar all year, not just at review time
• Frame your goals around contribution: "I want to take on more strategic responsibility so I can have a bigger impact on [team goal or business outcome]"

7. How do I get the right feedback to move up faster?

This is critical for women, who are more likely to receive vague, unactionable feedback, while men are 50% more likely to receive actionable feedback linked to business outcomes. Women are also 22% more likely than men to receive feedback on their personality rather than their work.

• Ask for specific, actionable feedback after key projects or presentations: "What's one thing I could have done differently?"
• Request regular check-ins with your manager — even brief weekly touchpoints keep your performance visible and your trajectory top of mind
• When you receive critical feedback, follow up to show you've acted on it — this builds trust and signals leadership readiness
• Keep a record of feedback received and steps taken in response — this is powerful evidence of growth in promotion conversations – and studies show that concrete evidence is especially important when trying to advance as a woman

8. Should I stay in my current role or move on to accelerate my career?

Stay if you're still learning, still growing, and have a clear, agreed-upon path to your next level with a manager who advocates for you. Consider moving if you've been consistently passed over without explanation, if advancement criteria keep shifting, or if there's no one willing to sponsor you.

If you do move, negotiate your salary at every transition and prepare strategically using Lean In’s advice. Women now ask as often as men, but face higher rejection rates unless they use research-backed techniques such as communal framing and documented evidence to improve the outcomes

Before leaving, have a direct conversation with your manager about your goals and timeline — naming it clearly sometimes changes the outcome entirely. Changing companies can accelerate your title and pay faster than waiting in place, but the sponsor relationships you've built are transferable assets — invest in maintaining them.

9. How do I avoid common pitfalls that slow women’s career growth?

• Always make sure you have clear, written criteria for advancement in every role–criteria that your manager agrees on. This is absolutely critical, because vague criteria open the door to bias and subjective judgments, which impact women more negatively than men.
• Don’t keep your head down and wait for your hard work to be recognized. Make sure you manage up, communicate achievements, and build sponsor relationships, since performance bias means women's work is more likely to be overlooked or underestimated
• Don’t limit yourself to projects where you’re certain of success. Push yourself to take on work a little outside of your comfort zone. Some women hold back until they view themselves as fully ready, but research shows women are more likely than men to underestimate their readiness.
• Don’t go it alone! Build a strong network of colleagues who have your back. You may want to join a LeanIn.Org Circle–a small group that meets regularly for career coaching and skill-building–because our research shows that Circle members get promoted twice as fast as employees overall.