A 10-question test to take before you volunteer for anything else

When an extra load lands on your desk, it may well be a sign that someone trusts you. Often it is. But it can also mean you have become the person everything gets dropped on, which is a very different thing from being the person someone is shaping for bigger things.

Telling these two situations apart matters a great deal, since it determines who ends up backing your career. According to McKinsey and LeanIn's 2025 Women in the Workplace report, just 31% of women at the entry level have a sponsor versus 45% of men, and for every 100 men elevated to manager, only 93 women are. Piling on work with no sponsor and no next role attached won't carry you forward. It's a parking lot with a nicer view.

Read the ten statements below and decide, for each, whether it's a yes or a no. Give yourself an honest score, because nobody else will be tallying it for you. It takes about four minutes. The conversation it prompts takes ten, and it's the one many women in Central Indiana keep postponing for a year.

The quiz

1. A senior figure above me has clearly named the position I'm being prepared to fill.

2. Along with the new assignment came something tangible, whether that's a job title, a spending budget, the power to make decisions, or a team to lead.

3. At minimum once every three months, I share my work directly with executives who sit above my manager.

4. The phrase "next step" has a date attached, even a rough one.

5. My manager has presented me to others as the individual who will soon be leading a function.

6. Whenever fresh responsibilities were handed to me, some existing duty was lifted from my workload.

7. The work I've been handed appears in promotion discussions at my company: revenue, a P&L, a product launch, a turnaround.

8. I keep a written growth plan that someone other than myself has gone over and reviewed.

9. If I ask what is blocking my path to a promotion, I get concrete answers rather than a vague instruction to simply continue as I am.

Item ten I am aware of whether my name is raised during talent reviews, and I know what is said about me in that room.

Your result

Eight to ten yeses: Takeoff ready. Someone is intentionally investing in your growth as a leader. Your job is to smooth the path for their advocacy by recording your accomplishments and keeping the timeline clear and visible.

Four to seven yeses: Low visibility. Part of this is development and part is drift, and your manager may not know which part is which. At your next one-on-one, ask this: "Which role is this work getting me ready for, and when will we revisit it?" Record the response along with the date. When the reply remains unclear across two attempts, read it as a refusal that no one was willing to state openly.

Zero to three yeses: Stuck on the tarmac. You are dependable, which is exactly why the work keeps coming, and under the radar, which is why the promotion doesn't. For this month, stop accepting new work unless it includes one of the items from questions 2, 5 or 7. From there, look for a sponsor by requesting a senior leader's guidance on a particular issue, then circling back to report what you did with it.

The follow-up move every group should make next, Indy included.

Pick the three "no" responses that could most realistically become "yes" within the next 90 days. Questions 3 and 9 are often two of them, and both are in your control this week.

How did you score? Pass this along to the woman on your team who is doing everyone else's work, and ask her what she got.