Every procurement and supply chain transformation roadmap has a plan for data, platforms, and processes. Almost none has a plan for the leadership bench underneath, and that single omission is quietly responsible for more failed transformations than any technology gap.
In conversations with senior procurement leaders across the GCC, South Asia, and global enterprise functions, CPOs, heads of supply chain, transformation directors, one observation surfaces consistently: the organisations that struggle most to build procurement capability are not lacking tools or budget. They are lacking a pipeline of leaders who have been given real briefs, real accountability, and real sponsorship into stretch roles. Not training. Not mentorship events. Sponsorship.
This piece draws on a conversation with Dr. Mona Golshan Sorour, former Deputy General Manager of Procurement and Supply Chain at Burjeel Holdings – one of the largest healthcare groups in the UAE. Dr. Mona holds a Six Sigma Black Belt and a doctorate in strategy, has led procurement at two major UAE healthcare organizations, and recently authored Call Me the B Word, a book that reframes the traits society labels as “difficult” in women as the fundamental requirements for leading large-scale transformations.
One idea from that conversation kept resurfacing long after it ended. She calls it the credibility tax. It is the most precise name for a leadership problem that procurement has been circling around for years without fixing.
The Credibility Tax: The tax nobody puts on a P&L
The credibility tax is the extra proof capable practitioners are asked to carry just to be taken seriously in the room.
It does not show up in any org chart. But it compounds, promotion cycle after promotion cycle, until the bench has fewer names on it than it should.
In her words:
“The credibility tax, I always felt it was one kind of high-interest loan that was given to women just to be in that room.”
She is naming her own experience, as a woman who has led procurement at two major UAE healthcare groups. The tax sits heaviest on women. That reality is not softened here.
But the mechanism is not gender-specific. The tax is paid by every high-potential practitioner whose work is strong but whose name rarely comes up in the rooms that decide. Sharpest where gender, background, or outsider-status intersects. Not absent elsewhere.
Watch the full conversation with Dr. Mona
The old way: more mentorship, more KPI-ticking
When organizations decide to do something about a thin bench, the response is familiar. More mentorship. More tracks. More celebration events.
Dr. Mona puts it directly:
“Just increasing the number of females in your team for the sake of, you know, we are more female dominant, and we are empowering the women and celebrate us once in a year, and the next day we go to our desk. I mean, it happens, but they are not, you know, that touchable impact to see in the level.”
Mentorship is necessary. But mentorship alone has a ceiling, and most organizations stop there.
The new way: sponsorship, sequenced correctly
The move that actually builds the next leadership layer is sponsorship. And the distinction Dr. Mona draws is the sharpest practical insight in the episode. Mentorship shapes capability. Sponsorship converts capability into opportunity. One helps you become ready. The other puts you in the room where readiness gets rewarded.
A mentor talks to you.
A sponsor talks about you — in rooms you are not in.
That distinction is structural. A mentor shapes capability. A sponsor converts capability into opportunity. Organizations that over-invest in mentorship and under-invest in sponsorship produce many well-coached practitioners who never get the brief that could change their career.
Dr Mona describes a specific project being handed to her mid-stream because someone senior vouched for her in a room she wasn’t in. A project that had been struggling under someone else’s management landed on her table with one line attached: she can do it, let her close it.
That is sponsorship. Someone senior, in a room she was not in, raising her name against a real project with a real outcome attached.
Not a training program. Not a mentoring coffee. A specific project, handed over because someone vouched.
Three moves this quarter for CPOs and CHROs
Audit the sponsorship layer, not the mentorship layer.
Every procurement function can list its mentoring programs. Few can name the senior leaders actively sponsoring specific high-potential practitioners into specific stretch assignments this quarter. If you cannot name them, you do not have a sponsorship system — you have a training line item.
Stop mistaking visibility events for career design.
Panels, celebration days, and elevation programs produce moments, not momentum. Develop the environment first, then develop the individual into it.
Make sponsorship a named leadership responsibility.
“Which two names did you raise this quarter, and into what brief?”
Make that a question senior leaders expect.
Broken leadership before broken procurement
The sharpest line Dr. Mona offers is not about gender at all. It is about the order procurement keeps trying to fix itself in:
“We always talk about broken supply chain, broken procurement, but we never discuss the broken leadership.”
Every transformation roadmap — data, platforms, AI, modular rollouts — assumes the leadership layer underneath is sound.
Tools and data only amplify whatever leadership capacity already exists. Put AI on top of a thin bench, and it runs faster into the same ceiling.
The credibility tax is one reason the bench stays thin.
Naming it is the cheapest structural fix procurement leaders have access to this quarter.
The piece of advice from Dr. Mona is worth carrying into your next leadership meeting:
“We need to move from being available in the room to owning that building.”
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