RfO Race to Progress : Sponsoring V. Mentoring

This trend to engage with career influencers is in line with the latest thinking on career progression. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that 94% of people looking for new openings claimed that professional networking had helped them[i].

This points to a clear need for a system of corporate sponsorship where an active sponsor introduces an individual to different networks and promotes their protégé’s skills and talents within their own sphere of influence.  

Yet the success of active sponsorship is dependent on proactive engagement from senior management and organisation leaders who are more likely to have built up a network of influential contacts. Worryingly, our research shows that there is little confidence that senior management treats all ethnic groups fairly when it comes to career progression (see Fig 21.). Individuals need a sponsor to open doors and help facilitate progression, but these sponsors need to ensure that they are fair in whom they choose to actively support.

I am interested in the idea of 'sponsorship' as distinct from 'mentoring'. Sponsorship suggests an exchange of value and a mutual relationship of interdependency.  If I do things that benefit you and make you more successful, will you be active in helping me be successful?  Firstly, you have to do something useful and secondly you need to ask to get something in return.  I think mentoring is valuable but it can be quite passive and one-directional.  I doubt if any leader in business has succeeded without sponsorship and support from more senior colleagues.  I also think that the concept of sponsorship demonstrates a commitment to the individual beyond 'being helpful'.  Most, if not all business leaders sponsor more junior colleagues in their organisation - it's one of the principle expectations (and pleasures) of a leadership role.  You are unlikely to get that sponsorship if your value to the 'leader' is not clear and if it's not clear that you expect something in return.  As a leader it's also worth asking 'who do I actively support and sponsor?'  Do they look and sound like me ?

Ben Castell  Partner, Advisory Services, Ernst & Young
and RfO Leadership Board Member.

An ‘active’ sponsor approach is something businesses should consider as a valuable tool alongside their mentoring schemes. With ‘active’ sponsorship, the mentor-mentee relationship goes beyond just providing feedback and advice. Instead, the sponsor takes the role of an active advocate, using their position, network and influence to promote their mentee to senior people in the business.

The Harvard Business Review[i] defines the position of a mentor and a sponsor as follows:

Mentors:

-          Can sit at any level in the hierarchy

-          Provide emotional support, feedback on how to improve, and other advice

-          Serve as role models

-          Help mentees learn to navigate corporate politics

-          Strive to increase mentees’ sense of competence and self-worth

-          Focus on mentees’ personal and professional development

Sponsors: 

-          Must be senior managers with influence

-          Give protégés exposure to other executives who may help their careers

-          Make sure their people are considered for promising opportunities and challenging assignments

-          Protect their protégés from negative publicity or damaging contact with senior executives

-          Fight to get their people promoted