A great mentor is priceless. A great sponsor will make you successful.
While dramatically different, mentors and sponsors are two sides of the same career coin.
Mentors for growth
Ask most successful individuals about early career influences, and they’ll point to one or more mentors who offered guidance and wisdom. In my case, several great mentors played key roles in my career and leadership development. They were with me on my journey, helping me understand what leadership means and what effective leadership looks like. They offered perspective, a sense of accountability and reflective support for my mistakes and failures. Most of all, they helped me learn to think bigger and embrace uncertainty as an opportunity.
I am forever grateful for these mentors. Their support made me a better person and a better leader. Yet, it was the sponsors I cultivated in my career who invited me to be successful.
Sponsors for success
Sponsors are the individuals who see you in action and are willing to take a chance that you are capable of more. They’re the ones who don’t care that conventional wisdom says you’re too young or too inexperienced to do something. They want to gain an edge and achieve something unique and are willing to gamble on you.
My sponsors provided new and more significant opportunities and entrusted me with teams, departments, business units, budgets and, ultimately, leadership for broad swaths of organizations. Along the way, they challenged me, dangled the potential for failure in front of me and ultimately forced me to be at my best.
Sponsor and mentor relationships are different
There was nothing altruistic or even warm about my relationships with my sponsors. One even offered the cliché, “If you want someone to like you, get a dog.” There were no grandfatherly or grandmotherly discussions filled with wisdom and love. Instead, “How are you going to… ?” was the lead-in question, typically before “Hello.” There were a few times I seriously considered getting a dog.
Sponsors back you because they perceive you can meet their need for results. They take chances on you because they trust you to deliver. I have little doubt that I would have been quickly discarded if I had failed to deliver. The implications of “You need to get it right” or “Don’t screw it up” were always present.
Does that sound cold? Yes, in a way. However, thank goodness for these sponsors; they placed me in situations that challenged me to grow up and be accountable for my actions. They took chances on me when others suggested I needed more experience. They challenged me to learn to think differently. I suspect I learned a lot about how not to lead through fear from these individuals who wielded fear constantly.
If you are motivated to scale your impact and test yourself while doing it, you need sponsors. The challenge is how to find them and gain their support. It’s different and more challenging than cultivating mentors.
Someone decides what gets done and who does what
In every organization, a small group of individuals determines the priorities and ownership of initiatives. You need to be recognized by those in these power positions to enhance your chances of being selected for success. Perhaps disappointingly, the quaint notion that you can do your job and deliver good results isn’t sufficient. The world isn’t that kind or fair.
If you want to lead, affect strategy or impact key decisions for your team, function or organization, you cannot avoid the heavy lifting of relationship development with those in power.
Breakfast with Maury
With apologies to Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Albom, one of my approaches to gaining a sponsor was to have breakfast with Maury. Early in my tenure as a product manager, I recognized that Maury was the power broker in our sales and marketing organization. He decided the priorities and ownership. I had ideas to extend our product offerings and move into new customer segments, and I needed his support.
Casual hallway conversations weren’t enough. I went out of my way to dial up my energy and visibility in meetings where he was present, yet I still needed a forum to showcase my ideas and ask for opportunities. Fortunately, I learned through colleagues that Maury enjoyed breakfast meetings and, when not traveling, held court on Thursdays at 5:30 AM at a local diner. I summoned the courage to ask if I could join him one morning and share some market insights and ideas. He agreed, and this breakfast turned out to be the most important one of my career.
We did this monthly, and Maury quickly became a sponsor of my initiatives, mainly because they helped him with his need for numbers. Through our discussions, I tuned in to his priorities and vision for the organization and learned about his frustrations. These insights and the growing relationship helped me tailor my communication and ideas and gain his support to bring initiatives to life.
Seven starter ideas for locating your sponsor
Ultimately, I credit my relationship with Maury for my rapid advancement in that organization and the growing self-confidence I carried to other organizations. While your circumstances are different, you need to find your version of Maury and gain their sponsorship. Here are seven ideas to jump-start your work in finding your sponsor:
- Show up in every setting with energy, positivity and ideas. Be deliberate about how you want people to experience you and bring this persona to life.
- Insert yourself into groups working on high-profile problem-solving or innovation activities.
- Map the sources of power around you. Who’s making the call on priorities and resources? Find a way to develop value-creating relationships with these individuals.
- As you identify potential sponsors, tune in to their interests and let them know you want to contribute.
- Ask for the opportunity to lead.
- When you generate results, advocate for yourself. Ask your boss to advocate for you.
- Advocate for the team members who help you generate results. They will be grateful and owe you.
Ultimately, you need someone willing to take a chance on you to achieve more. Wherever that opportunity arises, you need to deliver. The good news is that once a sponsor is convinced you can excel, doors open and new, larger opportunities emerge. Additionally, you’ll be amazed at how quickly other potential sponsors begin to court you.
If scaling your impact drives you, it’s time to develop a sponsor relationship at work. Don’t forget to seek ideas from your mentor regarding prospective sponsors.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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