Updated on December 21, 2023

Think back through your career. Has anyone ever put in a good word for you when you were up for a promotion or new assignment? Have you ever been invited to a meeting that you might not have gotten to attend otherwise? Was there ever a time that someone gave you feedback that was both hard to hear and incredibly valuable? If you’re answering yes to any of these questions, then chances are good that you’ve had a sponsor—or, at the very least, you’ve got someone in your network that has sponsorship potential.

What’s a sponsor?

In (Forget a mentor) Find a Sponsor: The new way to fast-track your career, Sylvia Ann Hewlett (2013) describes sponsors as senior colleagues who advocate for the advancement and professional development of individuals that they believe in. Sponsors take risks on their protégés, vie for their promotion, and provide support that enables the protégés themselves to take risks. This could be anything from assignment to a new project team or attendance at an executive-level meeting. Sponsors also expand their protégés’ mindsets in terms of self-awareness and confidence, broaden their networks and reach, challenge them, and give them honest—sometimes tough—feedback on their skills and self-presentation.

Below you’ll see two tables from (Forget a Mentor) Find a Sponsor (Hewlett, 2013) that delineate specific characteristics of both sponsors and protégés.

Table 2-1: What is a sponsor? (Hewlett, 2013, p. 31)

What are the benefits of sponsorship?

In The Sponsor Effect: Breaking Through the Last Glass Ceiling, Hewlett et al. (2010) explored the results of their research about sponsorship in several prolific organizations. Their findings suggested that men and women with sponsors tend to be happier with their rate of career growth, more likely to ask for challenging assignments, and more confident about requesting raises than colleagues who do not have sponsors (p. 9-11). Having someone senior to advocate for and encourage you when you’re ready to take your next big step—whether it’s ahead or sideways—gives you a big advantage.

Sponsorship also benefits the sponsor and the business. Sponsors expect their protégés to perform, to be loyal, and to relate their own unique brand through their work. Protégés must be trustworthy and discreet, and they must bring some unique perspective or skill to the table. They need to be someone that their sponsor can count on. From the business’s perspective, sponsorship increases productivity and output and helps to retain and engage employees. Below is Figure 2-1 from (Forget a Mentor) Find a Sponsor (Hewlett, 2013), which depicts Sponsorship as a two-way street with distinct benefits for both parties.

Figure 2-1: The two-way street (Hewlett, 2013, p. 41)

Why might someone look for a sponsor?

Few people have (or are aware that they have) sponsors, and the odds tend to be stacked in favor of certain demographics. Of the participants surveyed for The Sponsor Effect (Hewlett et al, 2010), only 19% of men and 13% of women had sponsors. Beyond this, men were found to be 46% more likely to have sponsors than women (p. 8). This trend, along with a lack of recognition of gender bias among typically male C-level employees, contributes to an absence of women in higher organizational levels, as illustrated in Figure 1-1 below (Hewlett et al, 2010, p. 3). They also suggested that this corresponded with a trend for sponsors to typically be straight, white males. In a recent interview with Robert Gray of El Paso Inc (2016), Maria Castañón Moats elaborated: “If I would have waited around for somebody like me, a Hispanic mother of two, to sponsor me, I would have waited a long time”.

Figure 1-1: Women fall away at executive levels (Hewlett et al, 2010, p. 3)

There’s also confusion around the difference between sponsors and mentors. Many people think that they have a sponsor when in reality they have a mentor. This doesn’t mean that their mentorship might not grow into a sponsorship. However, there are some distinctions between these two types of relationship. Figure 1-1 below (Hewlett, 2013, p. 21) describes the boundaries and overlaps in the roles of sponsors and mentors.

Figure 1-1: Sponsor versus mentor (Hewlett, 2013, p. 21)

How can you find a sponsor?

According to Hewlett (2013), there are 7 steps you can take to put yourself on the path to being ready for a sponsor:

Embrace your dream and do a diagnostic. Define what your ideal state would be and assess your skills, personal values, and the things that distinguish you from your peers. Work with a mentor, role model, or career advisor who can help you brainstorm your list of professional goals and see a big picture view of how you might obtain them (p. 69-72).
Scan the horizon for potential sponsors. Don’t necessarily settle on role models, friends, or your direct supervisor. Aim higher, broadly, and not necessarily for someone whose style you want to emulate yourself. Be proactive in increasing your visibility and always be ready to show potential sponsors something unique that you can offer to them (p. 82-85).
Distribute your risk. Use mentoring, networking groups, philanthropy, development programs, and more to increase your exposure both inside and outside your organization. You should aim to have 2 sponsors in your organization (1 in your direct workgroup and 1 in another department), as well as 1 outside the company. Hewlett calls this the 2 + 1 rule (p. 91).
Understand that it’s not all about you. Always communicate. Ask for help before problems arise and make sure your sponsor is in-the-loop. Make sure you are proactive, thoughtful, and that you go above and beyond the call of duty for your potential sponsor (p. 100-101).
Come through on two obvious fronts. Be sure to meet your objectives and be loyal to your sponsor. You want to reflect well on their personal brand and earn their trust. Seek out matter-of-fact improvement feedback, and gather with colleagues to advertise each others’ success (p. 105-116).
Develop and deploy your currency. Craft your own personal brand, using prior self-assessment, performance reviews, and mentor feedback to identify your strengths. Advertise your areas of expertise such as technical skills, and consider reverse-mentoring with your targeted sponsor (p. 120-126).
Lean in and lead with a yes. When your sponsor sends a request your way, say yes first, then worry about the potential conflicts once you’re able to negotiate. If there are challenges or obstacles, consider and propose solutions rather than simply stating the issues (p. 129-133).

Luckily, you’re not completely on your own in cultivating a sponsor. Many businesses want to help their employees develop these types of relationships, and there are also groups like Ellevate which can help to connect you with training and network growth opportunities that put you in a greater position for sponsorship. What I found to be most interesting about Ellevate was that it has different membership levels that correspond with different levels of experience. I’ll be attending an open web session on November 3 that will cover mentorship readiness, and I’ve sent out a request to meet with a representative about corporate partnerships, to see if there’s anything that might be of use to SAP.

How can businesses support sponsorship in the workplace?

Though much of the onus in cultivating a sponsor rests with the protégé, many businesses recognize the potential benefit to their employees and their bottom lines and want to promote sponsorship from within. To identify common approaches to doing this at an organizational level, I decided to compare the examples provided in The Sponsor Effect (Hewlett et al., 2010) across several dimensions, including time period, their general approach and goals, measurement strategies and results. 15 companies participated in the study: American Express, Cisco, Citi, Deloitte, Time Warner, Deutsche Bank, Novartis, Unilever, FTSE 100, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Morgan Stanley, Turner Broadcasting System, Intel, Ernst & Young, and PepsiCo. Curious about the full comparison? Then click here.

Here are some trends that stood out across all 15 programs:

Most organizations had strategic goals to increase their number of women in leadership, and most programs were geared towards women who were already in a leadership position. Managing directors and vice presidents were the most commonly targeted audiences.
Not all organizations took a matching approach. Some organizations paired protégés with sponsors, while others did not. Those that didn’t match protégés with sponsors instead focused on organizing events that provided opportunities for these two groups to interact with each other and grow their relationships organically.
Several organizations called out the need for careful education and guidance on the part of the sponsor in order to tee their relationship up for success.
Many organizations also organized alumni events, both ensuring prolonged exposure to their sponsors and encouraging alumni to themselves become sponsors and catalyze a trickle-down effect throughout the organization.

Want to learn more?

References

Gray, R. (October 24, 2016). Maria Castañón Moats: U.S. assurance leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers. El Paso Inc.
Hewlett, S. A. (2013). (Forget a mentor) find a sponsor: The new way to fast-track your career. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
Hewlett, S. A., Peraino, K., Sherbin, L., & Sumberg, K. (2010). The sponsor effect: Breaking through the last glass ceiling. Cambridge: Harvard Business Review.

Sponsorship: The boost you didn’t know you needed