Get Yourself a Sponsor, Not a Mentor
A mentor listens and offers advice. A sponsor makes things happen.
When Iris Drayton-Spann decided it was time to try for a promotion, she didn’t schedule time to sit down with her manager and make her case. Instead, the human resources manager asked her boss at Goodwill Industries International a question that would set in motion a chain of events to rocket her up the company totem pole:
“What are the projects you want to get done that you haven’t had the time to do?”
When her boss described an internship program that hadn’t yet gotten off the ground, Drayton-Spann got to work creating it. Within a year, the program was up and running, and she found herself taken under the wing of her grateful manager — invited to high-level meetings, introduced to other senior leaders at the company. And then her boss made it official, offering to be Drayton-Spann’s sponsor.
A work sponsor is a more involved — and, usually, more effective — spin on the mentor. Where a mentor typically answers questions and offers advice, a sponsor uses his or her connections and capital to advocate for a younger or less experienced employee, batting opportunities their way and actively participating in their career growth.
Sponsorship starts with convincing…
