When it comes to the issue of professional development, two acronymes are mentioned in the same breath as far as career development is concerned: mentorship and sponsorship. Although they are both essential in professional development, the difference between them can be enlightening to the women who want to make a jumpstart in their careers and become wealthier in their respective fields.
The discourse surrounding the progression of women has greatly changed in the decade. Such magazines as Influential Women Magazine have played a huge role in exposing the subtle tactics that successful women are using to shatter the glass ceiling and rise to the top. However, even with the awareness, women still remain underrepresented in terms of leadership in any industry. It is not always talent or ambition that is lacking it is the access to the appropriate support at the appropriate time.
Getting to Know Mentorship: The Backbone of Growth
The term mentorship is more common to the majority of professionals. A mentor is a close friend who guides and offers wisdom and viewpoint, in accordance with his or her experiences. This is a relationship that is based on frequent discussions, opinion giving, and skills enhancement.
Major attributes of mentorship are:
- Providing career counseling and professional help
- Giving feedback about the skills and performance
- Transfer of knowledge and insight in the industry
- Assistance with life career in the workplace
- Fostering trust via support
Professional development depends on mentorship. A good mentor will assist you to sharpen your skills, learn how to work in an organization, and acquire competencies to move upwards. Most influential women on LinkedIn attribute their achievements to their mentors supporting them through very important career changes and inculcating leadership skills that made them successful.
Nonetheless, mentorship is limited. Although a mentor can equip you with opportunities, it does not always mean that he or she can give you the opportunities. It is here that the important difference between sponsorship and mentorship occurs.
The Power of Sponsorship: Your Ticket to the Top
Sponsorship is not restricted to giving advice. A sponsor is a person of influence and power who goes out of his/her way to promote you, usually in a closed door situation where the decisions to your career are being made. Sponsors do not merely believe in your potentials they spend their political capital to make way to you.
What sponsors do otherwise:
- Lobby during leadership meetings to be promoted
- Suggest her high-profile projects
- Introduce you to powerful contacts
- Protect your reputation when you are not within the room
- Keep the doors open to opportunities that you were unaware of
The relationship between sponsor and mentee is more transactional as compared to mentorship. Sponsors have put their credibility on you and they look forward to you producing excellent performance that will put their judgment in high regard. This shared responsibility forms a strong force that induces rapid career advancement.
Studies have always indicated that sponsorship is one of the key elements in the development to senior leadership. The women who have sponsors have higher chances of requesting a raise, demanding challenging assignments and eventually accumulating wealth due to career progression. However, women are much less likely to be sponsored as compared to men, and a chronic gap in progress is the result.
Why Women Require Both But More Particularly Sponsorship
The fact is that both mentorship and sponsorship have advantages to women but at different levels and purposes. Mentorship will aid in enabling you to develop competencies and confidence when you are still young in your career. On the farther stage, the role of sponsorship becomes more and more important in order to enter into leadership circles.
Most women spend so much to get mentors who do not get sponsors. This is because of a number of reasons. First, sponsorship needs to be visible among the top-level executives, and women are less likely to enjoy informal networks through which such relations are developed. Second, the possible sponsors might be reluctant to promote women because they are biased unconsciously or they are afraid of how it will be perceived. Third, women are not always aware of their need to be sponsored and how to develop these relationships.
The applications developed by sources such as influential women magazine offer a lot of valuable information on how other successful women have gotten through these hurdles. Learning about the tactics of the leaders who have managed to make it to the top of the leadership hierarchy helps new professionals to learn more about the sponsorship processes that facilitate progress.
Finding the Potential Sponsors within your Organization
Nobody can find a sponsor without any strategy. The relationships of sponsorship are usually formulated through a natural process as opposed to the formal mentors who may be approached in a formal manner following the performance exhibited and the mutual benefit attained.
Identify possible sponsors who:
- Have a high working position in your organization
- Demonstrate a history of lobbying
- Do something that fits your career objectives
- Be able to see into promotion and opportunity decisions
- Be taken into consideration and appreciate your unique talents and input
The best sponsors are generally a generation above you in the organization structure. They are old enough to be influential and yet close enough to know your work and influence. Listening: Notice leaders who are interested in your projects, give you constructive feedback or involve you in key discussions.
LinkedIn also offers a chance to build relationships with influential women, which can increase your network of sponsors, not only within your immediate organization. Numerous elderly ladies are proactively interested in sponsoring young talent and providing opportunities to the future generation of leaders.
Developing Sponsorship Relationships
Sponsorship is not something you can directly request like you would ordinarily request mentorship. By working hard, you get it as a result of outstanding performance and a tactical relationship-making.
Measures to develop potential sponsors:
Begin with the successful performance of high results. Those who do sponsor you are interested in you making them look good then you should be beyond reproach on the quality of work done. Find large visible projects that will demonstrate your abilities to the top management.
Make your ambitions known. A lot of women are not comfortable talking about career goals in an explicit way yet the sponsors must know where you want to go and could be able to advocate on your behalf. Communicate your hopes to the top managers.
Provide spaces of interaction. Volunteer in cross-functional programs, participate in strategic planning sessions and place yourself so that the decision-makers can notice your potential. The better your exposure to the potential sponsors, the greater the chances of having relationship.
Show fidelity and confidentiality. The sponsors must have confidence that you will act on their behalf and manage sensitive data in the right way. It is a process that requires time to build this trust, which would be crucial in achieving advocacy.
Add value to the priorities of your sponsor. Know what is important to the prospective sponsors and establish how to play a role to their agenda. Sponsorship is mutual the more would be assisted in propelling their agenda, the more would be interested in your success.
Breaking the Chains of Sponsorship
The female gender has special difficulties in finding sponsors. Studies indicate that older men who take up most of the leadership roles can be reluctant to sponsor women because they are afraid of the perception or because they are not exposed to female talent. Moreover, women of color have further impediments of obtaining sponsorship.
These systemic issues need to be resolved by establishing formal sponsorship programs within organizations. Proactive organizations are also introducing systematic programs of pairing high potential women with top executives especially to get sponsored. Such programs normalize cross-gender sponsorship and hold responsibility to develop different leadership pipelines.
Women can also make active efforts to break the hurdles. It can be especially effective when it is possible to find female sponsors. Those women who have effectively maneuvered through the promotion process tend to have a deep insight into the issues and are encouraged to create wealth prospects to other women by actively sponsoring them.
Constituting your own board of directors an eclectic team of supporters and champions makes sure you have several individuals who will be interested in your success. This will minimize reliance on a single sponsor and form a strong support system.
The Mentorship Sponsorship Combinations
Most successful professionals do not have to decide between mentorship and sponsorship they develop them both strategically. The mentors assist in nurturing you to have skills and confidence to perform on a sponsorship level. It is the sponsors who then provide the platforms upon which you can prove that on larger platforms.
Given that one should have various mentors with different insights into varied facets of your professional life, consider forming a relationship with various mentors. At the same time, draw one or two prospective sponsors to whom you would give your advocacy, which would have a great effect on your progress path.
Your mentors and sponsors can be the same, but they usually play a different role. A mentor would facilitate your readiness to take on a leadership position whereas a sponsor would make sure that you would be taken into consideration when the position is available. Such different roles enable you to be more strategic in relationships.
Becoming a Sponsor Yourself
Sponsorship is one of the best things you can do as you progress in career, especially to women who are still in their early days in career. This generates a trickle effect, increasing opportunities in your organization and business.
Begin growing sponsors before you believe that you are prepared. You do not have to be at the C-suite level to push one to get a promotion or be suggested to a critical project. It does not need to be high-level professionals; even middle-level professionals have arenas of influence that their advocacy is important.
Sponsor various talent on purpose. Dare yourself to represent other people that do not appear like you or belong to another background. This aids in ending a trend of homogenous leadership that has in the past left out women and the minority.
The spirit of helping others as you rise is also evident in the content and community created in magazines such as Influential Women Magazine, which understands that combined progress is always beneficial and creates a more fair work environment.
Measuring the Impact
The distinction between mentorship and sponsorship is better expressed in terms of results. Whereas mentorship may lead to the development of skills and confidence, sponsorship is normally associated with a tangible career growth: promotions, salary raises, leadership, and network.
Monitor your career advancement and be frank enough to evaluate whether you are being sponsored as you should be. In case you have stagnated even with good performance, then there is no sponsorship available. When you are always left behind in high profile projects or promotions, then you probably need more lobbying at the senior levels.
Sponsorship success measures are: being promoted on average or more frequently than your peer group, being part of the succession planning discussions, being assigned to strategic projects, and seeing your name listed as an opportunity to without having to self-promote.
Taking Action Today
Knowledge of the difference between mentorship and sponsorship is only practical when it prompts action. Evaluate your existing connections and your support network loopholes. Do your mentors guide you? What is more important, do you have sponsors who actively promote your development?
In case of lack of sponsorship, establish a strategy of building such relations. Find possible sponsors, build visibility, and overall provide high quality results that show that you are ready to be promoted. It is important to remember that performance and strategic relationship-building is what allows one to receive sponsorship.
At the same time, invest in relationships with mentors who will enable you to acquire skills and competencies to work at the higher levels. Mentorship is equally powerful, and combined with the active sponsorship, this gives a faster track to leadership and the capacity to accumulate wealth via career promotion.
Leadership is not a simple task, and having the knowledge of the existing tools and when to apply each one of them gives you a great chance of reaching your goals. Women who are strategic mentors and strategic sponsors do not merely get ahead quicker; they build careers that are sustainable, have increased influence, impact, and financial compensation.
