The Benefits of Career Sponsorship Go Both Ways

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership, case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. Most of us think of mentoring a colleague as a one-way street – a GIFT of professional guidance and advice. But Sylvia Ann Hewlett says sponsorship is a reciprocal relationship. Not only is the giving deep  – it also goes both ways. Hewlett is an economist, consultant, and the author the book The Sponsor Effect: How to Be a Better Leader by Investing in Others. In this episode, she breaks down the building blocks, risks, and potential rewards of sponsorship. She also offers advice for choosing the right protégé AND effectively launching and managing these long-term relationships.  This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in June 2019. Here it is.

ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard. We all know that there are big benefits to having a sponsor at work, someone who has your back and pushes you up through the ranks. But, feel good aspects aside, why should people want to be sponsors? You’re investing your time and energy, and sometimes risking your reputation to help someone else advance. Our guest today says that it’s 100 percent worth it in very tangible ways. Senior executives who have a protégé are 53 percent more likely to have received a recent promotion. Entry level people who sponsor someone else are 167 percent more likely to have gotten a stretch assignment. And sponsors tend to feel more satisfied in their careers. Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and the founder of the Center for Talent Innovation. She’s studied dozens of sponsor relationships and has a lot of advice on how to make sure they benefit both parties. She’s the author of the book The Sponsor Effect: How to Be a Better Leader by Investing in Others. Sylvia, thanks so much for joining me today. Sylvia, thanks so much for joining me today.

SYLVIA HEWLETT: It’s great to be here.

ALISON BEARD: So we’ve talked about sponsorship on this show before, but for the uninitiated, what’s the difference between sponsors and mentors?

SYLVIA HEWLETT: Very simply, mentorship is a gift. It’s a professional guiding, giving advice, to helping out a younger person out of the goodness of their heart. And it’s pretty much a one-way street. Sponsorship, on the other hand, has much more heft. It’s a much more serious thing, because an established leader, or a rising star deliberately invests in a younger talent that the see as outstanding. They open doors for them. They coach them. They develop their careers very proactively. They make a ton of investment. And in return, they themselves see a great deal of value. It’s very much a two-way street. And it grows over time. It often happens, you know, fairly organically, because the younger person has to display a great deal of value. And oftentimes the senior person is looking for a value add, you know, a skill or an experience in the younger person that they don’t have themselves, that allows the older person to expand their own scope and span. So it’s very reciprocal. There’s some risk in it. And it’s really about progression for both of the individuals.

ALISON BEARD: So it sounds like you’re saying that when you’re thinking about the types of people to sponsor, diversity is really important. You want to find people who bring different things to the table. At the same time, we tend to gravitate towards people like ourselves. So what’s the right balance? Should you definitely be looking for, if you’re a man, a woman? If you’re old, someone young?

SYLVIA HEWLETT: One of the leaders at American Express had he called it the “one plus two rule”. Meaning that it was OK to choose someone who was very similar to you, but you’d better have a portfolio of younger talent, perhaps three people, that you are investing in, and the other two should not look like you. And what he meant by that wasn’t just gender or ethnicity. He also meant generational difference. He meant global differences. One thing I do find in the data, and there is some very, you know, serious data behind this book, is that the three things that sponsors tend to look for are very clear cut. First off, you know, performance is table stakes. You don’t get on anyone’s list unless you are really delivering and hitting those numbers and are outstanding at what you do. Secondly, very important is this trustworthiness piece, because quite frankly, unless you really understand that this person believes in the mission, is on board for the long run, really is a true team player and admires the company that you’re both working in, it would not make much sense to sponsor that person, because you absolutely need to be able to rely on that commitment. And I think to go to a young professional’s group, to go to a resource mentoring program, you know, there are ways of identifying potential fantastic talent that is quite different from you, and to make sure that that is a very constructive and not risky thing to do, what a leader has to be prepared to do is take a bet on talent perhaps outside their usual zone of reference

ALISON BEARD: And you talk in the book about spelling out the terms of the relationship, explaining that you expect it to be mutually beneficial. But how do you have that conversation?

SYLVIA HEWLETT: I think the frame to think of this in is that you approach the beginnings of a relationship with a very talented young person. And you test them. You give them a challenging task. And obviously you try and set them up for success. But you work with them on something that is not terribly risky, and the expectation coming from you is that they need to excel. And again, I’ll give an example. Kenji Yoshino, who is a very distinguished scholar and professor at NYU Law School has always had a very capable research assistant. But one year when he knew that he needed a research assistant who was really going to collaborate on a very important book, obviously he tried that person out first, right, giving him smaller, writing collaborative things to do, and obviously when that person rose to the occasion, you know, the bigger, riskier project was then put on the table. In this particular case I talk about it in the book, eventually this particular protégé became the executive director of a think tank within the school that Kenji himself was leading, a very, I guess, important role, and one which you would entrust to someone who already had a track record with you. There is this slow build I think between responsibility and expectations that have to be met before this thing is truly off the ground.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And as that relationship progresses, what kinds of support are you then supposed to be giving?

SYLVIA HEWLETT: So it’s about identifying. It’s about including, i.e., going across lines of gender, rage, age. You know, difference matters, and it’s very valuable. And then inspiring, because you are trying to expand the dreams of this younger person, trying to align their emerging vision of what they want to do with their lives with yours, because that is so exciting, and it allows for the commitment we’re talking about. So inspiration is very important. But then there’s the instruction, because there are going to be some skills gap. One very fascinating example I look at is at EY. A woman in the tax practice who herself had been very successfully sponsored was very intrigued by a young Chinese woman [Shau Zhang] who joined the firm in her 20s. Kate, the more senior woman, was immediately impressed by the fierce and precise marketing energy that this younger Chinese woman brought to bear. But she had extremely poor English. She’d gone to not just undergraduate school, but also to business school in China. And her second language was Russian. So Kate persuaded EY to give her individual, one-on-one English lessons, and she also created some executive coaching so that she had some kind of fast-tracking of her presentation skills. Well, five years later, this was such a success story that she gave Shau the challenge of co-leading with her a new venture at EY which was called, COIN, the China Investors Network that EY was creating. And Shau went on to lead this. And it’s now a $100 million a year business. And it’s a real legacy play, both for Kate and for the company. But obviously what Kate took very seriously very early on was, if she was going to this incredibly capable woman, you know, she needed to be very proactive in helping her close those skill gaps. So the instruction there is very important.

ALISON BEARD: You talk about the fact that people do make mistakes. They might not rise to all of those occasions when you’re testing their mettle. So how do you tell when those weaknesses or slipups show cause you to downgrade the relationship versus invest more time and energy in this person?

SYLVIA HEWLETT: One example I use is a woman who was an executive in the financial services world, and she had a very outstanding protégé who went silent for about eight months, failed to keep her in the loop, reach out to her, because I say throughout this study that it’s up to the younger person to actually drive the relationship because we always need to remember that the senior person has a huge scarcity of time on their hands. Right? So when this woman executive realized that she hadn’t heard, and she also got some indirect feedback from another senior colleague that something was going wrong, she made sure to have a meeting with her young protégé. And he very shamefacedly said, indeed, he had run into a lot of trouble, and he’d been too overwhelmed and a little bit scared, so he hadn’t come to see her. So she gave him a second chance and said, look, let’s do some brainstorming about how to deal with what you’re facing. And I can see this, that and the other thing that might help resolve the situation. But let me just tell you, you know, I need to be involved going forward, because my reputation is at stake, because everyone knows that I am behind you, that I have gone out on a limb to make sure that you were in this spot. Second time around, he again fell silent. And then she, again, went out of her way to see him, it was about three months later, and that time she said, you know, sorry, it’s over. I wish you well, but I am no longer going to be actively advocating for you. And I’m not going to make any big scene, but I will make sure that other people know that, too.

ALISON BEARD: So it’s like a breakup.

SYLVIA HEWLETT: Yes.

ALISON BEARD: Great. But you also tell the story of a woman who flubbed her first presentation to the CEO once the sponsor put her in that spotlight, and yet their relationship continued.

SYLVIA HEWLETT: Yes. And the difference there, Alison, was that the second chance, I mean, this was in the healthcare industry. This was a very promising younger talent put in front of the CEO by her own boss. And she basically hadn’t done her homework, and when it came to the second half of her strategic plan, it was very thin. And she could not defend it. And that made her boss feel mortified, because it was a kind of classic mistake, and she felt that she at this point in her career should have been able to avoid such a clear-cut failing. So she kind of dressed her down. I mean, there’s a lot of unvarnished feedback that happens in sponsorship relationships, because there is rift in the equation. And you have to play it straight. And she said, look, next time around, and it’s four months down the road, you’re giving this presentation in front of a large team, not quite the CEO, but it’s a big deal. We’re going to work in this together, and there cannot be another failure. And there wasn’t. It’s a kind of two strikes, you’re out kind of situation I think with a lot of these stories. It makes a lot of sense to be quite clear in terms of what went wrong. But then the younger person is on notice that the next time it really has to go smoothly.

ALISON BEARD: So at what stage in my career should I be thinking about sponsoring people in addition to or rather than finding people to sponsor me?

SYLVIA HEWLETT: Most people need to be doing both things. One of my daughters was working at a Washington think tank this last year. She’s young. You know, she’s pretty much an individual contributor at this point. But there were 14 interns in her office. And two of them were thoroughly terrific. So she invested in them, really helped them, but made demands on them, and you know, they worked together, and they got extraordinary things done. And you know, she wasn’t calling it sponsorship, perhaps, but that’s what she was doing. I think these muscles are very important, because you’re creating kind of relationship capital. Right? That sticks to you as well as to the more junior person.

ALISON BEARD: And through all of this, especially if you’re sponsoring more than one person, you recommend three, how do you make sure that you’re not taking on too much, and then getting distracted from your work?

SYLVIA HEWLETT: When you sponsor, you get help. It’s not a chore. It adds to your energy. Let’s go back to Kenji at NYU. He was invited by the law school to create this new center on diversity, inclusion and belonging. Because he writes books and is world renowned, and is basically an amazing scholar and teacher, he was very loathe to put something else in his calendar, like running a whole new think tank. But because he had this one protégé and several more, he was able to add this extraordinary dimension of impact to his life without having to do any of the real legwork or administrative work involved in actually setting it up and running it.

ALISON BEARD: Right. There are some other great examples in the book, too. One of my favorites was your description of Mellody Hobson as a grasshopper who just was always jumping whenever her boss wanted her to do something. And there was another story about an executive who just always said yes, no matter what the ask was, she said yes.

SYLVIA HEWLETT: Yes.

ALISON BEARD: So the idea that someone will just come through for you when you need them to is quite attractive.

SYLVIA HEWLETT: What it should do is take work off your shoulders next week, allow you to do more, and focus on what you do best without having, you know, all of the ankle biters. You know, the stuff that you find gets in the way that someone else could do better. When you have two or three people who actively are looking for things that they want you to share so that you can become an even bigger star, that’s pretty fabulous.

ALISON BEARD: And you don’t always need to be working directly with this person. Right? They don’t have to be on your immediate team. You can find them in your broader organization?

SYLVIA HEWLETT: Right. Jonathan Atwood at Unilever, he did an interview and then was on a panel with someone in a different department, a younger talent called Mita Malik. He found that she was quite remarkable, not just because she had extraordinary skills, particularly in marketing, but because she had the most amazing stories. Her grandmothers in India, were child brides at age 11. Her grandfather spend, was a freedom fighter and spent endless years in prison in the era of colonial rule. And she, in two generations, so much had transformed and challenged her family. She can talk about it with extraordinary, not just poise and eloquence, but she can connect it to the storyline of an immigrant woman in America today. What Jonathan realized is that she was a goldmine for him, because personal purpose was what he was trying to infuse into the workforce and connect it with the larger company brand. And so he increasingly tapped into Malik’s extraordinary abilities on this front of storytelling for his own purpose, for his own, give a megaphone to some of the work he’s doing. So they’re not in the same department, but you know, they’ve helped one another out, and they’re now very well known in the company, and both of their careers have soared. But again, it’s a very good example of a leader finding value rather unexpectedly in an employee who had at least two, you know, kind of off the charts sets of skills, that he or she can both amplify and incorporate into what they’re doing.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. People don’t usually appreciate it when leaders play favorites. So how do you sponsor someone without upsetting everyone else?

SYLVIA HEWLETT: Three pieces to this answer. First off, you’ve got to have the evidence of just how fantastic this person is. For instance, in some companies, you need to have a performance rating of, you know, 4.0 or 5.0 in order to be in the pool that is picked from. If something like that can be demonstrated, it’s clear that if you yourself get into this pool, you will also have this opportunity. So I think being clear about the performance criteria, because it is not some kind of favoritism. Right? Because it’s intensely meritocratic. The first criteria is performance. Secondly, I think the other thing that is quite clear from the get-go and should again be quite clear to the world and made quite transparent to the world, is how much the younger talent is delivering, because you really have to give before you get. You have to demonstrate that you are valuable, put value on the table, so the team will see that, as well as the leader you’re trying to impress. Right? So I think again, it reinforces the fact that this is highly meritocratic, and everyone can see the ways in which this younger talent is actually earning the support that they are getting. And finally, I think any sensible corporate tosho will position this as rolling opportunity. It’s not some kind of weird club that you get a chance of joining or not joining, and you know, life’s over if you don’t make the cut. I think that every year, every 18 months, there’s a sense of renewal that you can find this kind of relationship yourself, particularly if you are in, if you put yourself in the right category, so that you become in a way qualified for this kind of advocacy and development.

ALISON BEARD: Right, it’s an opportunity open to all.

SYLVIA HEWLETT: Yes. And a rolling opportunity.

ALISON BEARD: It makes sense. So I definitely feel emboldened to stop mentoring people and start sponsoring them. Thank you so much for being on the show.

SYLVIA HEWLETT: Oh, thank you. It was a great conversation.

HANNAH BATES: That was economist and consultant Sylvia Ann Hewlett – in conversation with Alison Beard on the HBR IdeaCast. Hewlett is the author of the book, The Sponsor Effect: How to Be a Better Leader by Investing in Others. We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from the Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review. We’re a production of the Harvard Business Review – if you want more articles, case studies, books, and videos like this, find it all at HBR dot org. This episode was produced by Mary Dooe, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Adam Buchholz, Rob Eckhardt, Maureen Hoch, Adi Ignatius, Karen Player, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.