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What Is Sponsorship?

Pat Fili-Krushel, chairman of NBCUniversal News Group, has come a long, long way in the super competitive and testosterone-fueled world of network news and media. Though not a journalist, she is the first woman in the American television news industry to head up a network news division, reporting directly to CEO Steve Burke. She’s been on Fortune magazine’s 50 Most Powerful Women list since 1998, and she’s been honored with a slew of other awards, including induction into the Museum of Television & Radio’s “She Made It” collection. No one would ever guess, in the presence of this poised and powerful executive, that she began her career as a secretary at ABC Sports.

“I’ve been lucky,” Pat insists when I marvel at her extraordinary journey.¹ “And I’ve worked my tail off.” She pauses to reflect, then adds, “But one of the things I’ve done well—and I don’t know that it’s conscious—is that I’ve always made my boss look good. All the people I’ve worked for will tell you, ‘I like having Pat around, because I know she’s got my back.’”

One of those people was Bob Iger, now CEO of Disney, whom she met at the Xerox machine when both were starting out their careers at ABC Sports. While she didn’t initially report to Iger, her work ethic and performance won his attention and he pulled her onto his team. Whenever Iger moved up, he recommended that Fili-Krushel fill his vacancy. It was Iger who brought her over to ABC from Lifetime Television, where she’d served as a senior vice president of programming, and installed her as president of ABC Daytime television. But Fili-Krushel was quick to make good on his investment in her: she was the driving force behind “The View,” the talk show that helped vault ABC’s daytime programming to number one among women 18–49 years old. She also conceived and launched SoapNet, a 24-hour soap-opera cable network, which went on to become a multibillion-dollar business. “Do your job well, make sure your boss is fully informed, and don’t be afraid to ask for help,” she explains. “That’s how you build the trust vital to any long-term professional relationship.”

Superior performance and trust is certainly what delivered Pat to her current position with Steve Burke. She’d impressed him back when they both worked for Disney, she as president of ABC TV, he as president of ABC Broadcasting. “Pat was someone you could absolutely count on to do the right thing,” Burke told me. “She wasn’t intimidated by projects or people, and she didn’t play politics. I knew her motivations at all times—and that made her one-hundred percent trustworthy.”

So in 2011, after Comcast and GE merged with NBC and Burke found himself at the helm of a super-siloed media monolith, it was Pat he turned to for help in transforming the culture. “I knew if I got Pat, I wouldn’t have to worry,” he recalled. “I knew when she found things wrong, she would make them right. I knew that if any of our top people had exposure to her, even without exposure to me, they’d know the kind of company we were trying to create.”

Hired on as executive vice president of NBCUniversal, Pat immediately set to rights the compensation structure that had mired Burke’s team in the past. With her formidable people skills, she helped effect the collaborative culture that Burke had envisioned. When Burke decided to form the News Group, putting NBC News, CNBC, MSNBC, and The Weather Channel in the hands of one executive, it was again Pat who emerged as first choice. “I knew my decision would ruffle some feathers,” Burke confided. “Pat’s not a journalist, so how could she be put in charge of hundreds of journalists who are risking their lives all over the world? But she didn’t need to be the senior-most journalist in order to find the people who could make this new environment productive and cooperative.”

But if initially people scratched their heads at Pat’s appointment, they don’t anymore. “Everyone, from Brian Williams to staff members, has told me she’s a breath of fresh air,” Burke observed when we spoke in early 2013. “Pat’s a great executive, the kind who creates an environment where people enjoy what they do. She has my complete confidence.”

Marina, an assistant finance manager at Lloyds Banking Group of London, feels pretty well supported at work.² She received a warm welcome when she returned from maternity leave last year. She was given the part-time schedule she’d requested—an unusual accommodation for anyone in the risk assurance department—and was assigned to a line manager she both liked and knew would look out for her.

While grateful for these developments, Marina wasn’t terribly surprised. She believed that it was all about performance, and she’d consistently delivered over her ten years at the bank. “It stands to reason,” she told me, “that the higher-ups appreciate my track record. When you have worked for a company as long as I have, your results speak for themselves,” she explained. “Once someone has seen your good work it’s hard for someone to say, ‘Oh she’s rubbish, she’s got to go,’ because people won’t believe it. People who know my skills and level of commitment will support me and make sure I’m rewarded.”

But it doesn’t seem to be working out that way. Now that she’s working a full-time schedule again, Marina is frustrated that those same people haven’t done more to fast-track her career. One of them, “a super-duper female executive” she met through the women’s network at the bank, struck her as someone who might be a champion. “She’s absolutely my role model because she also has young children and knows a thing or two about how a woman can make it big in a male-dominated environment,” Marina enthused. But their relationship has remained casual—and remote. “I thought of asking her to sponsor me,” said Marina wistfully, “but I had second thoughts. She’s my boss’s boss and there might be some conflict of interest.”

For now Marina is pinning her hopes on her long-time mentor—a senior person who has given her wise counsel over the years. He makes a point of complimenting her on her contributions, so she’s fairly sure that he has sent some work her way. “No one has said that directly, but I have a feeling that’s the case,” Marina said. “He did say to me once, ‘You’re one of those people who’s good at fixing things. You’re Mrs. Fixit.’”

Marina told me that she thinks in time her mentor will come through. Having recognized her good work, he will eventually reward it. “I’m definitely on his radar” she says, citing a conversation where he seemed pleased to learn she was working on a mission-critical project. “I haven’t gotten a promotion out of him yet, but I’m confident he sees my potential.”

Two ambitious women, two different career strategies. Top performers with a great deal of potential, each attracted the attention of a superior positioned to help her navigate a particularly tricky curve in her career trajectory. But whereas Marina is still waiting for her promotion, Pat has ascended to the “C-suite” (the domain of CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and other chief executives).

What accounts for these vastly different outcomes? Why do so many women, like Marina, stall out short of the leadership positions they have the potential to fill? Why do so few women, like Pat, fulfill their dreams and attain positions of true power and influence?

After two years of exhaustive inquiry, I can tell you why: high-potential women have mentors but lack sponsors. They fail to cultivate strategic alliances with individuals capable of propelling them into leadership positions and protecting them from other contenders. Often, like Marina, they have would-be advocates, senior-level leaders who’ve taken note of their capabilities. But they don’t know how to turbocharge these relationships. They don’t understand the quid pro quo, the mutual investment that ensures both parties remain incentivized to help each other over the long run. So, like Marina, they put their heads down, work harder, and wait, hoping that their mentors and role models will see to their success.

This mistake is all too common and one that women and professionals of color are particularly prone to making. I myself have made it. But as my own career path demonstrates, it’s never too late to seize hold of your dreams, win sponsors, and pull yourself out of a career stall. If you’re on a slow road to nowhere, consider changing your strategy. Forget a mentor. Find a sponsor.

Mentorship versus Sponsorship

Don’t get me wrong: mentors matter. You absolutely need them. But they’re not your ticket to the top. Mentors give, whereas sponsors invest.

Let me clarify.

Mentors are those people who take an interest in counseling you because they like you, or because you remind them of themselves. Mentors will listen sympathetically to just about anything you care to bring up. Indeed, the whole idea of having a mentor is to discuss what you cannot or dare not bring up with your boss or colleagues. Your mentor will listen to your issues, offer advice, and review which problem-solving approaches to take and which to discard. Mentors give generously of their time. In return, you listen and try to heed their advice. It may be that they enjoy drawing on their experience and sharing their wisdom, or they’re paying back their own early supporters, or they’re paying the debt forward. In any case, it’s an asymmetric relationship. The energy is flowing one way: toward you.

A sponsor, as we shall explore, is also someone who takes an interest in you and your career, but not out of altruism or like-mindedness. A sponsor sees furthering your career as an important investment in his or her own career, organization, or vision. Sponsors may advise or steer you, but their chief role is to develop you as a leader. Your role is to earn their investment in you. Indeed, throughout the relationship, you’re delivering outstanding results, building their brand or legacy, and generally making them look good. You’re driving the relationship, making sure that whatever dividends you realize in the way of promotions, pay raises, or plum assignments are manifestly dividends that you earned. Sponsorship, done right, is transactional. It’s an implicit or even explicit strategic alliance, a long-range quid pro quo. But provided you’re giving as good as you’re getting, there’s nothing about this dynamic that warrants distaste. Sponsorship isn’t favoritism or politics; it doesn’t rig the game. On the contrary, it ensures you get what you’ve worked for and deserve. (See figure 1-1 for a comparison of the two roles.)

FIGURE 1-1

Sponsor versus mentor

Sponsors can be role models, leaders you relate to and aspire to emulate. But they needn’t be, and often aren’t. What’s important in sponsorship is trust, not affinity. It’d be nice if the person who can most help you turns out to be a person you like or most want to be like. But trust can arise between two people who are vastly different. This difference imbues sponsorship with power, because each party gains from the complementarity of the other. The alliance is then greater than the sum of its individual parts.

This is not to belittle the role that supporters, by which I mean both mentors and role models, play in your career. Role models serve as vital inspiration, boosting your drive and giving form to your ambition. Mentors, who are often role models, can offer empathetic support, help you figure out what you want, and determine with you what steps will get you there. A good mentor will decode the unwritten rules, demystify the way things work, and offer you tips on navigating the organization. People who are mentored feel less isolated (especially if they’re entrepreneurs), more connected to their company, and less stressed than those who lack such attention and guidance. Multicultural professionals in particular benefit from the emotional support and pledge of solidarity that mentors and role models of color provide.

But neither mentors nor role models can give you real career traction. Research we conducted at the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) shows that sponsors, not mentors, put you on the path to power and influence by affecting three things: pay raises, high-profile assignments, and promotions. When it comes to asking for a pay raise, our research finds, the majority of men (67 percent) and women (70 percent) resist confronting their boss.³ With a sponsor in their corner, however, nearly half of men and 38 percent of women will make the request—and, our focus-group research suggests, will succeed in getting the raise. When it comes to getting assigned to a high-visibility team or plum project, some 43 percent of male employees and 36 percent of females will approach their manager and make the request. With a sponsor, the numbers rise to 56 percent and 44 percent, respectively.

Our research also shows that the individuals who are most satisfied with their rate of advancement are individuals with sponsors. Fully 70 percent of sponsored men and 68 percent of sponsored women feel they are progressing through the ranks at a satisfactory pace, compared to 57 percent of their unsponsored peers. That translates into a “sponsor effect” of 23 percent for men and 19 percent for women. CTI research shows that sponsors affect women’s career trajectory even more profoundly than men’s in at least one respect: 85 percent of mothers (employed full-time) who have sponsors stay in the game, compared to only 58 percent of those going it alone. That’s a sponsor effect of 27 percent.

The sponsor effect on professionals of color is even more impressive. Minority employees are 65 percent more likely than their unsponsored cohorts to be satisfied with their rate of advancement.

Even in companies with robust mentoring programs, mentoring doesn’t deliver on its promise, or at least not for women and people of color. Research conducted by Catalyst (an advocacy organization for women in business) shows that while more women than men have been mentored, more men have won promotions—15 percent more, according to a 2008 study.⁴ Mentors are no silver bullet, no matter how heavily Fortune 500 corporations invest in mentorship programs. So if, like Marina, you’re waiting for your role model or mentor to part the waters and set you up on the distant shore, you’re wasting precious time.

I wrote this book to make sure you don’t make Marina’s mistake: to show you why you need sponsors (and you need more than one) to help you achieve your vision, whether that’s a leading role in a large company, a strategic role in a small company, founding a business of your own, or steering a nonprofit or educational organization to fulfill its mission and mandate. I created the road map you’ll find in part II to show you exactly what you need to do to attract sponsors, win their advocacy, sustain their interest, and leverage their backing throughout your career. Because even at the pinnacle of your career, you’ll find that these skills serve you. Fabulously successful entrepreneurs and CEOs alike still need powerful voices to get them onto boards, introduce them to investors, or secure them a spot at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Sponsorship is the mechanism by which people of vision attain their goals, which is why no one—male or female, millennial or boomer, start-up employee or multinational manager—can afford to dismiss it or miss out on it.

That being said, women and people of color stand to benefit the most from this book precisely because sponsorship has long been the inside track for Caucasian men. Men are 46 percent more likely than women, and Caucasians are 63 percent more likely than professionals of color, to have a sponsor seeing to their success. I’m not suggesting there’s a conspiracy here. Rather, it’s a quirk of human nature that keeps leadership in the United States and Europe mostly pale and male. Those in power tend to invest in other members of their tribe because they’re the ones they trust most readily. This is the way it has worked since the dawn of civilization. But that doesn’t mean sponsorship is the exclusive province of straight white guys. That sponsorship has worked so well for the old boys’ network for so long simply underscores the power of this type of advocacy, not the exclusivity of power.

As the founder of an organization focused on talent issues, I have the privilege of knowing white male executives who are committing every resource at their disposal to changing the face of leadership, and not because women’s groups have pressured them into it. They understand that much of the best talent out there is diverse. Our research shows that Caucasian men comprise a mere 17 percent of college graduates around the world.⁵ There’s never been a better time, that is, for accomplished, ambitious women and people of color to show they’re eager to move into leadership roles, because the business sector is competing for them worldwide. For them, sponsorship is the key that turns all the tumblers, unlocking the door to the C-suite, on Main Street as well as Wall Street.

The research undergirding the advice in this book draws on the collective experience and wisdom of some ten thousand full-time workers in the private sector.⁶ We interviewed dozens of Fortune 500 leaders, convened with over a hundred managers in on-site and online focus groups, and surveyed thousands of employees in the United States and the United Kingdom—people on every rung of the ladder in every profession that requires a college degree. While most of these people work for large corporations, the insights derived from their experience transcend environment. Cultivating a sponsor and leveraging the relationship to mutual benefit turns out to be a skill that serves people in nonprofits and education as readily as it serves people in for-profits and government.

Finally, I’ve tested this research on the ground. I’ve presented this road map to hundreds of professionals worldwide, to graduate students at Skolkovo School of Management in Moscow, to bankers in London’s City, even to the National Football League in midtown Manhattan. The response has been amazing. You can feel the “aha!” moment happen. Men and women see, in sponsorship, the game changer they’ve been looking for. But they see something more: with this road map in hand, they’re in a position to do the changing. They don’t need to wait. They don’t need to be tapped or chosen or singled out by someone else. It’s up to them to put this dynamic into play.

And now, it’s up to you.