Rising managers who deliver for a senior leader with the standing to advocate for them gain a sponsor, who then spends their own capital on the manager's promotions and proposals.
An example
Good reviews had not won a senior manager in an accounting firm's advisory practice a single partner willing to argue for her at the annual promotion meeting. She noticed that one tax partner who sat on the promotions committee had a client in trouble with a delayed restructuring, and she asked to join the engagement. For seven months she ran the client's workstreams, finished deliverables a week early, told the partner about problems before the client raised them, and twice defended his position to the client's board. When the promotion round came, the partner spoke for her in the committee meeting, put his name to her business case for a new restructuring service line, and arranged for her to present it to the managing partner. She made partner that year, and the service line was funded.
Why it works
Someone with standing has put their own reputation behind the manager, so the manager's promotions and proposals look better and are easier to approve. A sponsor does more than advise: they advocate in the rooms where decisions are made, vouch for the person, and open doors. The relationship rests on an exchange of performance and loyalty for advocacy, so the manager has to deliver visibly for the sponsor, and the sponsor has to have both the standing and the willingness to spend it.
The thinking behind it
Sylvia Ann Hewlett Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor: The New Way to Fast-Track Your Career (2013) distinguishes a mentor, who gives advice, from a sponsor, who uses his or her own standing to advocate for and advance a protégé. Hewlett treats sponsorship as an exchange in which the protégé supplies strong performance and loyalty. Seven months of early deliverables and defending the partner's position to a client board are the protégé's side of that exchange.
When it fits
Managers whose work is good but who lack an advocate where promotions and funding are decided are the ones it serves. You need access to senior people with real influence, a chance to do work that matters to one of them, and the capacity to deliver beyond expectations for a sustained period.
How to use it well
Pick for standing and fit. Look for senior leaders who sit where decisions about you and your proposals are made, whose goals you can genuinely help with, and whom you would be glad to represent.
- Find a way onto something that matters to them, and deliver it better and earlier than expected.
- Tell them about problems early, and make them look good to the people they answer to.
- Once you have earned it, ask for what you want: a word in the promotion meeting, an introduction, a review of your proposal.
- Stay loyal in the ordinary sense, defending their positions where you agree and telling them privately where you do not.
What it costs and where it backfires
Sponsorship takes years and can vanish if the sponsor leaves, falls from favor, or changes their mind. Your fortunes become tied to theirs, and their rivals may become yours. Their support can also look like favoritism and draw scrutiny. Performance traded for loyalty is a fair exchange. Once loyalty means covering for the sponsor's mistakes or taking their side against the company's interest, it has become patronage, and it will cost you when they go.
When it is used on you
Facing a rival with a powerful sponsor, compete on the work and on sponsors of your own: find senior leaders who know your work and ask them to speak for you. If a sponsor's advocacy is overriding a fair process, raise it as a process question with whoever owns that process, and make sure your own record is visible.