The Transformative Impact of Sponsorship

Lynn B. Miller, Ed.D/ Center for Creative Leadership

Sponsorship is one of the most important influences in one’s leadership advancement, offering a unique blend of mentorship, advocacy, and strategic positioning. It’s also something that happens less frequently and sufficiently for women than for men in organizations.

In this interview, I talk with Lynn B. Miller, Ed.D., who serves as a Leadership Solutions Partner with the Center for Creative Leadership and specializes in women’s leadership development with sponsorship at the forefront of her programming. Miller has over 25 years of experience in management and leadership, previously held Learning and Development roles in technology, airline IT, and a global packaging.

What is Sponsorship?

Mentors and sponsors serve different needs in different ways. Sponsorship as an advocacy-driven relationship in which a senior leader actively supports and promotes a junior leader, showcasing their talent, introducing them to key influencers, and endorsing them for career-advancing opportunities. Sponsorship is primarily focused on the leader’s future. Miller notes, “That’s different from mentorship which primarily provides guidance, feedback, and support around current needs experienced by the protégé.”

Miller emphasizes that senior leaders have a powerful impact as their endorsements carry more weight and can open doors that might otherwise remain closed.

The challenge for sponsors is to become comfortable with providing strong advocacy to advance others’ careers, especially leaders who often lead differently than they do and are not in their chain of command. A sponsor might also have to “push” their protégé to step up to more challenging assignments to advance their career.

Impact on Women in Leadership

Gaining visibility is crucial, especially for women, as well as traditionally marginalized groups. It opens doors to new opportunities and helps more leaders see their value. When sponsorship is integrated into leadership development programs, women experience transformative outcomes. They demonstrate their confidence, become more intentional about their career, learn to advocate for themselves, and expand their potential opportunities and networks.

Why Sponsor?

One might wonder “What’s in it for the leaders who sponsor?” Miller notes that effective leaders know that supporting their employees' involvement in projects outside their immediate responsibilities is mutually beneficial.

“When someone that they promote has gotten an opportunity and has proven their worth that leader’s reputation increases. The leader becomes known as a talent maximizer. These leaders provide an environment where employees feel valued, cared for, and included which leads to a highly motivated workforce.”

In turn this enables the ‘Talent Maximizer’ leader to often have the benefit of leading a diverse and talented workforce as employees often seek them out for their boss. "Executives start to recognize this leader as a talent maximizer and leader of high-performance teams, which results in this leader garnering high visibility projects.”

In addition, sponsored employees may also bring back new skills, insights, and relationships to their team, as well as across the organization to other teams they work with, which helps managers enhance outcomes. It can become a win-win for all.

Miller shared that after interviewing sponsors who have gone through her programs:

“They are often surprised how much they learn from this experience. These leaders gain business knowledge in areas that they do not manage. Often as a senior leader, you don't know what's really happening internally. So, they are learning more about different areas and how they work or don’t. They also appreciate different leadership styles and how a diverse and inclusive work culture can benefit business. So, often, we will have sponsors coming back through the program wanting to garner more skills in being an effective sponsor and provide advice to new sponsors.”

Encouraging Sponsorship in Organizations

To grow sponsorship and promote gender equity, Miller challenges leaders to broaden their perspectives and recognize the benefits of sponsorship.

Sponsorship requires an understanding and appreciation of how women leaders lead and the potential impact that has on organizations. Miller notes, “Women are often skilled at creating relational work cultures and leading with an inclusive mindset which, in a VUCA [i.e., volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous] world, is needed.”

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Miller offers these recommendations for how organizations can enhance a sponsorship program:

1. Make sponsorship part of the talent management framework.
2. Engage leaders at the executive level, including the CEO, in the process.
3. Be purposeful in developing a fair and thoughtful selection process, including the pairing of sponsors and proteges.
4. Encourage collaboration across different organizational areas to create cross-functional opportunities.
5. Provide opportunities for sponsors to collaborate and share best practices.

Foundational Requirements for Successful Sponsorship

According to Miller the following three factors are the key to successful sponsorship:

1. Authenticity & Trust: Key to successful sponsorship is authenticity of the relationship between the sponsor and the protégé. Two-way communication is essential. The sponsor must be able to speak well and knowledgeably about the protégé’s skills, requiring the sponsor to invest time in understanding the individual's skills, potential, and unique perspectives. And the protégé must be willing to seek and receive feedback. Both require trust and risk taking.
2. Active Promotion: Miller distinguishes between “developing sponsors” who focus on mentoring and effective sponsors who leverage political capital. It isn’t enough for the sponsor to share their knowledge and connect a protégé to influencers. This uses social capital, “which doesn’t cost them anything,” she says, “but you need to also be able to move sponsees up in the organization That’s adding a sponsor’s political influence and position to help create promotional opportunities.” It’s the active promotion of people you see as having potential that Miller says, “is where the magic [of effective sponsorship] happens.”
3. Strategy: Effective sponsors identify opportunities that align with organizational goals and connect protégés to those opportunities. Showcasing these strategic projects contribute to the success of proteges and the organization.

By fostering authentic relationships, embracing diversity in sponsorship, and aligning initiatives with organizational goals, companies can create a successful culture of gender inclusion and equity, benefiting all.

For women, the potential outcomes can be transformational, including increased confidence, visibility and clarity for career advancement, leveraging supportive relationships, and insights into other types of work they might not have considered before.,.

[Note: This post is part of my subseries on how organizations can transform leadership development for women, as described through the eyes of experts and women’s lived experiences via interviews. Direct quotes are notated in italics and/or offset.]