Sponsorship is spending one’s social capital or using one’s influence to advocate for a protégé. However, many leaders believe that they’re sponsoring someone when, in fact, they’re providing mentorship. This Harvard Business Review article by Rosalind Chow, describes how, in a nutshell, sponsorship is all about influence.
Sponsorship can be understood as a form of intermediated impression management, where sponsors act as brand managers and publicists for their protégés. Sponsorship entails externally facing support, such as advocacy, visibility, promotion, and connections. Seeing sponsorship as a three-way relationship between sponsors, protégés, and an audience clarifies the difference between it and mentorship.
Here are the ABCDs of sponsorship:
A is for Amplifying. Amplifying is the sponsorship equivalent of self-promotion. When sponsors amplify, they share protégés’ accomplishments with others in a bid to create or increase an audience’s positive impressions of them.
B is for Boosting. Boosting is the sponsorship equivalent of self-assurance. When sponsors boost their protégés, they stake some portion of their own reputation on an implicit guarantee about the protégé’s future success.
C is for Connecting. Connecting is the sponsorship equivalent of impression management through association — that is, claiming a relationship with a highly regarded individual or group so that some of the positive feeling others have toward them is transferred to the person claiming the association. This is often referred to as a “halo effect”.
D is for Defending. Defending is the sponsorship equivalent of justifying or making personal excuses in an attempt to change others’ perceptions of them from negative to positive.
Using sponsorship for social equity
Most people have benefited from sponsorship in some form or another to advance in their professional lives and the fact is that we tend to provide sponsorship to those who are demographically similar to us. This provides a challenge for groups who are underrepresented in any given context.
Therefore, if we’re truly committed to social equity, we need to start thinking not only about how we can benefit from sponsorship but also how we can help others who need it. To do that, we must first contend with deciding whom to sponsor and stretching beyond the similarity biases which mean that we are more likely to sponsor those who are similar to us.
At Inclusive Leadership Company, we work with organisations to support their sponsors. By completing our inclusive leader assessment and coaching, sponsors are supported in their role as a sponsor. They are equipped to understand themselves better and consequently be in a stronger position to effectively deliver the ABCDs of sponsorship. To find out more, get in touch at enquiries@inclusiveleadershipcompany.com
You can review the full article here.
