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Forget A Mentor, Find A Sponsor: The New Way To Fast-Track Your Career (2013)

by Sylvia Ann Hewlett(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1422187160 (ISBN13: 9781422187166)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Harvard Business Review Press

review 1: The mentor is the therapist personality who can sit and have coffee with you. The sponsor is someone who can make one phone call and get you a job. This book is full of case studies about people who have faced situations on the job where they either advanced or failed to advance due to their connection or lack thereof to someone who was more politically powerful and connected, and also (down the road) due to whether they were able to maintain and reciprocate that relationship.
review 2: This book is a fabulous resource – I really wish I’d read it a couple years ago, though it’s definitely applicable to me now in my career. I was given this book as part of being accepted into a Sponsorship program at my work and I found it extremely helpful, approachable, ... moreand a resource I will look to in the future as well as put to use now. I really identified with a lot of the examples she provides of what not to do in your career (if you want to advance quickly). Like one of her case studies, I thought if I put my mind to it and worked hard someone would notice and I’d naturally get promoted, but I’d always heard I needed to “get my name out there”. This part of the “game” always confused me about the corporate world. I never really understood what a mentor was and I’d never heard of a sponsor before this book. I was of the mindset that if I worked hard my accomplishments would speak for themselves. And it did work initially - I’m assuming that’s what got me into the position I have now (on the lowest rung of management) - but this book showed me what to do to progress further up the ladder. How do you get involved in projects outside your department? How do you get your name out there? Well, as this book takes away the mystery: sponsors are the ones who spread the word about you and get you on these projects. Maybe I’m an idiot, but it never occurred to me before that someone higher up in the company would bother assisting anyone else. This book explained what benefit a sponsee is to a sponsor as well as how to get one. Unlike a lot of management books that contain a lot of theoretical concepts about how to “be a better leader” or “motivate your team”, this book tells you what to do in black & white. It basically gives you instructions on how to get and keep a sponsor. If I ever have daughter or a niece who wants to advance in her career, I’m going to give them this book. A guy can get a lot out of it too, of course! But the book talks a little bit about why men don’t usually need a book like this (because they naturally tend to sponsor others/find a sponsor) but didn’t it vilify men for having this advantage, just explained the historical reasons behind it. And who knows, as more of the “old boys” start retiring and my generation becomes the ones running the companies, perhaps that mentality will fade away and guys will be just as lost as us ladies. Overall, a great resource for ambitious young women. Pair this with sections of Lean In (the parts that talk about what to do to make your presence known and how to not fade into the background at work, not the parts where Sangberg talks about her privileged lifestyle) and you have a good roadmap of how to get yourself known at work (and hopefully get promoted). We’ll see if it works for me. less

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