myAIPMWant More Diverse Senior Leadership? Sponsor Junior Talent
Herminia Ibarra and Nana von Bernuth | Harvard Business Review
"With renewed corporate attention to racial equity — and a growing body of evidence showing that diversity programs don’t work, especially for Black employees — many companies are turning to a different approach for diversifying their pipelines to the top: sponsorship.
As Herminia described it in a recent article on increasing gender diversity at senior levels, sponsorship is a “helping relationship in which senior, powerful people use their personal clout to talk up, advocate for, and place a more junior person in a key role.” Sponsors not only give feedback and advice, they also use their influence with other senior executives to advocate for your promotion and to ensure that you’re visible to key decision-makers. Mentors share their knowledge, perspective, and experience, whereas sponsors wield their power on behalf of their protégés. This crucial difference makes sponsorship a valuable tool for actively promoting employees from underrepresented groups into senior positions, stretch assignments, and mission-critical roles.
Sponsorship efforts only work, however, if they are designed with care — pairing sponsors and protégés in ways that align with goals, training them on the impact of difference in career developmental relationships, and iterating on what they learn through experience. How you approach a sponsorship initiative can make all the difference between one that fails and one that achieves results, so take the time to get it right."
Read more
Want More Diverse Senior Leadership? Sponsor Junior Talent, Herminia Ibarra and Nana von Bernuth, Harvard Business Review, 2020