Excellent follow up to Forget A Mentor, Get A Sponsor. I have recommended this book to many professionals, as it covers a critical but overlooked element of leadership (i.e., being a sponsor). I covered this book for my Forbes column, and I only do that for a small percentage of books: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecenizalevine/2019/06/11/accelerate-your-career-with-the-sponsor-effect/#423312e56614

I was introduced to sponsorship a while ago, by the author Sylvia Ann Hewlett, in an article called Forget a Mentor, Get a Sponsor. Later, I have heard that term when I spoke to few people who changed roles.
The Sponsor Effect: How to Be a Better Leader by Investing in Others has many examples of real people who are amazing champions of picking diverse proteges, developing their key skill sets, honing the proteges value-add and finally delivering three ways from the sponsor, protege and to the company.
A successful organization needs consistent high-performing leaders wh can understand that the fabric of leadership calls for not one time leader but a pipeline of leaders which makes up for the weakness of one with the strength of another, resulting in a strong organization.

THE SPONSOR EFFECT

A few pages into Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s The Sponsor Effect: How to Be a Better Leader By Investing in Others, I caught myself thinking, “Finally! A book about why business professionals should take people under their wing.”

In my experience, grooming subordinates for positions of leadership is often the last thing on the minds of many alpha-type executives of the hard-charging variety. No doubt that such people are immensely intelligent and talented; but a good number sometimes can be either overly career- or responsibility-oriented that they take for granted the importance of investing in their direct reports. Meanwhile, it’s a little ironic that “find a good mentor” is almost boilerplate advice for anyone starting out in their careers.

Now along comes Hewlett, who makes the point that, yes, sponsoring rising talent is a good idea that is also empirically linked with the further career advancement of experienced professionals (because of course executives who can manage talent will go far inside an organization!).

In that regard, the notion of sponsorship Hewlett develops in The Sponsor Effect is reciprocal in nature and goes beyond mere mentorship:

“Sponsorship is a professional relationship in which an established or rising leader identifies and chooses an outstanding junior talent, develops that person’s career, and reaps significant rewards for these efforts.”

Thus, the whole point is that sponsorship is not simply an act of altruism on the part of the experienced party. Rather, it is a deliberate undertaking by the latter cognizant of the fact that the relationship is meant to be mutually beneficial from a professional standpoint.

This raises the obvious question: what kind of “mutually beneficial rewards”? For subordinates, these obviously include, among others, new opportunities for training, exposure to different functional areas within a company, and career growth—all of which may take longer to achieve without sponsorship from an organizational leader. On the flip side, Hewlett makes the case that those in positions of authority benefit from having a loyal pool of talent who can be called upon readily to take on new and often time-sensitive challenges, and who also have the potential to serve as successors to the sponsor when the time comes.

As such, The Sponsor Effect is organized like a “how-to” guide to becoming a capable sponsor. Hewlett drills down on what it takes to build a healthy sponsor-protege relationship, explaining how to identify and invest in talent as well as what to do when things don’t exactly work out. She delves into the topic with plenty of nuance, emphasizing how sponsorship can be accomplished within a professional and organizational environment while at the same time offering a cautionary note as to what kinds of behavior are unacceptable (i.e., #MeToo).

Understandably, though, Hewlett can’t cover all bases. Some might argue that the very notion of sponsorship as she describes it is calculating at best and transactional at worst, thereby pandering to the worst of human tendencies. And it’s not entirely clear how to navigate the fine line between sponsorship that fosters individual loyalty and that which develops institutional loyalty, with the book arguably making a case for the former at the expense of the latter. Those for whom building organizational capability is a top concern might take issue with this.

Yet on the whole Hewlett does a great service to executives by reminding them why it’s in their interest to invest in talented subordinates, and The Sponsor Effect is a worthwhile manual to show them how.

Investing in others is one of the things leaders do. Leaders pour in their time, effort, wisdom, and other resources to help develop their followers to be the next leaders of their respective organizations.

This book provides its readers a framework and helpful guidelines on how to be an effective sponsor. It helps us understand the difference between mentorship and sponsorship. It also addresses some of the sensitive issues such as sexual harassment in the workplace. More importantly, it provides us reasons why leaders should take up a sponsorship role and how it benefits the organization in the long run.

What I really like in this book is that the author was able to weave different stories of sponsor-protégés relationship. This gives readers an idea that these relationships can be different depending on the organizations and specific circumstances of the people involved.

My only suggestion is more graphs and illustrations for the statistical data presented. This would help some readers who would like to make a business case for sponsorship in their organization. This would also help socialize that the findings presented in this book are based on hard data.

I received an ARC in exchange for honest review. This was a very good, and fairly quick leadership read on empowering other leaders through a concept called Sponsorship. What I appreciated about this book is it clearly painted a picture of the what, why and how - elements not always found in leadership books. I appreciated the practical tips as well as the real-life stories of ways which this has thrived and failed in various settings.

Very quick read. Simple and approachable. Uses a specific framework, provides lots of examples based on interviews with executives and delivers some relevant statistics. Good way to learn about sponsorship of talent as a carrier investment.

I am reviewing this book in the July-August issue of Global Business and Organizational Excellence. (approx. 800 words). I will post a teaser on my twitter page, and also on my blog as the publication date gets closer. I will send a pdf copy of the review then too.

I was the first reviewer on Goodreads...!