You Are Being Mentored? Good for You! Wait...Are You Also Being Sponsored?

Althoff, Glowinski and Hudziak, 2012 AACAP meeting, San Francisco

A few months ago, in a heated discussion about mentoring, a respected colleague exclaimed: "enough about mentoring...what's missing is sponsorship!"

Until that point, sponsorship evoked being paid to wear brandname sportswear, something unlikely to ever happen to me in this and most alternate universes as well. I would not mind being sponsored with fashionwear mind you...

Well, the other kind of sponsorship, whereby people are not just advised, nurtured and guided (mentoring) but also championed, pushed forward for opportunities that open & close sometimes unpredictably quickly, nominated for well deserved awards etc...that kind of sponsorship is indeed a hot topic.

It's here in the New York Times and also in the Harvard Business Review (in a special issue on women leadership) as a probable important factor in differential men/women professional outcomes, highlighting that it's not just that women prioritize other things on average (the famed "you can't have it all" unifying theory), or are less socialized to take advantage of opportunities (the famed "you need to lean in" unifying theory) but also that we are less sponsored!

So, look around: are you being sponsored?
And stay tuned, while I research what difference it makes. This is going to be an Academic Women's Network theme this year.

Till Later,

Anne