The Sponsor Effect: How to Be a Better Leader by Investing in Others
Sylvia Ann Hewlett
Harvard Business Review Press (June 2019)

HOW to fulfill your leadership potential by helping others to fulfill theirs

The title of one of Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s previously published books, Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor, offers excellent advice to those who have embarked on a business career and hope to attract the interest and then the support they need to accelerate their personal growth and professional development.

Just to be clear, Hewlett would be among the first to agree that mentors can also be of substantial value. In fact, a fast-tracker could have more than one based on need, fit, and career objectives. It’s also true — and highly desirable –to have several people within the given organization who can be advocates of your performance and behavior, once you have earned their respect and trust.

Here’s specifically what Hewlett has in mind: “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. As a mutually beneficial relationship, sponsorship is much deeper and more rewarding than the traditional mentorship, a relationship in which a senior person ‘pays it forward’ by giving guidance to someone more junior, often casually and not for long. Sponsorship relationships, on the other hand, require a commitment and investment — by both sponsor and protégé.”

Throughout the Italian Renaissance, promising young artists such as 14-year old Leonardo da Vinci became a garzone (studio boy) in the workshop of artists such as Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his time. These young men later became apprentices and then perhaps established their own workshop. Collaboration was extensive. The more talent a workshop had, the more prosperous it became.

In organizations today, accelerating the development of talent can be of substantial benefit to both the sponsor and to the given organization as well as to the protégé.

Hewlett quickly identifies the WHAT and WHY of becoming a better leader by investing in others. The bulk of her attention is directed to explaining the HOW. More specifically:

HOW to identify potential protégés
Include diverse perspectives
Inspire for performance and loyalty
Instruct to fill skill gaps
Inspect your prospects
Instigate a deal with each protégé
Commit political capital and clout while providing air cover when protégés take risks

These are among the several dozen passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Hewlett’s coverage:

o Legacy (Pages 10-11 and 151-171)
o Three Sponsorship Gaps (23-26)
o Subha Barry (27-31)
o Tiger Tyagarajan/Genpact (31-33, 63-65, and 110-112)
o Lydia Bottegoni (33-37)

o Reinvent the Organization (41-42)
o Identifying potential protégés (45-56)
o Kevin Lord/Fox News (58-63)
o Inspiring performance and loyalty (69-77)
o Karen Lynch (70-74)

o Instructing protégés to fill in gaps (79-81)
o Crowell and Moring (80-84)
o Cisco (85-90)
o Inspecting protégés (93-107)
o Instigating deals with protégés (109-118)

o Investing in protégés (119-132)
o Steve Howe/Ernst & Young (134-144 and 158-162)
o Kate Barton (137-142)
o From Sponsorship to Succession (158-164)
o Two Protégés — and Two Legacies (164-168)

These are among Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s final thoughts: “Sponsorship is about empathy. Although it rests on a quid pro quo and is transactional, at heart it is [or at least should be] a mutually beneficial and generous relationship. Your protégés should gain enormously from the investments you make in them — and so should your organization.”

I urge those who read this book to make one commitment to re-reading it at least once and select whatever material is of greatest interest and value to them, then make another commitment to doing everything humanly possible to implement her most relevant recommendations. For many of those who read The Sponsor Effect, it could be the most valuable book they ever read.