When we talk about sponsorship, there’s often a focus on how engaging with a sponsor can propel forward the career of a ‘sponsee’. For women in the early and mid stages of their careers, there’s no doubt it can be an invaluable experience, helping them to find allies at work and articulate their career aspirations.
But, if we flip the script and focus on what senior leaders can get out of sponsoring a more junior colleague at work, there are some tangible benefits we can point to.
Recently, Women’s Agenda spoke to two senior leaders at SMEC, a global engineering, management and development consultancy, to learn about their experiences as sponsors in the Cultivate Sponsorship program.
Lisa France, Global Executive Director for Renewables in the Surbana Jurong Group, the parent company of SMEC, took part in the Cultivate Sponsorship program in 2023. She said she went in with a “textbook reading” of what was expected of her as a sponsor, but that started to change once she engaged with her sponsee.
“Engaging with my sponsee was where it got really interesting,” France tells Women’s Agenda.
“When you pay attention to what it is that this person actually wants and really do that deep dive with them about what they want from their career, and then work through the program…it challenged us both.”
“The agenda that was set by the program and the fact there were specific tasks, was really good,” France added.
France and her sponsee came from different areas of the business, meaning they didn’t have much in common in terms of their day-to-day work. That left plenty of space for them to think about the bigger picture.
“It was a real eye opener for me because firstly, I got paired up with someone who was outside of the area that I normally work in, so I work in energy, and she works in planning. We didn’t have a lot in common in terms of talking technical — which was good,” France explained.
“So then it came down to actually getting to know the person and what motivates them. And what is it that my sponsee looking for in her career? And how could I actually help?”
Senior Executive Director, Water and Environment, Bob Tilbury, said taking part in the program as a sponsor helped him to explore his own motivations as a leader. He described it as a “mutual learning program” where he was offered time to self-reflect, as well as support his sponsee.
Like France, Tilbury and his sponsee were also from different areas of the business, so didn’t know each other at all before the program.
“There’s a degree of anxiety when you go into a program like this,” Tilbury shared with Women’s Agenda. “Even if you’ve done it before, you expect to be challenged by your partner.”
“It’s very much a mutual learning program, so the sponsor does almost all of the same learning modules and exercises that the sponsee does. I got a lot out of it and I found the self reflection components of it very, very insightful.”
Tilbury said it allowed him to explore his own motivations as a leader, a rare experience for someone at his professional level.
“You don’t often get time to reflect and think about that for yourself,” he said. “And this program forces you to do that.”
Tilbury said that at the start of the program, he did nearly all of the listening as he helped his sponsee to explore her career aspirations and motivations. But over time, both parties became a lot more direct and got to understand each other better.
“We trusted each other and we became mutually more direct and more challenging for each other as we went along, which was fantastic,” Tilbury said.
“Sponsorship is much more valuable than a typical coach type of role where there’s a lot of one way traffic. You get as much out of it as a sponsor or as you do as a sponsee.”
Everyone wants different things from their careers
Lisa France noted that the conversations she was having with her sponsee prompted her to reflect on whether she should challenge any assumptions she had about what her own team wanted from work.
“It then made me really increase my activities with getting to know exactly what my team wants, instead of assuming that every person wants to go ahead at breakneck speed,” France explained.
“That’s not always the case. Some people have got different reasons for going in different directions and speeds. It was a great outcome to go back and have a think about how I engage with everyone in my team.”
France elaborated that her sponsee opened her eyes to how everyone wants different things from their careers.
“That was absolutely a game changer because I’ve only run my own race and I tend to treat others as I want to be treated.”
Understanding ambition and achievement
Bob Tilbury had two critical conversations with his sponsee. One was around the concept of ambition, the other was around perceptions of achievement.
“Culturally, my partner had a negative association with ambition. For her, it was seen as not good to be seen as ambitious,” Tilbury said.
“We had a really important conversation around that and that ambition doesn’t mean self promotion. It means realising your potential and being the best leader that you can be.”
When it comes to achievement, Tilbury said both parties shared that they were driven to succeed by wanting to achieve things. “But for both of us, that was really internalised – we wanted to achieve things for ourselves, not for someone else to recognise us,” he said.
“For my partner it was a source of frustration at times in her normal role, when she felt like she was not achieving the things that she wanted to achieve. So from a leadership perspective, and a self understanding perspective, it was a really important conversation to say, ‘don’t be too hard on yourself’.”
Who are my sponsors?
For France, one of the other key takeaways was being able to reflect on her career, and the unending value of having sponsors at any stage of your career.
“It had me asking, what about those of us that are already considered leaders in the business?” France said. “Who are my sponsors? Am I engaging with them enough? And am I asking for help?”
“It can be kind of lonely as a senior leader, because you haven’t got people around you who are saying, ‘come and let me help you with your career’.
“At the age of 50, they kind of assume you’ve got it all worked out, but you can always do with a sponsor.”
You can learn more about Cultivate Sponsorship here.