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    Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor: The New Way to Fast-Track Your Career
    Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor: The New Way to Fast-Track Your Career
    Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor: The New Way to Fast-Track Your Career
    Ebook195 pages3 hours

    Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor: The New Way to Fast-Track Your Career

    By Sylvia Ann Hewlett

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Who’s pulling for you? Who’s got your back? Who’s putting your hat in the ring? Odds are this person is not a mentor but a sponsor. Mentors can build your self-esteem and provide a sounding boardbut they’re not your ticket to the top.

    If you’re interested in fast-tracking your career, what you need is a sponsora senior-level champion who believes in your potential and is willing to advocate for you as you pursue that next raise or promotion.

    In this powerful yet practical book, economist and thought leader Sylvia Ann Hewlettauthor of ten critically acclaimed books, including the groundbreaking Off-Ramps and On-Rampsshows why sponsors are your proven link to success. Mixing solid data with vivid real-life narratives, Hewlett reveals the two-way street” that makes sponsorship such a strong and mutually beneficial alliance. The seven-step map at the heart of this book allows you to chart your course toward your greatest goals.

    Whether you’re looking to lead a company or drive a community campaign, Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor will help you forge the relationships that truly have the power to deliver you to your destination.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarvard Business Review Press
    Release dateAug 20, 2013
    ISBN9781422187180
    Author

    Sylvia Ann Hewlett

    Sylvia Ann Hewlett is the founding president of the Center for Talent Innovation, a Manhattan-based think tank where she chairs a task force of eighty-two multinational companies focused on fully realizing the new streams of labor in the global marketplace. Her book Forget a Mentor: Find a Sponsor was named one of the ten best business books of 2013 and won the Axiom Book Award.

    Read more from Sylvia Ann Hewlett

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    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      This book really surprised me! firstly by its title which raises questions about the meaning of a primary mentor and the authentic power of a sponsor! Loved throughout the book stories and the likelihood of the facts!Today - I remain cautious about the choice of one or the other - however there is no ideal way - only the final result is important!And for once - it seems that the sponsors are not legions in life also strive to recognize the good ones ;()Saturday - Nov 2, 2013

    Book preview

    Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor - Sylvia Ann Hewlett

    Ziai.

    Introduction

    My Story

    My understanding of the power of sponsorship is rooted in my childhood. I grew up in a family of six sisters in a small town in the Welsh mining valleys. In the 1960s, this corner of Britain was a bleak and barren place. Across the coalfield, the collieries were closing down; unemployment hovered at 28 percent. As a girl child, there was not much you could look forward to. Maybe you could marry an unemployed miner? You could always do that.

    But my father—very much the working-class bloke—had plans for his daughters. When I was thirteen, he took me by bus to Cambridge to show me the dreaming spires of one of Europe’s most beautiful and distinguished universities.

    After two days seeing the sights (Kings College Chapel and Trinity’s Renaissance Library stand out in my memory) and taking in a debate at the Cambridge Union, my dad was ready to deliver the message. Over a plate of beans and toast (we’d found a cheap greasy spoon we felt comfortable in), he stared me in the eye and told me straight: If you work hard, you can go here. His voice was hard-edged with urgent passion. I promise you, girl, Cambridge will change your life. I was mesmerized.

    My dad’s advice was simple enough. But was it realistic? What chance did I have of getting in? I attended a third-rate state school that had never sent anyone to either Oxford or Cambridge. But it wasn’t just my schooling, in a variety of ways I was a long way from being standard Oxbridge material. Until this bus trip, I had never eaten in a restaurant or stayed in a hotel, and I lacked some of the most elementary social skills. I had no small talk and was clueless when it came to figuring out which fork to use when tackling peas or fish. To cap things off, I spoke English with a thick Welsh accent—the kiss of death in upper-crust British society.

    As it turned out, my father’s challenge wasn’t so unrealistic. My unsophisticated dad—quite unwittingly—had gotten it right. Times were a-changing and I did have a shot at getting into Oxbridge. A women’s liberation movement was getting off the ground, and Harold Wilson (the new Labor prime minister) was kicking off a campaign to force the ancient universities to open their doors much more widely to two types of students: females and kids from the wrong side of the tracks. I qualified on both scores.

    But I’m getting ahead of my story. After that trip to Cambridge, I returned to my mediocre Welsh school fired up and focused. I knew I had to ace both O- and A-levels and do very well on a barrage of highly specialized Oxford and Cambridge entrance examinations. The head teacher at my school washed her hands of the entrance exams, saying that the school could not offer preparation beyond A-level. But as I sent away for sets of past papers and delved in on my own, I got an offer of unofficial help from Miss Gwen Jones, my A-level English teacher. She told me I had special potential and that I reminded her of her sixteen-year-old self. Perhaps she wanted to provide the kind of support she herself had failed to find as a young person? Whatever the reason, Miss Jones offered invaluable help, assigning me challenging essays and giving me detailed feedback during the critical months leading up to A-levels and the Oxbridge entrance examinations. As Miss Jones saw it, she was not providing Oxbridge prep (by her own admission, she knew very little about the specifics of the examinations). Rather, she was trying to turn me into a good writer. She felt that if I learned to write with clarity and style, it might compensate for not being well drilled in other ways. We kept our tutoring sessions under the radar, meeting during lunch break and after classes in a small space under the stairs, away from the hustle and bustle of the school. We would cram two chairs under the stairwell and work away on essay drafts. I was enormously grateful for her practical help, but even more grateful for her belief in me. That someone in authority thought I had academic potential bolstered my resolve

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