Making Real Connections (HBR Women at Work Series) by Harvard Business Review

Author:Harvard Business Review
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2022-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

Rosalind Chow Answers Questions from Listeners About Sponsorship

How should one goes about thanking their sponsor? Am I showing enough thanks? Am I thanking too much? Am I showing enough excitement about having been helped?

—C.

First, there’s no harm (as far as we know, based on the research) in expressing gratitude. If anything, people underestimate how meaningful it is to others to be thanked for their efforts, because most of us don’t get thanked a lot! So if a person notices that I’ve gone out of my way to help them and they go out of their way to acknowledge my help, that usually builds a stronger relationship between us.

Now, there is a possibility that if women thank others too much, especially for things that are truly rather inconsequential, then they run the risk of implying “I can’t do anything on my own without help.” So one option is to thank the other person for providing the opportunity and discuss how you will or have already begun to execute and perform well, which means that they opened the door, but you’re the one doing the work.

The other way to interpret the question is: Are there certain forms of sponsorship that are more worthy of appreciation than others? Again, giving thanks is always good, in my book. But taking the question at face value, I would suggest thinking about how much reputation your sponsor has put on the line for you. The more they had to actively insist on others’ consideration of your abilities, the more “costly” that sponsorship is—and thus, more valuable. If someone says positive things about you in general, that’s nice but not overly costly to them. But if they strategically introduce you to the other person and say, “This is the person I was telling you about! The one you should hire,” that’s a more active form of sponsorship that probably warrants a thank-you note.

It’s one thing to have a sponsor, but then what? It’s not always the smoothest ride; much of it is impacted by forces beyond your control, basically power struggles and office politics. What happens when your sponsor leaves the company and/or they get pushed out and you become collateral damage?

—G.

This relates to something I alluded to in the podcast: You don’t want to have only one sponsor; like stocks, you need to diversify. The more senior you get, presumably, the more opportunity powerful people in the organization have to directly observe your talents, so you won’t be as reliant on your sponsor.

But sometimes you pick the wrong horse (or the wrong horse picks you). Depending on what your relationship is with your sponsor, you can ask them for help and they can try transitioning you to another sponsor in the firm. You could also leave with your sponsor, assuming that they have found a position in another firm that you’d be interested in.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.