A sponsor is someone who will develop you and prepare you for promotion by opening doors to opportunities.
Few companies have formal sponsorship schemes. However, in a competitive corporate world, you should be looking to have at minimum an informal sponsor. Someone who will play a role in supporting you and helping you achieve your goals. Informally, you will probably have someone who will advocate for you, recommend you for work, sing your praises, put you forward for projects (and promotions). However, to ride out any potential “people politics” you should be looking to avoid aligning yourself with one person (and only one person). You don’t want to just be their favourite candidate for promotion. You want to be a strong candidate in the eyes of everyone.
Sponsorship may open up the opportunities and get you in the position for a potential promotion in the first place. However, ultimately you will need to be convincing a group of partners or directors that you are the best choice.
To do this you need to:
- have been exposed to good work and clients;
- be seen as a team player (and not taking any one side);
- have evidence of the supervision, training and development of others (that has been demonstrated in front of as many people as possible);
- be effective when delegating and managing others;
- have worked with all key decision makers in your team and beyond (or with the right hand (wo)man of those decision makers);
- networked internally so that people know who you are (as the people making the decision may not have any overlap with you on a day to day basis).
Whatever it is that you are doing to get your promotion – make your mark in front of everyone – not just your sponsor.