While a mentor can offer advice and perspective, a sponsor can open doors
During a session at the Women in Telco event, panelists sought to differentiate between the role of mentor and sponsor in the tech industry, but also shared their insights into why such relationships are critical for women as they grow their careers.
Mentorship: A sounding board
From the perspective of Shazia Zeb-Sobani, VP of network implementation at Telus, a mentor is an “ally” and a “sounding board.” Further, she shared that for young women, having a mentor that is also female can be a critical resource because they may be more comfortable opening up to someone of the same gender. “Women-to-women mentors don’t only play a role to guide the career or give a better vision for young and aspiring women, they also play a very strong ally, a sounding board, a strong mental support [and] a strong psychological support,” she said.
“[Women] … bear children … We have such challenges coming back, integrating into work after maternity leave, or other things that are very specific to women,” she explained. “And even if you have a very strong male mentor or male sponsor, they might not be able to associate with it.” She added, however, that she strongly advocates for both male and female mentors and sponsors because each can play a different role in someone’s journey.
However, as Shalini Palmer, VP of sales in EMEA for Analog Devices, pointed out, there is also a unique benefit associated with male-to-female mentorship situations: “What you’ll find is when men are mentoring women, they start to learn, to understand,” she explained. “So, yes, women-to-women, there’s an empathy about what you may be going through. But actually, it’s a great way to expose and teach and [to] bring knowledge to our male counterparts in terms of what’s needed and how to give feedback.”
Sponsorship: An advocate
While a mentor is great for emotional support and can offer advice and perspective, a sponsor, said Technology Leadership Coach Yota Trom, can “make things happen for you.” That said, these are usually individuals who have networking connections or a managerial role that can benefit your career growth. “[A sponsor] can open the door, can create a new opportunity,” she continued.
Palmer agreed with Thom but added that sponsors also advocate for you when you are not in the room, which she claimed is a “critical” element of sponsorship that is likely not present in a strictly mentorship relationship.
Zeb-Sobani cautioned female event attendees not to “shy away from exploiting” sponsorships, claiming that in general, women are very comfortable using a mentor, but much less comfortable taking advantage of a sponsorship. “Usually, women are very good with the use of [a] mentor and they’re shying away from leveraging the full strength of having the sponsor. And we should never undermine the value and the contributions that we can bring to the sponsor as well, because we can serve as a key enabler at a level where we are to advance their agenda and to advance their strategy,” she said. “So, first of all, be very intentional with getting a sponsor, convert it into a two-way relationship, be an enabler for them, and be bold with your ask and be bold with your positioning.”
Further, because a sponsor is willing to invest in you in a way that impacts their own career, Palmer said that trust and chemistry between both parties is “absolutely key” to a successful relationship. “That person has to be ready to invest in you, to be able to bring you those other opportunities and advocate for you. And also, they need to have the network that is really going to give you the platform and stage where you want to develop,” she said.
Ok, so which is better?
The simple answer? Neither — you should have both, according to all three panelists.
More specifically, as we grow in our careers, the type of external support that we need changes. “When we are starting out [our] career, maybe having a mentor — someone who is able to advise us, to bounce back ideas — might be more useful because we need that advice until we figure out who we are, what we’re good at, what we’re passionate at, where our heart is,” offered Thom, adding that in this case, having someone there to simple listen and advise us can go along way. “On the other hand, later on in our career when we have our achievements, we know a little bit better where we are, we might need someone who is actually able to bring change and can make things happen for us. And there is where the role of the sponsor becomes real[ly] important. Because once you figure out your art, when you know exactly what to do and how to do it well, you need someone who is there to open the door for you.”
Zeb-Soba agreed with this perspective that as an individual advances in their career, sponsorships become more important, especially at the middle or senior management level because by that point, a sufficient network of mentors and advisors has likely been achieved. At those stages, sponsors can actually play a lot more significant and important role for you… They can open the doors that you don’t have access to,” she said.
“Sometimes we might have a person who might be our sponsor and our mentor at the same time,” said Thom. “And other times, we might just need to find two different people that can help us from a different angle… Someone might be within our department, or we might also need someone who can be external and maybe give us a sense of the industry of what’s happening, what opportunities that are out there. So for me, both of them are equally important but we just need to be strategic [about] which stage of our career we are [at] and what will make the biggest impact and difference.”
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