Mentoring comes up a lot in coaching. Many clients are seeking professional mentors, and others are striving to be good mentors for teammates or students. We usually think of mentors as more experienced colleagues who can advise us and foster our professional development. Relationships with mentors are built on mutual respect and trust.
But mentors are not the only relationships that professionals need to cultivate. In her pathbreaking 1977 study of gender dynamics in the corporate world, Harvard management professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter described three types of relationships that are important for professional development. In addition to mentors, successful professionals need peer networks and sponsors.[1]
If mentors guide us, sponsors go a step further. Sponsors are people who wield power or influence in organizations and use that power to advocate for promising but less advanced professionals. A mentor might share information about an assignment that can lead to career growth or a job opportunity, but a sponsor will actively campaign for you to have the new role. I've benefitted from mentors over the years, but I've benefitted even more from the sponsors who energetically promoted my growth.
Peer networks also help advance careers by exchanging favors and the sharing knowledge and ideas. For example, if someone contacts me about facilitating a workshop that is not in my wheelhouse, I will decline the opportunity, but I'll also share the names of coaches in my network who do have the appropriate skillset for the work. The coaches I know are part of my informal peer network. I'm also part of formal peer networks--in my case, professional associations--that have contributed to my success in ways large and small.
Mentors, sponsors, and peers can open all kinds of doors for us. Still, it's important not to let any of those relationships cause us to lose sight of our own instincts and values. Last month, Jessica Satava, CEO of the Greenville Symphony Orchestra, drove that point home in a story she told at the Converse Women's Leadership Conference. Satava described going to a mentor for guidance on handling a tricky situation. The mentor quickly sketched out a plan of action. In spite of her nagging unease that the mentor's approach might not be the best tactic in the current situation, Jessica followed the mentor's advice. You guessed it: the results weren't great. The lesson Satava learned is a good one for all of us: "The best mentors are sounding boards, not guides."
That's a point to remember: when we turn to a mentor, a sponsor or a peer, we should listen to their guidance, then filter that advice through our own experience and intuition. A mentor may share something that worked for them, but it might not fit the current situation or be a right approach for you. A sponsor may enthusiastically advocate on our behalf, but the opportunity that the sponsor promotes might not be the right opportunity for us. Mentors, sponsors, and wise peers are experienced sounding boards, but in the end, we must learn to throw our own judgements into the decision-making mix.
Jessica Satava urged her audience to take a mindful approach with our professional relationships. I urge my clients to do the same. I'll leave you with a set of questions I often ask:
· Who are the people who have been your mentors?
· Were any of them also sponsors?
· What qualities made them effective?
· Who are the people who make up your informal and formal peer networks?
· How have you grown as a result of these relationships?
· Who have you mentored?
· What were the best parts of mentoring? The most challenging?
· What can learn from your answers to these questions that will make you a better mentor, sponsor, and peer?
[1] Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation, (New York: Basic Books, 1993 edition of 1977 book), 275-76.