Mentor Schmentor

Have you ever felt during the course of your career that you were floundering a bit and thought, “Gosh, if I only had a mentor, someone to help me along, things would surely be different.”

I know I have. And yet, I never fully understood the relationship between mentor and mentee.  It all seemed very loose to me and frankly it was hard for me to imagine that an ambitious, successful superior focused on his or her own career would have the bandwidth or interest to be a sounding board for a relative newbie like me. And not because they’re uncaring individuals, but because they’re so focused on their own climb up the corporate ladder that they don’t really notice the junior person down the hall even exists. As a result, approaching someone you admire and asking him or her to invest in your career without offering something of value in return struck me as a bit awkward and not really my style.

What I’ve come to realize is that I was actually looking at this the wrong way. First off, what a young professional needs is not so much a mentor, as a sponsor.

Here’s what I mean. A sponsor is a boss or person of influence in your organization who can advocate on your behalf or connect you to important people or assignments because they trust that by doing so you’re going to make them look good.  They’ll expect you to be completely loyal and do an exceptional job. As a result, they’ll become vested in your success because they benefit too.  

A great example of an individual whose career received an important boost early on from a powerful sponsor is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Certainly there’s no question that Sheryl Sandberg is a very talented and hardworking person who has been high achieving her whole life. As Sheryl has said herself her ambition and willingness to “lean in” to new career opportunities has helped her to join the ranks of the nation’s top corporate executives. But in truth it’s not just ambition and a desire to get to the top that got her there. She also had the good fortune to have someone “lean in” with her.

While a student at Harvard Sheryl became a research assistant to then professor, Larry Summers. When Larry Summers left Harvard to become Chief Economist at the World Bank he brought her along. And then, when he went on to become Secretary of the Treasury, again he brought Sheryl with him.  In fact Sheryl Sandberg wound up being his chief of staff at just 29 years of age.

These opportunities not only provided her with tremendous experience at a young age they also gave her great exposure which in turn put her on the radar of her future boss, Eric Schmidt at Google and then of course, her current boss Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook.

Now I’m not saying finding a sponsor is easy or even necessary. But I do believe, to use a famous quote, “the harder you work, the luckier you get”. If as Sheryl Sandberg and others demonstrate, you’re smart, you work your butt off and that hard work is noticed by people in need of assistance from a bright, hungry, capable underling and, they’re in a position to champion your efforts, you sure do increase your opportunities for success.

This much I know.

-Jeanine