Beyond Mentorship: Sponsorship as the Key to Black Career Empowerment
September is a fantastic time to celebrate Black Achievement and Black History Month, and it’s the perfect opportunity to think about how to genuinely advance the careers of Black professionals in the workplace. In this article, we dive into the differences between mentorship and sponsorship. While mentorship is great for offering guidance and support, it often doesn’t tackle the systemic barriers that can hold back career progression. Sponsorship actively pushes Black employees into leadership roles by leveraging a sponsor’s influence to advocate for opportunities.
Differences Between Mentorship and Sponsorship
Mentorship allows a more experienced employee to guide and support someone less experienced. It's a private relationship where both sides can exchange knowledge, gain insights, and grow together. This process helps to develop skills, encourages collaboration, and fosters a culture of learning.
Sponsorship on the other hand, is a proactive relationship where a more senior or influential individual uses their social capital to advocate for a protégé's career advancement. Unlike mentorship, sponsorship actively seeks to create opportunities and visibility for the protégé in the workplace.
According to the Harvard Business Review (1), sponsors play four key roles to effectively support their protégés:
Amplify: They highlight the protégé's achievements, helping to enhance their reputation within the organisation.
Boost: Sponsors nominate protégés for key opportunities, which increases their visibility and potential for advancement.
Connect: By introducing protégés to influential individuals and inviting them to high-profile events, sponsors help expand their professional networks.
Defend: Sponsors protect their protégés from negative perceptions, offering alternative explanations for challenges they face and actively challenging biases.
Why Mentorship Alone Is Not Enough
While mentoring is helpful for developing skills and offering emotional support, it doesn’t always lead to promotions or leadership roles. This is because mentorship is a relatively low-risk, private relationship between mentor and mentee, focused on providing advice and guidance. However, this support doesn’t guarantee career advancement, as systemic barriers often remain unaddressed. Sponsors, however, fill the gap between performance and promotion by raising the protégé’s profile, advocating for them, and managing how others perceive them. Sponsorship is crucial for Black professionals because it provides visibility and credibility, helping to overcome the systemic barriers that often block access to leadership roles.
The Role of Sponsorship in Addressing Systemic Barriers
Sponsorship is crucial for everyone’s career growth, but it’s even more critical for Black employees, who often face deep-rooted biases and barriers at work. For example, in the UK’s finance and professional services sectors, only 1% of senior positions are held by Black professionals (2). This massive gap is partly because Black employees lack access to the influential networks that are essential for reaching those higher levels.
That’s where sponsorship makes a difference. Unlike mentorship, which provides guidance, sponsorship is about action. Sponsors leverage their influence to promote their protégés, helping them secure key positions and visibility. For Black women, who often face both racial and gender discrimination, having a sponsor can be a game-changer, pushing them forward into leadership roles and making the workplace more inclusive for everyone.
Impact of Sponsorship on Black Achievement
Sponsorship radically improves the workplace for Black employees. Research from Coqual shows that 53% of Black professionals with a sponsor report satisfaction with their career advancement, compared to just 35% without one (3). Moreover, Black managers with sponsors are 65% more likely to advance to the next level of leadership. Sponsorship also influences retention, with Black employees who have a sponsor being 60% less likely to leave their jobs within a year. This highlights the critical role sponsors play not just in career progression but also in fostering long-term commitment and stability in the workplace.
How to Build a Culture of Sponsorship
So, what can your organisation do? It’s time to go beyond mentorship. Start building a sponsorship culture, and take real steps to empower Black talent. Not only will this drive diversity and innovation, but it’ll also create long-lasting change for both employees and the company. To build a culture of sponsorship, organisations can take the following steps:
Leadership Buy-In: Ensure top-level executives actively support and model sponsorship within the company.
Training: Provide training for potential sponsors on how to advocate for underrepresented employees.
Inclusive Policies: Create formal sponsorship programs that focus on elevating marginalised talent, particularly Black professionals.
Measurable Goals: Set clear diversity and promotion goals tied to sponsorship efforts.
Networking Opportunities: Facilitate meaningful interactions between sponsors and protégés through events or project collaborations.
Embracing sponsorship fosters an inclusive culture that empowers Black professionals and drives systemic change. By prioritising diverse talent, organisations can enhance innovation and success, creating workplaces where everyone thrives. Now is the perfect time to commit to this transformative journey and make a lasting impact.
At LAUDACE, we are committed to empowering communities & organisations to become equity-driven and intersectionality-focused through our ED&I Education, ED&I consultancy and Courageous Conversations Series solutions to foster more inclusive cultures, empower marginalized voices, and social impact.
If you're ready to make a real impact on your teams or communities, contact Laudace today. Together, we can ignite a positive transformation within your organisation and create a more equitable world.
Sources
Chow, R. (2021, June 30). Don't just mentor women and people of color. Sponsor them. Harvard Business Review.
Burnham-Nenov, K., & Prakash, N. (2024, February 5). Why we need to pick up the pace of Black representation in finance and professional services in the UK. Bain & Company.
Hewlett, S. A., Jackson, M., & Cose, E. (2021). Vaulting the color bar: How sponsorship levers multicultural professionals into leadership. COQUAL.