Ambitious professionals must cultivate a robust network made up of many types of people. Mentors and sponsors are essential to ensuring advancement and opportunity. Mentoring has been an effective workforce development tool that requires that the mentee be deemed worthy of investment, possess initiative and open to feedback, and the mentor knowledgeable, senior and generous with their time. While corporate programs and organic mentoring relationships have had some success they have not had uniform results. Some of what is lacking are advocacy – someone to go to the mat for you and open doors – a sponsor. Sponsorship has emerged as an effective complement to mentorship, especially for mid and senior-level executives with an eye on the C-Suite. The nature of the protégé/sponsor relationship is more complex, especially when considering elements of gender, ethnic, racial and other diversity.

Organizations can support their employees by helping them build their professional networks and by developing institutionalized approaches to mentorship and sponsorship. Organizations benefit from enhanced skills, capabilities and readiness of the talent pipeline, as well as cross-cultural exposure.