Women’s Leadership: Leveraging Relationship Currency and Sponsorship
What’s the most important ingredient in women’s leadership and leadership development alike? In executive coaching and organizational leadership, I’ve long believed the adage that who you know is just as important as what you know. The leadership strategy of leveraging relationship currency and sponsorship is particularly important for women in leadership to master, since SHAMBAUGH’s research has shown that women leaders who do this well have an advantage when it comes to leading and thriving.
To lead and thrive in a hybrid workplace, this concept is also important and becomes more challenging if you’re juggling work from home with work in the office. It’s important for women leaders to make the most of their time in the office to build relationships, and continue these efforts when working remotely by staying connected with sponsors and other key stakeholders online.
Below are three actions you can take to boost your relationship currency and sponsorship. We train and coach women in leadership on these points in SHAMBAUGH’s Women in Leadership and Learning (WILL) Program and our eWILL coaching and development training program for women leaders:
Invest in Relational Capital
In my book Make Room For Her, I reported that 83 percent of men understand that career advancement is largely based not just on job skills or even their competence, but on their “relational capital,” which is another way of saying that you have a broad network of people around you who can help you reach your career goals and objectives. Career growth and getting ahead are facilitated by making connections with key decision-makers who can help support your promotion, and then tapping on these relationships for sponsorship support.
Build and Leverage a Meaningful Network
For women with a goal of reaching the executive suite, one of the biggest “Sticky Floors” that I identified in my book It’s Not a Glass Ceiling, It’s a Sticky Floor was that of failing to build, and then intentionally use, a strategic network. This is a key way that women can invest in relational capital and potentially find a sponsor. It takes time to build a strong network, but consider starting to cultivate advocacy from senior-level staff, and also clients if they have a relationship with a key executive in your company. To get in front of these individuals, consider working on a task force that a particular executive sponsors.
Identify and Capitalize on Sponsors
When I say “sponsorship,” this involves building relationships with key high-level decision-makers who are willing and able to go beyond mentoring to advocate on women’s behalf in relation to strategic opportunities and advancement. As I reported in Make Room For Her, a Harvard Business Review Research Report found that only 14 percent of full-time female employees in large organizations have sponsors; meanwhile, almost half of their male counterparts have sponsors. This is a big problem and reveals that many women are failing to invest in relational capital. Women in leadership or those who aspire to it, in particular, should start thinking broader and bigger to identify and cultivate a relationship with a potential sponsor. This may be outside of your comfort zone, but it’s an important leadership tactic to build relationships with people specifically for this purpose.
Be a Resource—Demonstrate Your Value
To cultivate strong relationships that include sponsors, you must find a way to become a reliable, value-added resource to others. This starts with understanding other people’s challenges and goals, as well as finding ways to creatively offer a solution or idea that supports them. It also means doing your homework to better provide the right information at the right level, and adapting your tone and style to meet others where they are. Moving beyond “me” to instead focus on “we” is a testimony to great leadership, which makes this an important factor that sponsors look for in potential sponsees.
In my next post, I’ll provide actionable strategies on how women in leadership can effectively negotiate on their own terms. If you or your team have experiences with this topic or advice that you’d like to share about it, please reach out to me at info@shambaughleadership.com.
Contact me at info@shambaughleadership.com to learn more about SHAMBAUGH’s Unique Coaching Offerings to Include Cohort, One-on-One, and Team Coaching. Learn more about SHAMBAUGH’s Women in Leadership and Learning (WILL) Program and eWill Virtual Coaching and Development Program.
Rebecca Shambaugh is President of SHAMBAUGH Leadership, and Founder of Women in Leadership and Learning. Rebecca is a contributing writer to Harvard Business Review, the HuffPost, and a TEDx speaker. Rebecca has been featured on CNBC, Forbes, Training Magazine, and US News and World Report. She is author of the best-selling books It’s Not a Glass Ceiling, It’s a Sticky Floor and Make Room for Her: Why Companies Need an Integrated Leadership Model to Achieve Extraordinary Results.
Find out more about us at: www.shambaughleadership.com
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