Sponsors: How to Build Your Fanbase at Work

Isn’t it curious how we as humans love shortcuts and simple solutions? For good reason: heuristics or hacks can dramatically reduce the energy we need to spend thinking or investigating i.e. lower ‘cognitive load’. ‘Social proof’ is particularly compelling to us: if others we respect endorse something, it must be great! Examples of such credibility signals include the professional credentials we have, our alma maters, the companies we’ve worked for, and others vouching for us – in effect, all stamps of approval affecting our personal brands. A consequence is that perceptions matter and can quickly become reality, including when it comes to performance and achievement in a work environment. 

Thus, what others feel and say about you matters significantly. In a professional context, influential sponsors can have a major impact on your performance bonuses and career path. And, sponsorship becomes increasingly important the more senior you are in your career, particularly as you aim for the C-Suite: you need to be well-known, and respected, by large groups of stakeholders, at all levels of the organisation, and both internally and externally. A successful CEO, for example, is highly likely to have reinforcement from a lot of her Non-Executive Directors (NEDs), who may also have actively supported her appointment. And, new NEDs probably needed endorsement by influential peers and seniors to join the boards they’re on. While we often think of sponsors as needing to be within your organisation (as that’s where many career advancement opportunities arise), active support from other advocates can help our careers too – for example, others in your profession, ex-colleagues and previous bosses. 

Trust me: sponsorship is important. Earlier in my career, a boss told me how he was spending time meeting one-on-one with members of the executive committee to understand how they thought about him and his work. At the time, I felt this was self-serving and manipulative, and I naively wondered why they didn’t already know what value he was adding or not. Some of my revulsion stemmed from having seen plenty of politically-savvy people achieve success by schmoozing, but without ‘genuine’ value-add – something I still feel is dishonest. However, now I also know just how important his networking with the influencers was: it’s not enough to be effective in your current role, even if you are recognised as a stand-out performer. This will not by itself guarantee you get opportunities to move into your next desired roles. You need to both deliver your current organisational objectives and gain exposure to and sponsorship from executive leaders i.e. add genuine value and be widely viewed as capable of doing even more. 

So, how can you actively improve your sponsorship? Read more for discussion on how business relationships matter, building strong impressions and addressing perception gaps, the marketing concept of superfans, and a proactive, three-step approach to gaining further influential sponsors. Let’s go! 

Active Career Management
First, for context, some thoughts on actively managing our careers, which you may know is fundamental to Protagion’s approach i.e. taking a proactive stance in our careers to develop them consistently with our aspirations and personal definitions of success. There is a fundamental level of technical competence, leadership capability, and work ethic required to advance in an organisation. While necessary, these are unfortunately not sufficient. We also need to be recognised for the right things by the right people at the optimal times in our careers. 

Parts of this article are inspired by the writing of Robert Wilson, who sadly I can find little information about, beyond inferring that he has a financial and analytical background and is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a very structured thinker. Robert argues we should manage our careers like we’d manage an important project or business initiative: developing a detailed project plan with key milestones, timelines, owners, and key accountabilities, and then checking on progress and adjusting plans accordingly. 

Active career managers could be described as drivers of a car with a map and a clear sense for where they want to be and by what time”
ROBERT WILSON (possibly a pseudonym)

He describes five elements necessary for career success – note the importance of exposure to influential sponsors: 
1) a clear awareness of the most critical opportunities and actions that will be valued most heavily by those individuals who will have the greatest impact on your career
2) perspective on who those individuals are who are most likely to positively impact your career
3) an understanding of how to best gain exposure to these individuals and showcase your work in an impactful way
4) a consistent and focused allocation of time to exploit these opportunities
5) a carefully considered road map with milestones for where you want to be and by when that is documented and referenced periodically
This approach will resonate more strongly with the ‘Anna the Planners’ among us, but may feel like overkill to the agile ‘Norah the Explorers’. In practice, though, there is scope for different application, including more spontaneity if that’s how you personally thrive e.g. taking action based on a broad back-of-the-envelope plan instead of a detailed spreadsheet. 

Business Relationships Matter
Some of you may be thinking that this sounds too close to sucking up to power to win favour… I’m not suggesting you spin your abilities or output without merit. Nor am I suggesting that you pretend to be best friends and laugh at their inappropriate jokes. Instead, it’s about building strong business relationships over meaningful time periods, where you both get value. 

A strong network of contacts who respect your professional skills, capabilities and leadership attributes increases the likelihood you’ll gain exposure to projects, work experiences, other people, and ultimately bigger opportunities at an accelerated pace. And your network can also help you further build the skills you’ll need to progress along your desired path. 

Individuals in your functional discipline who are ahead of you and already on a rapid career trajectory can be a great resource for career guidance – many of our professional mentors could help. And, where you can find supportive individuals within your company, they may give you access to new internal opportunities sooner, or may provide increased exposure of your skills and capabilities to senior leadership who you might not otherwise have access to. 

Be aware that developing a strong professional network with respected and influential individuals takes time and requires repeated interaction and consistently favourable impressions. Building credibility and gaining sponsorship through solid performance is not a quick process, especially when you move to a new environment where your track record isn’t yet corroborated. Actions that can help include: 

• meeting and exceeding expectations 
• building trust and confidence in your abilities 
• demonstrating your leadership, vision, analytical abilities, creativity, work ethic or other attributes in a compelling (and easily shareable) manner 
• making your referrer look good too, which increases the likelihood of receiving future opportunities from them 

Strong Impressions
Making good impressions is key to gaining others’ support. A favourable first impression often shapes how you are perceived for the foreseeable future, so aim to be memorable and use the ‘halo effect’ to distinguish yourself. Indeed, quickly impressing the customers of your work (internal or external) is one of the most effective ways to build trust and credibility in your capabilities. Consider your output from their perspective(s). Understand what you are providing, how it is currently being used, and what you’d ideally want if you were in their shoes. Such empathy often suggests opportunities to impress them further, strengthening your credibility even more. 

Don’t only think about direct customers though. For example, consider your division manager as well as your direct manager. Yes, your promotions are often heavily impacted by your direct manager’s assessment, so their view is important – particularly when they’re influential across the organisation. But, deliberately seeking opportunities to create positive impressions with more senior leaders will help even more. Assemble your information in a manner that is very clear and concise (i.e. executive friendly) while still having the supporting detail needed by your direct manager and other direct customers. This will help it appeal to various audiences and be easier to share between time-poor executives. 

Bear in mind that limited exposure based on minor interactions with you and/or your work are frequently extrapolated into beliefs i.e. we humans love to make assumptions, however baseless they might be. These extrapolations (and hearsay) can be big reasons for perception gaps. Changing deep-rooted perceptions can be incredibly challenging and take considerable time, with numerous favourable interactions required to change these attitudes and beliefs to ones more consistent with reality. 

Building Superfans
Conceptually, cultivating sponsors who will spread positive messages about you and advocate for and defend you is similar to the marketing paradigm of building superfans. Pat Flynn writes about superfans as intensely loyal customers of your brand who invest time and resources into it. His ‘pyramid of fandom’ describes different types of ‘audience members’ i.e. business connections in our career context. The four levels, applied to the context of career relationships, are: 

• Casual: the largest segment i.e. acquaintances who’ve heard of you
• Active: those who know who you are and what you have to offer
• Connected: those who you communicate with 
• Superfans: these are the sponsors who use their political capital and influence to champion your interests, whether it’s a bigger bonus or a quicker promotion 

All of these groups are likely to be talking with others about you, perhaps in response to being asked their opinion, or perhaps actively, depending on how strongly they feel (positively or negatively) i.e. word of mouth. The more positive things people can say about you to others, the more this will compound, with social proof rapidly building your credibility. 

So, how strong is your sponsorship?
To evaluate the strength of your sponsorship, ask your manager, in-company mentor and others to share their perspectives on the level of sponsorship you have within the company. Also assess your recent career history at that employer: were you asked to apply or interview for new opportunities, and what was the outcome? It’s also helpful to understand why you didn’t get an offer (and what you were told about why). 

Actively growing your sponsorship
Remember that the quality of your work and the impressions you make are what counts, so provide the most favourable impression you can at every exposure opportunity. And, extremely positive first impressions help a lot to really highlight your unique capabilities. 

Bear in mind that ideal exposure opportunities are more infrequent than you might like. There is much of your work that will be seen as standard (even if done well), with probably just one or two major projects to generate sponsorship from in a given year. Gaining sponsorship generally takes time – you must produce repeated examples of strong results in different roles and projects. 

To formalise the process of growing sponsorship further, consider this active, three-step approach: 
1) determine the leaders or decision-makers you will need to gain exposure to and sponsorship from i.e. those who can most effectively influence your career and who you feel you could build a strong and mutually-beneficial business relationship with
2) develop a strategy to capitalise on exposure opportunities i.e. a plan to impress them
3) proactively seek out exposure opportunities and deliver well when they arise 

We all have limited time, so it’s important to be selective about where to invest it optimally, including how best to showcase your work to those who can most help you achieve your aims (including, but not limited to, your current manager). Your longer-term likelihood of success will be significantly higher if your work and capabilities are favourably viewed by other functional leaders, especially those more senior. Understand their styles and expectations, plus their levels of influence and their previous willingness to sponsor people they have strong opinions about.  Others’ levels of influence can be inferred based on promotions and the success of other talented individuals they managed or sponsored. You will likely need to develop additional competencies to gain credibility with some decision-makers.

Step 2 involves preparing yourself as much as possible to garner support from your potential sponsors when opportunities arise e.g. making lists of work you’re doing that the senior leader might be interested in, focusing on activities that are distinctive, proactive and in the process of being implemented successfully. Assess what might garner favourable attention from your targeted sponsor(s), including determining their interests and whether they have responsibility for special projects, networks or other activities. Try to understand some of the challenges they’re aiming to solve or what opportunities they see to improve business performance. What insights, research or results would enable them to deliver on their objectives and/or continue to ascend in the organisation? Focus as far as possible on areas where: 

• you have an inherent strength and ideally interest you can showcase, 
  
• this strength or interest ties in (perhaps loosely) with something you’ve been tasked with developing, leading or solving as part of your normal job responsibilities, and 
  
• you have the time and resources to create a compelling solution that would appeal to the targeted sponsor(s).

You next need to decide how to get the work in front of your targeted sponsor(s). Think through how you might capitalise on and/or create interaction opportunities e.g. lunches, dinners, presentations, business trips or other events. Volunteering to join a network or project with the target sponsor(s) might create an opportunity for an introduction, where you can offer to take them through the specifics in a less informal setting. Be open to unexpected (or even inconvenient) situations too. 

Ensure that you communicate the work clearly, in a memorable way that is intuitive to leadership. These aspects are key to getting those who see it to want to share it with other leaders i.e. corridor soundbites. If your work is unique, compelling, intuitive and shareable, it will generally help them to look good too, increasingly the likelihood they will indeed share it. You may even be asked to present it directly to more of your targeted sponsor(s) – clearly indicate your interest in doing so. If you get the opportunity to present your work, capitalise on it: consider your content, method of delivery, likely questions etc to transform potential sponsors into actual sponsors. 

Hopefully you’ll find these tips helpful on your own path to increasing your professional squad of superfans. Please do reach out if you have questions, and all the best with growing your sponsorship!