packing up my office.
As I regrouped and attempted to figure out how to reinvent my professional life, one thing was sure: I’d learned my lesson on the sponsorship front. I now understood that climbing the ladder in any competitive field required heavy-duty support from a senior person with heft and influence.
Finding such a person wasn’t easy. I hadn’t been in the business of cultivating such relationships. But after some soul searching, I realized that I did have such a person in my back pocket. His name was Harvey Picker and he was dean of the School of International Affairs at Columbia University and former CEO of Picker Instruments. Picker wasn’t particularly influential at Columbia (he didn’t sit on any of the critical university-wide committees), but he did have power in the wider world, and most importantly, he was a great fan of mine. We’d met through my teaching. A Brazil enthusiast, Picker had sat in on some sessions of a course I taught on the Latin American economy, and we’d had spirited discussions on growth models and on trade-offs between economic growth and social justice in the Third World. We shared a Portuguese language instructor and a love of fado (Portuguese folk music).
A week after the tenure debacle, I turned up in Harvey’s office clear-eyed and focused. I came directly to the point: could he help me find a job?
Harvey came through. Indeed, he was not merely responsive; he got out in front. In his old-fashioned courtly way, he told me that he’d learned of what he called “the ridiculous tenure decision” and was profoundly put out, so much so that he’d taken it upon himself to scope out a job that might suit me. The top slot at the Economic Policy Council (a New York–based nonprofit that brought together 100 corporate CEOs and trade union leaders to examine cutting-edge issues) was open, and Harvey thought that my skill set was perfect for the position. I had precisely the mix of top-notch academic credentials and international experience they were looking for. Did he have my permission to put my name forward? He knew the chairman of the EPC board rather well and while that didn’t count for much (Harvey was a self-deprecating sort of person), it would open the door, which was all I needed. Dumbstruck, I conjured up a weak and wobbly yes. A month later, I started a brand-new career.
So I finally got it—sponsorship, that is. I did my utmost to never again let it go. My career journey was complicated (more on that in the final chapter). But from here on out, I knew that if I was going to amount to anything, I needed powerful sponsors.
The Sponsor Imperative
Who’s pulling for you? Who’s got your back? Who’s putting your hat in the ring?
Odds are, this person is not a mentor but a sponsor.
Now don’t get me wrong: mentors matter. You absolutely need them—they give valuable advice, build self-esteem, and provide an indispensable sounding board when you’re unsure about next steps. But they are not your ticket to the top.
If you’re interested in fast-tracking your career, in getting that next hot assignment or making more money, what you need is a sponsor. Sponsors give advice and guidance, but they also come through on much more important fronts. In particular they:
Believe in your value and your potential and are prepared to link reputations and go out on a limb on your behalf.
Have a voice at decision-making tables and are willing to be your champion—convincing others that you deserve a pay raise or a promotion.
Are willing to give you air cover so that you can take risks. No one can accomplish great things in this world if they don’t have a senior leader in their corner making it safe to fail.
It is this kind of heavy lifting that distinguishes a sponsor from a mentor. The data that underpins this book shows that sponsorship has a measurable impact on career progression. Men and women with sponsors are much more likely to rise up through the ranks and hang on to their ambition. Sponsors—unlike mentors—give you serious traction.
1
What Is Sponsorship?
Pat Fili-Krushel, chairman of NBCUniversal News Group, has come a long, long way in the super competitive and testosterone-fueled world of network news and media. Though not a journalist, she is the first woman in the American television news industry to head up a network news division, reporting directly to CEO Steve Burke. She’s been on Fortune magazine’s 50 Most Powerful Women list since 1998, and she’s been honored with a slew of other awards, including induction into the Museum of Television & Radio’s “She Made It” collection. No one would ever guess, in the presence of this poised and powerful executive, that she began her career as a secretary at ABC Sports.
“I’ve been lucky,” Pat insists when I marvel at her extraordinary journey.1 “And I’ve worked my tail off.” She pauses to reflect, then adds, “But one of the things I’ve done well—and I don’t know that it’s conscious—is that I’ve always made my boss look good. All the people I’ve worked for will tell you, ‘I like having Pat around, because I know she’s got my back.’”
One of those people was Bob Iger, now CEO of Disney, whom she met at the Xerox machine when both were starting out their careers at ABC Sports. While she didn’t initially report to Iger, her work ethic and performance won his attention and he pulled her onto his team. Whenever Iger moved up, he recommended that Fili-Krushel fill his vacancy. It was Iger who brought her over to ABC from Lifetime Television, where she’d served as a senior vice president of programming, and installed her as president of ABC Daytime television. But Fili-Krushel was quick to make good on his investment in her: she was the driving force behind “The View,” the talk show that helped vault ABC’s daytime programming to number one among women 18–49 years old. She also conceived and launched SoapNet, a 24-hour soap-opera cable network, which went on to become a multibillion-dollar business. “Do your job well, make sure your boss is fully informed, and don’t be afraid to ask for help,” she explains. “That’s how you build the trust vital to any long-term professional relationship.”
Superior performance and trust is certainly what delivered Pat to her current position with Steve Burke. She’d impressed him back when they both worked for Disney, she as president of ABC TV, he as president of ABC Broadcasting. “Pat was someone you could absolutely count on to do the right thing,” Burke told me. “She wasn’t intimidated by projects or people, and she didn’t play politics. I knew her motivations at all times—and that made her one-hundred percent trustworthy.”
So in 2011, after Comcast and GE merged with NBC and Burke found himself at the helm of a super-siloed media monolith, it was Pat he turned to for help in transforming the culture. “I knew if I got Pat, I wouldn’t have to worry,” he recalled. “I knew when she found things wrong, she would make them right. I knew that if any of our top people had exposure to her, even without exposure to me, they’d know the kind of company we were trying to create.”
Hired on as executive vice president of NBCUniversal, Pat immediately set to rights the compensation structure that had mired Burke’s team in the past. With her formidable people skills, she helped effect the collaborative culture that Burke had envisioned. When Burke decided to form the News Group, putting NBC News, CNBC, MSNBC, and The Weather Channel in the hands of one executive, it was again Pat who emerged as first choice. “I knew my decision would ruffle some feathers,” Burke confided. “Pat’s not a journalist, so how could she be put in charge of hundreds of journalists who are risking their lives all over the world? But she didn’t need to be the senior-most journalist in order to find the people who could make this new environment productive and cooperative.”
