Sandra Quince, Paradigm for Parity® CEO, on Sponsorship and Mentorship in the Workplace

As National Mentoring Month comes to a close, Paradigm for Parity® celebrates the importance of mentorship. While the month is ending, the work must continue and include sponsorship to lift women of all races, cultures and backgrounds to close the gender gap in corporate leadership.

Unconscious biases make it harder for women, particularly women of color, to advance to senior positions where they are not traditionally represented. To address this problem, women of all backgrounds need not only mentors, but also career sponsors and access to networks of influence to help them grow and develop professionally. Sponsorship is a key component of Paradigm for Parity’s® 5-Point Action Plan.

Paradigm for Parity® CEO Sandra Quince responds to questions about the role of sponsorship and mentorship in her career. Quince shares the benefits of both for women’s advancement in the workforce and offers suggestions to facilitate sponsorships.

1. What role has sponsorship played in your career?

Sponsorship both informally and formally has played a huge role in my career. I’ve been able to take advantage of many career opportunities and grow because someone saw my capabilities, spoke on my behalf and opened a door I didn’t have the ability to open at the time. In fact, my role as CEO of Paradigm for Parity® coalition resulted from someone who sponsored me.

2. To you, what is the difference between mentorship and sponsorship?

Both mentorship and sponsorship are essential in ensuring that all talent — especially diverse talent — has opportunities to develop and advance.

A mentor is someone who comes alongside to support you in your journey. They are those that you leverage as a sounding board to discuss ideas, ask for guidance, be a voice of reason and a confidant. You can have multiple mentors that essentially can serve your personal board of directors, and they might come from both inside and outside of your organization or field. A mentorship relationship often develops with someone because you admire the way they think, you are impressed by their career path, and you want to learn from them as part of both your professional and personal journeys.

Sponsors are key influencers and leaders who have a seat at the table in your organization. Generally, sponsors have advanced to a high level and use their personal and professional capital to speak on your behalf and put weight behind you to open doors. They act as an advocate for career growth and expansion and help to remove roadblocks to aid in your success. They are sometimes your manager or others who have clear insight into your skills and capabilities and understand your career goals and aspirations.

3. How has the pandemic and virtual or hybrid work affected the dynamic of sponsorship?

While the pandemic has diminished opportunities for in-person connections, it has not dampened opportunities to ensure companies are elevating the best and brightest within organizations.

In the virtual and hybrid world, outreach and connection may look different and require both sponsors and proteges to be intentional about connecting virtually. Notably, though, companies should think more broadly about how to encourage and expand opportunities for sponsorship leveraging technology. This opens the doors to foster sponsorships with employees in different states — or even halfway across the world.

4. How does sponsorship benefit and uplift multicultural women in particular?

The reality is people naturally gravitate to those who look like them, leading to C-Suites that do not reflect the diverse makeup of the rest of the organization. It’s these unconscious biases that are one of the main reasons diverse talent too often isn’t able to advance to the C-Suite.

One way to overcome this barrier is through an active sponsorship program with a specific focus on multicultural women. In general, multicultural women don’t have the same opportunities to be positioned for growth as men within their organizations. Leaders must look at where diversity sits in an organization — are multicultural women remaining at entry level and mid-level leader jobs or are they being given the opportunities to advance into leadership and C-Suite roles? Companies should examine who is being developed or given opportunities for special projects or stretch assignments, who is given visibility to executives and put measures into place to address where they see inequities. This is how to begin leveling the playing field.

5. How can companies help facilitate sponsorship?

First, companies must clearly and succinctly define what both mentorship and sponsorship look like within their organization. Then, companies can provide resources for employees to leverage, including making introductions, providing examples of what mentorship looks like, outlining the role of a sponsor, and encouraging people to develop sponsor relationships on their own.

Companies can empower employees to cultivate relationships with leaders across their organizations by encouraging what’s referred to as “skip level meetings”. This is a practice where employees are encouraged to schedule meetings with their manager’s boss and higher up the chain which helps with relationship building and can ultimately lead to sponsorship.

Another approach is to establish a more formal sponsorship leadership program where a group of high performing employees representing diverse backgrounds are identified as potential rising leaders and pair them with an executive or C-Suite leader to form a sponsorship relationship.

Quince makes it clear that both sponsors and mentors are critical to reaching gender parity in the workforce. Paradigm for Parity® acknowledges and thanks all mentors, mentees, sponsors and proteges for their work fostering relationships and lifting each other up — during National Mentorship Month and beyond.

About Paradigm for Parity®

Paradigm for Parity® is a coalition of business leaders dedicated to addressing the corporate leadership gender gap. The coalition is made up of CEOs, senior executives, founders, board members, and business academics who are committed to achieving a new norm in the corporate world: one in which women and men have equal power, status, and opportunity. The ultimate goal is to achieve full gender parity by 2030