The difference between sponsors and mentors

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Rashim Mogha. I'm Head of Education Products at Automation Anywhere. I also run an initiative called empowered Women of the World, or eWOW. I learned the difference between mentorship and sponsorship the hard way. So when I just got into the job, I was all about hey, I need to get mentors, and I need to start that mentee-mentorship relationship right away, and that's going to help me move to the next level, and I realized that my first promotion from an individual contributor to a manager level was fairly easy, I got it within six months. And then I kind of hit a dry spell. For two years, there was no promotion, I was exceeding my goals, my coworkers were getting promoted but I wasn't, and when I introspected and looked at what they were doing different as compared to me, I realized that I had put all my eggs in one basket, which is my manager, and I was all about exceeding my performance goals and focusing on what my manager wanted me to do, whereas these people, while they were meeting their performance goals, not exceeding them, just meeting them, had strategically invested in finding sponsors within the organization. That was the piece that I was missing. So that's when I got interested in understanding the whole concept of sponsorship and then actively going out and recruiting sponsors for myself. So a simple difference, mentor is somebody whom you talk to, and a sponsor is someone who talks about you. He or she talks about you when you are not there in the room and promotes you to the next level. You want to think about mentors as somebody who is going to advise you in terms of how to navigate professional and personal situations, right? You're facing problems with some of your coworkers, for example, or you have some personal crisis where you need advice. That's when you go to the mentors. To sponsors, you showcase your skillset. This is what I'm good at, this is what my superpower is, and this is why you should take me to the next level and you should push my agenda, if you will, to the next level. One thing that you want to be very careful about is what you talk to your sponsors about. That sponsors do not need to hear about your personal woes. Don't make your sponsors your agony aunts, you have mentors for that, and focus on showcasing your skillset, what you're capable of, and where you want to go with your sponsors.