Sponsorship, or the act of using your own social capital to advocate for a junior employee, is often touted as a fix for inequities and key for fostering the talent pipeline. While it’s true that most protégés generally benefit from receiving sponsorship, this relationship doesn’t have to be only about the protégé. It can also present an opportunity for the sponsor to grow, allowing them to deepen and expand their own relationships with peers and senior leaders as they help connect a junior employee. Yet little research has studied how sponsorship impacts sponsors. Are some ways of sponsoring more conducive to win-win circumstances than others?
