4 Things Your Leadership Team Can Do to Improve Diversity (& It Doesn’t Involve Hiring Anyone!) 

Sponsorship is perhaps one of the most important things your executive team can do to develop a diverse leadership pipeline, and help retain diversity in your organization. Sponsors are vital for success in today’s workforce: as Bonnie Marcus, an author and executive coach focused on high-achieving women, points out: “It’s the fast track — the fastest, most powerful way to get ahead.  Having the right sponsor can make a dramatic impact on your career advancement.”

Yet despite the high impact a sponsor can make, mid-level women and minorities lag far behind mid-level white men in securing workplace sponsorship. In fact, according to businessinsider.com, only one out of eight women, and one out of twenty minorities report having a sponsor — versus one out of four white men. So it makes sense that the career acceleration sponsorship can provide would be especially beneficial to those who have  traditionally been overlooked in the workplace.

How then can you turn this around and build a culture of sponsorship in your organization?  What steps should senior management take to make this happen?  Read on.

Sponsorship Savvy: Four Common-Sense Tips

Encourage All Senior-Level Staff to Get to Know the Reports of Their Direct Staff.  You have to sponsor someone in whom you believe, and whose work you trust and feel you can stand behind, or the advocacy won’t feel genuine. It’s easy to fall into “intragroup bias” and migrate towards the familiar (i.e. the people who are most similar to you) – but instead, get to know your full staff, not just your direct reports.  This also gives you a  bigger pool of candidates from whom to choose.

Another tip: in their book Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America, Harvard faculty members David Thomas and John Gabarro point out that “high-performing members of other racial groups remain comparatively invisible in the selection process.”  So encourage even the more junior members of your team to speak up at meetings, and take time to understand their interests, passions and backgrounds. You may actually end up finding someone on your own team with high potential whom you can sponsor for new opportunities.

Keep an Open Mind.  Every employee will have his or her own approach to work.   It’s important to remember that you started sponsoring this employee because you saw their potential, and now you have the privilege to help them realize how that potential can be harnessed into new opportunities.  The challenges they face may be different from what is familiar to you, but working with them to understand the roadblocks — and how those challenges can be addressed to make this new opportunity viable — is a critical part of sponsorship.

An example: when I was halfway through my pregnancy, one of my previous sponsors put me up for a new position with heavy travel, but also with lots of exposure, and the chance to deliver against a critical business goal. Clearly, a great opportunity. Yet I told him directly that a heavy travel job was out of the question, and his response was “Well, how could we make this work for you?”  I told him, and he spoke with the hiring manager and worked it out.  And it paid off — eight months later I was promoted, while out on maternity leave.

Sponsor More than One Person at a Time.  There are limitless chances for promotion at most organizations.  The problem is usually more around lack of qualified employees for those opportunities — versus lack of opportunities themselves.  While sponsoring every single employee in a significant way may be difficult from a bandwidth perspective, sponsoring more than one employee is certainly possible.  And while the focus may be to sponsor diverse employees to improve retention, sponsoring anyone helps – everyone feels more satisfied with a sponsor.

Cross-Pollinate, and Include Sponsorship as Part of the Succession-Planning Process.  Sponsorship is important to the organization:  it improves job satisfaction and ensures the right talent is available on an “on demand” basis.  So ask leadership to put forth candidates from within their sponsorship pool for new opportunities, and during the leadership evaluation cycle, request that organizational leaders identify potential candidates who could replace them or their direct staff. For any voids, encourage them to talk to other leadership members – they may be able to pool a “high potential” candidate from another organization, and give them the chance to shine while developing a new skillset.

Sponsorship is great for everyone.  Need more help convincing your team?  Catalyst (a non-profit focused on expanding opportunities for women and business) took a look at how sponsoring employees impacts the sponsoring managers’ careers.  The results:  Not only are they more likely to get promoted than their peers, but managers that sponsored employees earn, on average, $25,075 more than those that don’t, as reported in Forbes magazine.  How that’s for motivation?