Someone told me a little while ago that I am extremely naive, and that it really isn’t my fault. I am, he told me, a product of my background. I believed that hard work and diligence would pay off, you see, but he disagreed. He told me that today, it isn’t what you know, or even who you know. It’s who’s got your back. That is the single most important thing in the business world today, he proclaimed, and then he asked me, “Who’s got YOUR back?”
Now, months later, unemployed and frankly a bit jaded, I have to say that my co-worker had a point. Your success is in great part related to who is looking out for you and who’s willing to go the extra distance to ensure you get a fair shake in the business world. At least, he was correct about that with my previous employer. It was very much that sort of environment … and without a strong sponsor, my ability to succeed was greatly diminished. I’m not laying the blame for my failures at someone else’s feet, or in this case, no one’s feet. But I do believe that the lack of a strong sponsor – someone who was willing to make sure I had the tools to be successful and who would advocate for me – was the beginning of the end for me. I didn’t really understand how much that sponsorship meant until recently, but I believe that it really is the cornerstone to being successful, particularly in a very large company with thousands of employees.
I didn’t always lack a sponsor at my last organization; quite to the contrary, I had many people who were very strong advocates for me, and who were happy to see me successfully promoted to a new position with more responsibility. They were thrilled to see me move into a new role, and I believe the person who put me there felt like he was doing me a favor, and at the time I thought he was too. In the eight or so years I’d been with the company, I’d never received a promotion. And this promotion took me away from administrative work into a world of project management – a dream I’d had for many years. I was put into a controls analyst position, and I thought I had finally been recognized for all my previous hard work and dedication.
The position was not without its drawbacks. I’d never done this type of work before, and the agreement was that I would be in a “junior” type role for three years as I learned the ropes and got my bearings. I was assigned to work on a team with another controls person who had many years doing that type of work, and I was set. However, she was a contractor and unfortunately for me, the company person who hired me moved into a new position just six short months after I started. Apparently somewhere in the transition, the plan he had for me and another junior analyst either weren’t conveyed or were ignored by the new management of the team. I lost my advocate, my sponsor, and I had very little in the way of direction from the company in what I should be doing to continue on the path I was set upon before he left. However, the first year went well, overall, and I felt like I was learning how to do the job at a very rapid speed. The following year … well, I’m not really sure what happened.
I do know that I butted heads with the new management of the team, and we were at odds over stupid things, like meeting times. I wasn’t trying to cause trouble or anything like that … it was just a conflict of personality. I felt then, and still believe, that the team leader to whom I reported didn’t have a very good grasp of what the job was that we did, or else he wouldn’t have turned things like meeting dates into a conflict. Over time, it became more and more difficult to understand his motivation, and after a while I stopped trying. I decided to just keep my head down and do my job. What I should have done was attempted to get out of that situation and out of that group. I didn’t, though, and I paid the price. I really can’t say more than that about what happened, but what I can tell you is this – the moment I ran into management that was no on board with the plans that had been made for me previously, I should have jumped ship and moved on.
My pride and an inability to back down from a challenge compelled me to stay. I had been a long-term employee with a spotless record; I figured that over time I would win over these people and they would come to love me as much as everyone else had in the past. I was wrong. They didn’t want to love me, they didn’t want to advocate for me. Much of the time, I felt they were working against me.
I did eventually move into another position, and the manager there seemed to really like me. He told me multiple times what a great job I was doing and how I had met all of his expectations. But again, he didn’t advocate for me. I had already lost my sponsor; he was “warned” about me before I went into the job, and it was only supposed to be for a couple of months anyway (it turned into nearly a year). But I thought when he told me that I was doing a good job that he would advocate for me; he apparently did not.
That sponsorship was particularly useful when it came to a “committee” who decided how well you performed over the previous year. These are people who don’t know you, don’t know what kind of work you’ve done. They just look at what your manager has said about you on paper and make a determination about how well you did, supposedly in relation to the rest of your “peer group”. So someone who did a fine job for their manager, who did everything required of them but who did no “personal development training” the year before can still be ranked below someone who did a mediocre job but who did all sorts of training. And it’s all in how your manager writes up your review. You could be an ok employee but because your manager really likes you, come out sounding like Joan of Arc.
So … I’ll ask you this question. Who’s got your back? Who’s making sure you get a fair shake in the business world? And who’s willing to go the distance to help you when you need it? If you answer with anything other than the name of someone you know is advocating for you … one day, you may be the one writing this post.
