A mentor gives you advice, a sponsor puts their credibility behind your advancement, and an advisor helps you read the terrain and make specific moves. Most people gain all three the same way: by volunteering their time somewhere before there’s anything in it for them.
When I started my speaking business, I was not glamorous about it. I was in the back end of the work, the part nobody sees and nobody applauds, including contracts, systems, positioning, and all the unglamorous structure that has to exist before anyone steps onto a stage. I had less capacity than I’d had in years, and I did the thing that made no sense on paper.
I volunteered for two speaking boards.
I want to be honest about my thinking at the time, which is that I didn’t have much. I wasn’t running a strategy. I was raised to volunteer, mostly informally, mostly through human connection. I joke that my mom would’ve been a nun if she hadn’t met and married my dad. Mom still led, though. She led by being in service to others, giving her time and her talents away, and I absorbed that long before I could explain it.
What I couldn’t have predicted is that those two boards would introduce me to some of the most talented voices in the speaking industry, and through them to the event planners at associations and corporations who book the rooms I now stand in. I didn’t ask for any of that. I showed up and did unglamorous work alongside others doing the same, and the relationships followed.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe: Whoever moves our career forward is almost never someone we asked. They’re the ones who watched us work when there was nothing in it for us.
Volunteering Does Two Things at Once
Volunteering is a relationship strategy, and it’s also a recovery strategy. Both are true, yet we usually talk only about the first one.
Sometimes when we’re going through hard times, the fastest way out of them is to focus on someone else. That’s where volunteering comes into play. Focusing on someone else’s issues can be a great way to help take the focus off our own, and that in itself is a form of resilience. When I’m depleted, more analysis of my own depletion is not always the answer. Contribution is.
This is lifestyle resilience doing real work. Lifestyle resilience isn’t only about protecting our personal time from our professional time. Lifestyle resilience involves the exchange between giving and receiving, and most high-capacity leaders I know are wildly out of proportion in one direction. We give at work, we give at home, and we might feel like we receive almost nowhere. Volunteering, oddly, corrects that. Volunteering is giving that returns something, because it puts us in rooms with people who become our support system.
Adam Grant’s research on reciprocity found that the most generous givers cluster at both the bottom and the very top of success outcomes. The difference isn’t how much they give. The difference is whether they’re building relationships while they do it.
A Sponsor Is Committed to Your Success
Mentors and sponsors get used interchangeably, but they’re not the same investment. Mentors mainly offer us guidance and advice, while sponsors take an active role in our advancement. A sponsor is typically a senior leader, a C-suite executive, or a high-level influencer who is committed to our success.
Nadya Maree described this to me in a way I still think about. She had someone advocate for her for an opportunity, and what stood out was learning that the CEO and medical director had heard from housekeeping staff that she should be the director of that department. It wasn’t just her boss who supported her. Colleagues across departments spoke up about her fitness for the role based on her personality and her work ethic.
Read that again, because it’s the whole point. Nadya’s sponsors came from everywhere, and they came from how she treated those who had nothing to offer her.
An Advisor Tells You the Truth
Advisors, like sponsors, take an active role in our advancement, specifically in helping us design our landscape. Advisors offer advice on how to navigate business politics, how to position for a promotion, or how to get an entrepreneur closer to closing a contract. An advisor is equipped to speak freely, honestly, and in a way that instills confidence in us.
That last part is the standard. Plenty of people will tell us the truth in a way that leaves us smaller. An advisor tells us the truth and we walk away steadier.
Building that relationship takes calculated risk, though, and I want to name it clearly. We have to disclose real concerns, real mistakes, and real strategy before an advisor can be useful to us, which means we’re exposed before the relationship has proven itself. Make sure you have a trusted relationship before you share all your worries and professional strategies.
I learned this the hard way. I was once brought onto a team that had an outside consultant, an advisor figure, who was being let go as I was coming in. He offered his services as an advisory resource, and he was genuinely knowledgeable. He also built rapport with me by sharing details about other members of the team. I never felt comfortable telling him anything real, and I understand why now. Someone who hands you someone else’s information is showing you exactly how they’ll handle yours.
Trust your instincts on this. They’re usually early, and they’re usually right.
Fifteen Minutes, and a Clear Reason To Use Them
This week, students across the country are heading back to school, walking into buildings staffed with adults whose entire job is to advise them. Every one of them has a guidance counselor, an advisor, a coach. We stop being assigned them somewhere around age 22, and most of us never replace them.
That means we have to design them for ourselves.
My best advice is to keep a running list of people you’d like to ask for a 15-minute discussion. Fifteen minutes is short enough that almost anyone says yes, and that’s exactly why the 15-Minute Calendar Strategy® works. When you reach out, have a clear goal in mind so the conversation stays focused and valuable for both of you.
One rule holds the whole practice together: For every 15 minutes I’ve received, I give 15 minutes to someone else. It works like a checking account. If you make a withdrawal, make a deposit.
Design Your Corner on Purpose
Sit with these three questions this week and write the answers down rather than thinking them.
- Who can you count on to be committed to your success?
- Who will you ask to be part of the team that guides you toward it?
- Who could be your sponsor or advocate within your organization, across your industry, and in the community?
If you can’t fill in a name, that’s not a verdict on your work. That’s a design gap, and design gaps are fixable. Start where I started, which is by volunteering somewhere where your effort is visible to leaders you respect.
Leveraging mentors and sponsors is essential to guide both your own development and that of your team, ensuring everyone thrives together. Volunteering is where I found mine, and I still volunteer, sponsor, and advise today because giving back is exhilarating. My life feels steady when I’m giving my time and talents in the proper way, following the flow and riding the wave of my professional and personal development. And guess what? Everyone thrives.
Designing your landscape is the Set stage of Ready, Set, Go®, and it starts with knowing where your resilience is strong and where it’s thin. Take the What’s Your Sphere of Resilience® assessment inside The Joyful Leader® Toolkit and find out which of your spheres is carrying more than its share.
Bringing this to your team or conference? I speak on joy as a performance foundation for leaders under sustained pressure. Reach me directly at nicolevanvalen.com/contact or booking@nicolevanvalen.com, or through my profile at A-Speakers.
