Leading Her Introvert Way: Conversations about executive leadership, career growth, business and mindset for mid-life Black women.

106: 5 Mistakes That Keep Black Women From Getting A Career Sponsor (And How To Avoid Them)

• Nicole Bryan • Episode 106

Share episode

Leadership promotions aren’t handed to the hardest worker; they’re championed by the loudest advocate in the right room. We get candid about why so many Black introvert women hit a plateau after years of stellar results, degrees, and glowing reviews.  We break down the five mistakes that quietly sabotage advancement and how to change the game with strategic sponsorship. 

******

LET’S CONNECT!


Ready to turn performance into influence and influence into offers? Join my free  Secure Your Sponsor Challenge starting Saturday, November 1. 

If this conversation helped you think differently about advancement, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs it, and leave a quick review—your voice helps more women get the sponsorship they deserve.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey lady leader, and welcome back to Leading Her Introvert Way. I am Dr. Nicole Bryan. I'm your host, and today we need to talk about something that's been on my mind. I recently had a conversation that honestly blew my mind. And not necessarily in a good way, but it did confirm something that I've been seeing for years in my work with ambitious black introvert women in leadership like you. So grab your notebook, get comfortable, because we're about to dive into the five mistakes that are keeping you from getting a sponsor. And trust me, if you want to make it to the executive table, you definitely need to hear this. But first, I want to let you know that today's episode is sponsored by my upcoming secure your sponsor challenge. This challenge is designed for you to not only learn all about the benefits of sponsorship, but for you to actually pick and approach your sponsors so that by the end of the challenge, you will leave with established relationships with two to three different career sponsors who will enthusiastically and proactively advocate for your professional development, your next promotion, your salary raise, and your bonus increase, and all the support you need to move your career forward. Now, if you're ready to have all that and more, then go to services.thechangedoc.com forward slash secure your sponsor. Again, that's services.thechangedoc.com forward slash secure your sponsor. Or you can click the link in the show notes to sign up. We are starting this Saturday, November 1st. So don't miss it. All right, now let's get into today's episode. So I was talking to my business coach recently. And let me tell you, my business coach is a beast. She is phenomenal. She runs a very successful company, has coached tons of coaches of all sorts, including leadership coaches, executive coaches, career coaches, and she's she's brilliant at what she does. But here's the thing: she's never worked inside large organizations as a people manager or a senior leader. So she's built her own business from the ground up, which is absolutely amazing. But she doesn't have that corporate leadership experience. So when I shared my idea with her at first about the secure your sponsor challenge, she loved it. She thought it was brilliant. But then she said something that made me pause. She said, You know, Nicole, I've heard of mentors, but you're the first person I've ever heard talk about sponsors in a corporate setting. And this is someone who has coached hundreds of career professionals, y'all. Hundreds. I just sat there for a second and I thought, and therein lies the problem. I want you to think about what that actually means. What it means is that nobody is talking about sponsors, right? Nobody is focused on it. Even people who coach other career professionals don't know about it. But here's what I know after years of working in leadership, after years of growing my career in nonprofit organizations, for-profit organizations, the executive suite, sponsorship is literally the secret sauce for moving up in your career. So let me paint the picture for you, because maybe this is you. You come in as a supervisor, you work hard, you show up early, you stay late, and you get promoted to manager. Yeah, you get promoted to manager. Maybe even you made it to the director level. You did everything right. You got your degrees. Hell, you got multiple degrees. You got multiple certifications. You deliver result after result for every team, every company that you've ever worked for. You've exceeded expectations. You've gotten the best or the highest rating on all of your performance reviews. But now, all of a sudden, your career progression has started to slow down significantly. Maybe it's even stopped altogether, where before you were getting promoted every two to three years, and now you're in year four, five, six, and there's no sign of forward movement or upward movement for you right now. You keep applying for the senior director roles or vice president roles or executive vice president roles, right? A VP roles, and you're getting nothing but crickets. Or you get the interview, right? You're offered an interview, but you don't ever get the final offer of employment. Or you don't even get, you know, you're not, you, you, you don't even know that, or you don't even know how to get on their radar. Sound familiar? Here's the truth that nobody told you. Truth number one, when you want to move into the senior ranks of your organization, so think vice president, maybe even assistant vice president or associate vice president, vice president, senior vice president, executive vice president, and above, you need a sponsor. Not a mentor, but a sponsor. Truth number two, the more complicated or complex your organization's culture is, the more you need a sponsor. Because navigating politics without a guide, that is absolutely career suicide at the senior level of any organization. And truth number three, the further you want to go in your career, whether that's in your current company or in a different one, you don't just need one sponsor, you need sponsorship, which is multiple people advocating for you, opening doors, putting your name in rooms. And I know what you're thinking. Nicole, if sponsors are so important, why didn't anyone tell me this before? That is an absolutely great question. And here's what makes me disappointed, but not surprised. The skill of building relationships that support your career growth, it's not taught anywhere. It's not in your leadership development programs at work. It's not in your MBA or graduate school courses, not even your mentors are telling you about it. And when they do mention it, they're certainly not teaching you how to do it. And you want to know why that is? It's because we're taught to believe in something called meritocracy, right? The meritocracy myth. And the meritocracy myth, just in case you haven't heard of it before, is that if you just work hard enough, you will get noticed. If you just deliver results, you'll get promoted. If you just keep your head down and do excellent work, the opportunities will find you. And let me tell you something. That is exactly what is keeping you stuck. Because promotions at the senior level of your company, they're not about who works the hardest. They're about who has advocates in the room when your name comes up. But here's what I want you to hear building sponsor relationships is a skill. And just like any other skill, like public speaking or data analysis or strategic thinking. And like any skill, once you learn it, it pays dividends for the rest of your career. It'll help you achieve the goals you still have left, the dreams you're not giving up on, and the executive seat you know you're meant to have. And that is exactly why I created the Secure Your Sponsor Challenge. It's a free four-week challenge starting this Saturday, where I'm going to teach you how to identify, approach, and nurture sponsorship relationships that will build your career today and tomorrow. Okay, let's dive into the five mistakes that you are making that Black introvert women make when it comes to getting a sponsor. Okay. And this is the part where you're definitely going to want to take notes. So mistake number one, all right. And this is the most common mistake that I see. Mistake number one is that no one is getting a sponsor at all. Right? So you're out here grinding. You are working overtime, you're delivering results, you're taking on extra projects, but you're grinding alone. And when you don't have sponsors, here's what happens: you're invisible when opportunities, the big opportunities come up. Let me explain what I mean. When a senior director position opens up, or when they're looking for someone to lead a high visibility project, or when they're deciding who to send to that executive leadership program, those decisions often happen in rooms that you are not in. And in those rooms, someone asks, who should we consider for this opportunity? If you don't have a sponsor in that room ready to say your name, ready to shout your name from the rooftops, you won't even get considered. I call this being in a career deficit. You have all the ambition in the world and you have the skills, you have the drive, but you don't have the infrastructure of support inside your company or inside your industry or inside your field. And here's what I see happen. Black women especially fall into what I call lone wolf syndrome. Because we are taught to be self-sufficient, right? We are misindependent. I don't need anyone's help. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right? But careers are not built in isolation. The most successful people, the ones sitting in the C-suite right now, they did not get there by themselves. They had sponsors, they had support. Sometimes a lot of sponsors and a lot of support. So you don't need to make getting a sponsor. So you need to make getting a sponsor a priority, not something you'll eventually do or when you have the time. Your career advancement depends on it right now. Okay, let's move on to mistake number two. So let's say you've decided, okay, Nicole, I hear you. I need a sponsor. Great. But here's where mistake number two happens. You pick the wrong sponsor. And there are so many ways people pick wrong. Let me just break down the four most common ones. The first one is when you title chase. This is when you look at someone's title and you think, she's a senior vice president. She must know how to get there. And I want her position one day. So she should be my sponsor. But here's the problem. Just because someone is senior doesn't mean they can or will sponsor you. They might have, they might not have influence in your area. They might not have political capital to spend. They might be politically weak themselves. And yes, that is a thing. They might not be interested in developing others. Title does not equal sponsorship ability. The second wrong way of choosing is the likability trap. Now, this is when you pick someone because you vibe with them, right? You like their personality. Maybe you admire them or you think that they're really cool. Maybe you went to the same college or you're from the same hometown. And listen, connection does matter. But if that person doesn't have influence in areas that matter for your goals, they can't actually help you advance. This is what psychologists call affinity bias, because we naturally gravitate toward people who are like us or who had who we admire. But career strategy is not about feelings, it's about positioning. Wrong way number three, right? Is which I'm calling it culture blindness. Now, this happens when you don't understand your company's power dynamics and political landscape. And I get it, you don't want to play politics. That's fine. You don't have to play, but if you're trying to move your career into the senior ranks, you damn sure better understand the company politics and company power dynamics. You don't have to play in it. You don't have to be out front inside of it, but you have to understand it. So you will go and you'll pick someone who seems nice, who seems supportive, but they're actually politically weak in your company. They don't have any influence, other leaders don't respect them, they're not in the right rooms. And now you've attached your career to someone who can't actually advocate for you effectively. And the final, the fourth long way that I want to talk about today is lack of strategy. Now, this is the biggest one because you're not clear on your goals. So you can't pick someone aligned with where you're trying to go. Are you trying to move from manager to director? You need a sponsor who understands that path. Are you trying to transition from operations to strategy? You need a sponsor in the strategy function. Are you trying to break into the C-suite? You need a sponsor who's already there or has access to those decision makers. And the fix, you need to be strategic, not emotional about selecting your sponsor. And that starts with clarity on your own goals and understanding your organization's power structure. We are going to cover this exact thing in week one of the challenge. How to identify the right sponsors for your specific situation. Okay, getting back to our list of mistakes. So we've already talked about two mistakes, right? We talked about not having a sponsor at all, which is mistake number one. We also talked about picking the wrong sponsor, which is mistake number three. Move, excuse me, mistake number two. Moving on to mistake number three, approaching it all wrong. So you've identified the right sponsor. Let's just assume you've identified the right sponsor. Now what? This is where mistake three happens. Approaching it all wrong. I see this go wrong in opposite in two opposite directions. I see this go wrong in two opposite directions. The first is when you're too timid. This is when you're so scared of rejection or looking stupid that either you never approach your sponsor or your potential sponsor at all. You kind of just admire them from afar, or you approach so softly, so indirectly, that they don't even realize you're asking for sponsorship. This often comes because you might be suffering from imposter syndrome. So you might be thinking to yourself, who am I to ask this senior leader for help? Or what if they say no? Or what if I'm not actually ready for my next role or my next promotion or the next big opportunity? Or even what if they think I'm not qualified? So you start sending these vague emails like, I'd love to pick your brain sometime, or you run into them in the hallway and make small talk, but never actually ask for what you need. And they walk away thinking you just wanted to chit chat. They have no idea you were trying to build a sponsorship relationship. Direction number two is being too aggressive. So it's the opposite of what I just talked about. This is the opposite extreme, where you kind of show up like a bull in a China shop. You're treating it like a cold call, like a business transaction. You walk up to them at a company event or in the hallway and you say, Hey, will you be my sponsor out of nowhere? Or you send them an email and it says something like, I'm looking for a sponsor and I think you'd be great. Can we meet? And imagine the person on the other end who's receiving this email. Like, who are you? They're thinking, Why me? What's in this for me? It feels very transactional. It feels like you want something from them without offering anything in return. But there's a middle ground. The right approach is somewhere in the middle, in between being too timid and being too aggressive. It's about building authentic connection first, then being clear about what you're looking for or what you need. And you're listening to this, and I know you're at, you know, all my introverts are listening. I know there are a lot of you because that's who this podcast is for. This doesn't mean you have to be extroverted. You don't have to work the room at networking events. You don't have to be loud or constantly visible, but you do have to be intentional. You have to create the opportunities for one-on-one connection. You have to show up consistently. You have to communicate clearly about your goals and your interests. The approach here needs to be authentic. It needs to be strategic. It has to be confidence-based, not timid, not aggressive, but intentional. And in week two of the challenge, we're going to walk through exactly how to approach potential sponsors in a way that feels natural to you. Okay, moving on to mistake number four. Mistake number four is about how you position yourself in the relationship from the start. And this is crucial, not showing up as a worthy investment. Here's what a lot of mid-career professionals don't realize. Sponsors aren't looking for projects. They're not looking for people to fix or people to save. They're looking for investments. They're looking to actually invest their time and their energy in people. Now let me break that down. When a senior leader or an executive leader decides to sponsor someone, they're literally putting their reputation on the line. They're using their political capital that they've spent years, decades building. They're telling other decision makers, this person is ready. I know this person. I've got their back. This person is worth betting on. If you turn out to be a bad bet, that reflects poorly on them. So they're asking themselves, is this person worth my investment? Is this person going to make me look good for spotting their potential? Or are they going to make me look bad for taking the risk? The mistake that many people make is showing up like you need to be saved, right? Like they're doing you a favor. This happens when you undersell your accomplishments and you say something like, it was nothing. I just did my job. Or when you apologize constantly for taking their time. Oh, I'm sorry to bother you, Sam, but right? Like you're just you start out apologizing because you need their time and attention. Or you don't articulate your value or your vision clearly. Or you come across as not being ready for the next level. Or even when you focus only on what you need help with instead of what you actually bring to the table and what you can do for them. When you show up in that way, the sponsor is thinking, I don't know if they're ready. Maybe not now, maybe in a few years. There's a principle in psychology called reciprocity, the idea that relationships work best when both people benefit from it. That's what sponsorship is. Sponsorship is mutually beneficial. When your sponsor advocates for you and you succeed, it makes them look good. It shows that they have good judgment. It expands their own influence because now you have a certain level of loyalty to them. And it builds their leadership brand as someone who knows, identifies, and backs good talent. But you have to show them what's in it for them. Now, I know that as Black women, we're taught that we shouldn't be bragging, we need to be humble, we don't need to be too much, we don't need to be too out there because people are afraid of us or they're intimidated by us, and that we shouldn't make other people uncomfortable with our success. And as introverts, we often don't like talking about ourselves anyway. But there's a difference between arrogance and owning your excellence. Arrogance is, I'm better than everybody else. Owning your excellence is here's what I've accomplished, here's the impact I've made, here's where I'm going next. Your sponsor needs to be able to see and understand your excellence. They need to know what you've done, what you're capable of, and where you're headed. Otherwise, they will never be in a position to truly advocate for you in the way that you need them to. So you need to position yourself as a high potential leader who is worth investing in. You need to articulate your value clearly. You need to show up confident in your abilities while staying humble about your growth areas. And in week three of the secure your sponsor challenge, we're going to work on this together because so many of us don't even know where to start. Or it makes us feel uncomfortable when we are, when it's time to position ourselves in this way. And so the challenge, week three, is specifically curated to walk you through step by step how to do this with the sponsors that you select, how to communicate your value without feeling like you're bragging. All right, moving on to mistake number five: treating sponsorship as a transaction instead of a relationship. So let's say, let's assume you've done everything right so far. You've identified the right sponsor, you've approached them well, they've agreed to sponsor you. So congrats, right? But here's where people drop the ball. This is when you only reach out when you need something. You take the transactional approach. Hey, I'm applying for this promotion. Can you get it? Can you put in a good word? Or there's this project I want to lead. Can you recommend me? Or even I need a raise. Can you advocate for me? And then when you're approaching it this way in this transactional mode, you're gonna hear crickets. You disappear until the next time you need something. And thus your sponsor is not motivated to act on your behalf, right? Or maybe you never bring your personality into it. Maybe you meet with your sponsor every week, every month, you show up, but you show up as this very tarnished version of you, this no personality, this very rigid individual. Every interaction that you have with your sponsor is formal and stiff. And that means they don't really know you, they just know your resume. Think about it like this: this is not a vending machine where you put in requests and get promotions out. It doesn't work that way. Instead, this is a relationship with another human being. And like any relationship, it has requirements. If it's going to grow and if it's going to mature and if it's going to benefit you, the relationship, the sponsorship relationship has requirements. It requires regular connection, not reaching out just when you need something or you want something, but regular touch basis. It requires genuine interest in them as a person. You can't expect them to be the only ones who's interested. If they're showing an interest in you, you've got to show an interest in them. It requires showing up with updates and wins so that they can celebrate you, so that they can keep up to date with what's going on with you. It also requires you being reliable and trustworthy. And it requires you bringing value to them, not just taking. Relationship-based sponsorship looks like checking in regularly, even when you don't need anything, sharing your wins and updates. It could be in person, it could be via email so that they have recent examples when your name comes up. It looks like asking about their goals, their projects, what they might need from you, and showing a genuine interest. It looks like looking for ways to support them. Can you help with their initiative? Can you connect them with someone? And it looks like being someone that they can actually enjoy talking to. Your sponsor is putting their reputation on the line for you. And they deserve to be treated with care and respect. So you get to treat your sponsor relationship like you would any important relationship in your life with intention, with care, with consistency, and with authenticity. And when you treat it like a real relationship, because that is exactly what it is, then that is when the magic happens. That's when they're thinking of you when opportunities arise. That's when they're going out of their way to open doors for you. And in week four of the Secure Your Sponsor Challenge, we're talking about how to nurture these relationships long term so that they keep paying dividends throughout your entire career. Okay, lady leader, let's recap the five mistakes that Black introverted women make when it comes to securing a sponsor. Mistake number one, not getting a sponsor at all. So you're out there grinding alone without the support infrastructure that you need to take your career to the senior leader and executive leader level. Mistake number two, picking the wrong sponsor. So if you're choosing based on title or likability or lack of strategy, instead of being intentional and deliberate. Mistake number three, the approach is all wrong. You're either approaching it too timidly or too aggressively instead of being authentic and intentional. Mistake number four is not showing up as a worthy investment, which means you're underselling yourself instead of owning your excellence. And mistake number five is when you treat it like a transaction instead of a relationship. That may look like you only reaching out when you need something instead of building genuine connection over time. If you heard yourself in any of these mistakes, and I'm betting you did, here's the good news. None of these are unfixable. Every single one of these mistakes comes down to either not knowing the strategy or not having the skills or not having someone show you how it's done. And that, lady leader, is exactly why I created the Secure Your Sponsor Challenge. Over four weeks, but just six hours, we're walking through how to identify the right sponsor for your goals, how to approach them with confidence, even as an introvert, how to position yourself as someone worth investing, and how to nurture the relationship so that they pay dividends for the rest of your career. The challenge is completely free. For the moment. And it starts this Saturday, November 1st. If you're ready to register, head to services.thechangedoc.com forward slash secure your sponsor. I'm going to also put the link in the show notes. Because, lady leader, your career is entirely too important to keep making these mistakes. You've worked too hard to stay stuck at the level you're at. You have too much potential to keep being invisible when these great opportunities come up. It is time to secure your sponsor. It is time to get your seat at that executive leadership table. I'll see you in the challenge. And until next time, keep leading your introvert way. Thanks for tuning in. If you have thoughts, questions, or ideas for future topics, connect and send me a message on LinkedIn. And if you enjoyed today's episode, subscribe and please take a minute to write a quick review on Apple Podcasts. Your review will help spread the word to other ambitious females so they know they're not alone and that this podcast is a community of support for all of us leading her way to the top. Remember, your leadership is needed. Your leadership is powerful. So lead boldly. Until next time.