The Power of Your Personal Board of Directors: Building Relationships with Career Influencers
Your net worth is your network. We’ve all heard this before.
The makeup of your network is equally as important as the list of people in your network. In a recent article, I wrote about how you can think about three buckets of people to focus on networking with.
In this article, I’ll discuss how you can think about building relationships with career influencers — what I call your Personal Board of Directors. You can go to these people for guidance when you are at a career crossroads or for honest assessments about what you do well and what you could improve.
Most of these individuals will be part of the experienced leaders’ bucket mentioned in my last article.
There are three types of career influencers you should think about:
- Engagement or Case Manager
- Mentor
- Sponsors
I present this from a consulting point of view, but the engagement/case manager can be replaced by your boss.
Engagement Manager (EM) or Case Manager
This is someone who talks TO you.
Your EM’s primary focus is on supporting you to get the job at hand done. They delegate you tasks and review your work product.
Your EM is more short-term focused, ensuring you perform at a high level and the client receives value from your work. The relationship is performance or delivery-driven above all else.
Because you work closely with this type of career influencer, they can provide you with constant and real-time feedback. In addition to feedback on deliverables, they can advise where and how to develop your hard and soft skills based on your interests.
For this type of relationship, you should focus on performing at the highest level while also exhibiting leadership skills — whether in client communication and relationship building, proactive thinking about the project’s next steps, or managing and developing others on this project.
Strive to have an open form of communication here — this will ensure you can get live, direct feedback to allow for rapid continuous improvement.
Mentors
This is someone who talks WITH you.
The focus is on long-term career growth and development. The conversations will look beyond your current project and focus on where you want to be in the future. Then, mentors help you build a skills and opportunity roadmap to help you get from where you are today to where you want to be.
Your mentor talks with you about the big picture and provides holistic guidance, advice, and support.
Some mentors may be purely professional, while others take a holistic approach — providing guidance on the intersection of career and personal life (starting a family, choosing between spousal career opportunities, managing work-life balance).
Mentors help you identify new career advancement opportunities — both within your current organization and outside. It’s important to have mentors inside and outside of your current company.
Find someone within your organization who can help navigate organizational politics and learn about new projects in the pipeline that may align with your career aspirations.
Equally as important, someone outside of your organization provides you with unbiased opinions as they don’t have a vested stake in keeping you at the firm. They may be more candid about when it is time to look for opportunities outside of your current company.
In many cases, they can also serve as the ‘devil’s advocate’ when considering staying or leaving your company.
Mentorship relationships may take the most effort to develop, but they also may be one of the most rewarding and beneficial.
Sponsors
This is someone who talks ABOUT you.
Sponsors are people with influence in your company, community, or industry.
They use their brand and power to influence others for your benefit. They use their leverage to advance your career. Sponsors are the individuals who advocate for you when it comes to promotions or discussions on who should be staffed on a new project.
Sponsors also help connect you with opportunities. This may be an introduction to another power player at your organization or connecting you with an industry leader.
Conclusion
Some of these relationships may overlap — your sponsor may also serve as a mentor. Don’t get caught up in the technicality of assigning every single person in your network to a specific role.
Instead, use this framework to ensure that you are developing relationships that fit the criteria of each of the buckets mentioned above.
I encourage you to take some time and reflect on who is in your personal BOD. Using a spreadsheet or jotting down in a journal who currently fills these roles for me and who I’d like to have fill these roles in the future is extremely helpful.
