3 things my sponsor told me that helped advance my career
I owe a lot of my early career advancement to my former boss, mentor, and sponsor; John Schuetz. As a boss, he gave me vision and direction. As a mentor, he gave me advice and shared his experiences. As my sponsor, he advocated for me in rooms and in conversations where I was not present. He brought my name up in discussions about opportunities that I had no way of knowing even existed.
Take the opportunities that are presented to you even when they look different than you originally had in mind. I have always had ideas of where I wanted my career to go, but I never could have guessed the individual steps it would take me to get there because some of the jobs did not even exist before I had them.
There will be sacrifices. When I accepted a job as a production supervisor on the night shift, my husband and I understood there would be challenges. I had a 6-month-old and a 2-year-old. Working was actually easy compared to managing everything else.
Just try it. This is what John told me when I had so many doubts that I wanted to pass up an opportunity. He believed in me when I did not yet believe in myself. My sponsor’s belief helped me make the decision to jump with less focus on my own “what-if” doubts.
The first step to all of this was deciding on the path I wanted and making the choice to talk about it with others. I could not simply sit back and assume that other people knew what my aspirations were. But in order to tell people what I wanted, I had to start by believing that there were opportunities ahead for me. Often it is easier to zoom in and focus on the necessary day-to-day activities, but we must also make time to zoom out and ask ourselves these questions…
What do I want my life to look like in 10 years?
What’s the next step I can take to get there?
Who do I need to tell what I want so they can help?
