每日TED "How to find person who can help you get ahead at work"

How to find person who can help you get ahead at work"

The roundtable was a very commonly used phrase on Wall Street to describe the year-end evaluative process for analysis, associate, vice presidents all the way to managing directors. That was the process where they were discussed behind closed doors around a table, i.e. the round table.

Everyone was put into a category. The top bucket, the middle bucket, the lower bucket and then that was translated into a bonus range. That would be assigned to each professional. There was one person that was responsible for recording the outcome of a conversation. There were other people in the room that had the responsibility of presenting cases of all the candidates. And there were other invited guests who were supposed to comment as a candidate’s position was presented. It was interesting to me hat those other people were folks(人们) who were more senior（资深） than the folks that were being discussed. And they theoretically had some interaction with those candidates.

It was that moment that I realized that this idea of a meritocracy (英才教育制度) that every organizations sells is really just a myth. You cannot have a 100 percent meritocracy environment when there is a human element involved in the evaluative equation. Because by definition, that makes it subjective. Persons can’t be a champion or an advocate because you don’t necessarily have to spend any currency to be someone’s champion. You don’t necessarily get invited to the room behind closed doors if you’re an advocate.

Why do you need a sponsor?

As you can see, there is not one evaluative process that I can think of does not have a human element, so that means it has that measure of subjectivity.

You cannot ask someone to use their hard-earned, personal influential currency on your behalf if you’ve never had any interaction with them. So it is important that you invest the time to connect, to engage and to get to know the people that are in your environment and more importantly to give them the opportunity to know you. Because once they know you, there is a higher probability that when you approach them to ask them to be your sponsor, they will in fact answer in the affirmative(以肯定方式)。

How you identify a sponsor?

Sponsors need to have three primary characteristics.

1. They need to have a seat at the decision-making table.
2. They need to have exposure to your work in order to have credibility(可信性) behind doors.
3. They’d better have some power. It’s really important that they have those three things.

And once you have identified the person, how to ask for one?

You can say，I hope you feel comfortable arguing on my behalf.

You need to divert some of your hardworking energies into investing in a sponsor relationship because it will be critical to your success.

You have a seat at the table, you have a responsibility to speak. Don’t waste your power worrying about what people are going to say. If somebody is worthy of your currency, spend it. The way to grow your power is to use it.