hey youtubers this is Jennifer Tardy your career success coach and you're
back for another video and I know that there were a couple of other videos that
I've shared with you in the past where I've said the terms mentor sponsor coach
supervisor and I said okay all of those things are used interchangeably they
mean very very different things and so I wanted to use this video to share with
you quick quickly on what the difference is and and each of those are so so I
will start first with the supervisor or the person that you report to who could
be your manager so that person's responsibility is
really just to give you assignments and to measure your performance right it's
as simple as that they can be more they can be less but for the sake of this
video you know that their responsibility is to give you assignments your day to
day work and to give you feedback and to measure your performance along the way
now then if you're lucky you can run into a mentor or you can be assigned a
mentor now a mentor is the person that gives you advice and oftentimes we find
mentoring relationships in corporate America by people who are similar to us
maybe they have similar experiences to us maybe they look like us but
oftentimes these mentoring relationships aren't that public and so it allows your
your mentor to give you more transparent advice on how to navigate the
environment within the organization so that is a mentor
sometimes your manager will also take the hat of being your mentor is law 2
now then you get to another topic which is a coach now with a coach instead of
just giving you answers or giving you advice that you need a coach will help
you to come to the answer on your own so they'll kind of coach you through to
your own awareness or your own understanding
of what you should do next and sometimes they'll share some of their own stories
but for the most part they'll ask you questions to help you to get to where
you need to go sometimes a mentor can act in the place
of a coach sometimes your manager could be that supervisor that coach and a
mentor but usually coaches are a component to someone's already
established role but some people especially the higher you go up in
organizations you get connected to a professional coach such as an executive
coach that can help you to to show up more formally or to have more leadership
presence okay so the last role is the sponsor role and
when a sponsor is it's someone who is a leader within the organization that has
a voice that has a seat at the table and that has some decision-making authority
that can put their name online for you that affords you and getting the ability
to get more high-level visibility so that you can have a seat at the table so
that you can get a chance on a certain project team that you wouldn't have
otherwise received so think about a sponsor by way of you are the Protege
and so typically sponsors will find people who are similar to them and and
they will help that sponsor to get the type of visibility they need for their
own career success but the real difference between a mentor and a
sponsor in this scenario is that you typically find that mentors are behind
the scenes it's more of a quiet partnership whereas the sponsor is
OUTFRONT and they are very vocal and visible that they are supporting you and
you're on your own career navigation so I hope that those terms help for you to
figure out which one that you are looking for and it really depends on
where you are in your own career which one is most useful to you but I
recommend that if you don't already have someone someone regardless of what their
role someone that you trust someone that has
a great reputation as someone who knows how to navigate the career path at the
company I hope that you have someone who can help you to navigate your own career
path within the organization and if you don't be sure to find one as soon as
possible so if you think about any other roles that you think are important for
our viewers to know about please leave it in the comment section I love reading
your comments and and we'll come back with more videos for you soon Jennifer
Tardy your careers success coach and you are visiting black career success
channel take care