Building Your Network: Week 1

The podcast music, I Talk to the Wind, produced by Yung Pinoy, as part of the NC State University Libraries State of Sound collection.

Additional Resources

• Podcast Transcript
• Printable Resources
  • Career Planning Worksheet
  • Mentor Mapping Worksheet

Laying Your Foundation

Produced by Diane Chapman

We’re thrilled to welcome you to SPARK 2025: Building Your Network: Mentors, Coaches, and Sponsors for Faculty Success, a four-week program designed to offer you the strategic insights and practical tools needed to build a thriving academic network. Starting with this week, you’ll receive weekly themed packages, including podcasts, blog posts, and printable handouts, all aimed at helping you determine your needs and cultivate meaningful mentoring relationships. To truly make this month a game-changer for your career, we invite you to fully immerse yourself in this first week’s content. As you’ll discover in our inaugural blog post and accompanying podcast, this installment provides the critical framework by clearly distinguishing between mentors, coaches, and sponsors. These roles are often confused, and are each vital at every career stage. Even more, you’ll be introduced to the powerful concept of career mapping as a proactive, adaptable approach to navigating your professional journey. To help you immediately put these insights into action, this week’s resources include printable worksheets designed to guide you through your own career planning and mentor mapping. Your engagement now will not only set a strong foundation but also ensure you are ready to leverage every piece of advice and resource shared throughout this collaborative learning experience.

This week’s podcast, an insightful conversation featuring Katharine Stewart, Senior Vice Provost and Professor Emerita at NC State University, emphasizes the crucial role of a robust professional network at every career stage.

Differentiating Between Mentors, Coaches, and Sponsors

Dr. Stewart clarified her thoughts on the distinct roles within a professional network, highlighting that while they can overlap, understanding their differences is key:

• Mentoring focuses on professional development over the long term, guiding individuals as they advance through career stages and prepare for new roles. It’s about helping someone develop into another professional stage.
• Coaching is more skills-oriented, providing targeted support to acquire, practice, and refine specific abilities. It can be a shorter-term, more focused relationship.
• Sponsoring involves using one’s influence, network, or positional power to advocate for and open doors for another individual. This often means recommending them for opportunities or connecting them to influential people.

She stressed that individuals need all three throughout their careers, regardless of their current stage. Even as she enters retirement, she recognizes the continued need for mentors, coaches, and sponsors.

The Power of Career Mapping

A significant takeaway from the discussion was the importance of career mapping. Stewart championed this structured approach to career planning, contrasting it with the often less defined path of academic careers compared to structured graduate programs. Career mapping involves:

• Taking stock of existing skills, knowledge, and credentials.
• Identifying gaps in what is needed to achieve desired career goals.
• Systematically planning how to acquire necessary experiences or exposure.

Stewart highlighted that careers rarely unfold as expected, and the value of mapping lies not in rigid adherence to a plan, but in the process of planful thinking. This preparation equips individuals to adapt to unexpected opportunities and challenges, much like disaster planning prepares for unforeseen events. She also emphasized the need to consider one’s “whole self” in career mapping, including personal values, unique experiences, and identities.

Fostering a Culture of Support

Beyond individual efforts, Stewart offered strong opinions on institutional strategies for cultivating a supportive environment:

• Normalizing the Need: Academic leaders, from department chairs to provosts, should openly discuss their own needs for mentoring, coaching, and sponsorship. This vulnerability helps to dismantle the perception that competence means having all the answers and encourages others to seek help.
• Creating Space for Connection: Institutions should actively create opportunities for faculty to find mentors and coaches outside their immediate academic units. Stewart noted that discussions about challenges and fears are often easier with external perspectives, and cross-disciplinary connections can offer fresh insights.
• Leveraging Existing Structures: Partnering with organizational development in HR or faculty development offices can facilitate the bridging of institutional barriers, connecting individuals with the right resources and people.

Advice for Aspiring Professionals

For those just starting their careers and unsure where to begin building their network, Stewart offered practical advice:

• Understand Your “Why”: Begin by clarifying your values and personal sense of purpose. This self-awareness guides you in finding mentors and coaches who resonate with your core drivers.
• Project a Preferred Future: Engage in short-term career mapping (e.g., five years out) to identify potential areas where you’ll need assistance.
• Start Talking to People: Don’t hesitate to ask others for recommendations. Stewart emphasized the “two or three degrees of separation” in higher education, making connections surprisingly accessible. Be direct in your inquiries, asking, “Who do you know who is good at X?” or “Who might have wisdom about Y?”
• Be a Mentor Yourself: Recognize that everyone, regardless of career stage, possesses valuable expertise and lived experience to offer others. Be generous in sharing your knowledge, as this reciprocity strengthens the entire community.

When it comes to building your network, do not overlook awards and recognitions. Academic success includes recognition by professional societies, government agencies, foundations, and your institution. Awards, memberships, and fellowships extend your scholarly impact, elevate your profile, and connect you to a wider professional community. 

Coaches, sponsors, and mentors provide a roadmap for how to navigate awards over the course of your career. Beyond serving as a model, they often help you achieve these recognitions by providing information, letters of recommendation, and support. To that end, it is important to consider the following:

• Discuss awards. Identify opportunities you wish to pursue in the next year, and the next five years. This is especially true for early career faculty, as there are opportunities specifically for that career level. Look to aspirational peers for guidance.
• Nominate your colleagues for awards. In addition, serve on selection committees and share what you learn. 
• Build a pipeline so internal awards lead to external opportunities and college level recognitions lead to university level. 

Dr. Stewart concluded by underscoring the profound value of a robust network of mentors, coaches, and sponsors, encouraging everyone to actively build and nurture these crucial relationships.

Your Action Plan

What might you do this week to begin building or strengthening your own professional network based on these insights? We encourage you to take the following steps to get started building your network.

1. Download the Career Planning Worksheet
   This worksheet will help you to reflect upon your career goals and the gaps you need to fill in order to achieve them.
2. Download the Mentor Mapping Worksheet
   This worksheet will help you reflect upon the gaps you found in career planning and help you to think about how to structure your network in order to fill them.

Resources

Katharine Stewart Consulting: https://katharinestewartconsulting.com/about/ 

Stewart, K. E. (2024). Career mapping for faculty and aspiring academic leaders. In Diane D. Chapman & Michelle L. Bartlett, (Eds.) Faculty development on a shoestring: Programs to support higher education faculty using little or no resources. Emerald Publishing, pp. 315–343. https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU5921288  E-book

We hope this content was useful to you, and please know that we want to support you. You can leave us a comment (if you have an NC State ID), or we will be following this conversation on Bluesky, X and LinkedIn at #SparkBYN and you can join us there. Looking forward to hearing from you!