Mentors and sponsors are essential to career success, but these close relationships are not always free from trouble. This book shares advice and practical examples on how to survive and thrive throughout your career by differentiating between good and bad guidance you receive from mentors and sponsors. Real-life guidance is provided on how to manage troubled mentoring and sponsoring relationships at work.

This book shares the learnings and perspectives of two pioneer women who waded the many challenges posed by multiculturalism and gender in one of the corporate environments more rigid and traditional in the business world: the energy sector in the Middle East. How they managed to create a growth space for themselves and their teams is a story of professional and personal tenacity, shaping a privileged perspective that enabled them to understand the root causes of barriers, as well as envision plausible solutions. They propose in the book not only their vision, but a remarkable collection of unfiltered interviews to influential leaders in the energy sector, to complete a vision of what is key to achieve success when leading or consulting in a corporate environment. The book offers a compilation of very personal approaches to professionalism, resilience, work, and ultimately, success, from within and outside the ranks of highly regarded corporations in the energy sector. The ultimate aim is that of triggering a self-reflection in the readers, grounded on the learnings and perspectives of those who made it to the highest roles of one of the less understood business environments.

Mentors and sponsors are essential to career success, but these close relationships are not always free from trouble. This book shares advice and practical examples on how to survive and thrive throughout your career by differentiating between good and bad guidance you receive from mentors and sponsors. Real-life guidance is provided on how to manage troubled mentoring and sponsoring relationships at work.

This book is a compilation of very personal approaches to mentoring and sponsoring, breaking the stereotypes of seniority, age or experience. The authors have provided a platform to understand that mentoring and especially sponsoring are in fact a win-win relation, in which both sides, mentors and mentees; and sponsors and sponsored individuals learn from each other, enhancing their career paths. How they managed to create a growth space for themselves and their teams through mentoring and sponsoring, is a story of professional leadership. They shared a privileged outlook to understand the root causes of barriers, as well as to envision plausible solutions for difficult career crossroads, in which mentorship or sponsoring was key to steer step changes. The authors propose not only their vision, but a remarkable collection of unfiltered interviews with young and renown professionals in many sectors, from photography to music, research, sports, energy, and more, completing a vision of what is key for both sides of the equation pertinent to mentoring and sponsoring: the givers and the receivers. They explain what is needed to gain the most out of the mentoring and sponsoring loops, with their own career stories. Success is supported by many factors, in which the most important are the technical competency and performance aligned with resilience. However, in the long path of a career, mentors and particularly sponsors play a foundational and frequently a changing-life role, improving our perspective or triggering reflections and actions that benefitted our journeys at work and in life. This book provides insights on what works for an effective mentoring and sponsoring process. It is useful for all professionals, especially those starting their career journeys.