An important aspect of career advancement is the establishment of a diverse developmental network which is defined as “a set of relationships an individual has with people who take an active interest in and action to advance the individual’s career by assisting with his or her personal and professional development.” -Higgins & Thomas, Constellations and Careers.

Accordingly, the best developmental networks are diverse across three dimensions:

1. Functional (e.g. policy, finance, operations; marketing, HR, R&D)
2. Positional (e.g. hierarchy – senior, peer, junior)
3. Demographical (e.g. race/ethnicity, gender, generation, geographic region)

Three Roles You Want Present in Your Network:

• Mentor: A trusted person in the organization or industry, often at a more senior level, with whom you can get advice, gain perspective, get connected to others, access information and learn from the experiences of the mentor.
• Coach: An individual who provides support for self awareness, personal development and accountability to achieving goals. Coaches support you to develop ideas and discover answers about yourself and your work. Good mentors are often good coaches too
• Sponsor:  Sponsors help you connect to influential people. Sponsors advocate on your behalf for recognition, funding, promotions and career opportunities gaining support from prominent peers in the organization or industry. Sponsors are seen as critical to career advancement and business development 

Developmental networks are also referred to as a personal board of directors or advisors, a wisdom council, career constellation or a sanity circle. Whatever term you prefer, take the time to reflect on who is currently on your team. What roles are missing? How diverse are your members? Who would you like to invite onto your team? 

Please share your suggestions and experiences below. What name do you use for your developmental network?

When it comes to professional development, mentoring is a popular subject. Co-mentoring is about establishing mutually beneficial learning relationships among our colleagues and friends. Rather than look “up” in the organization or further “out” of our immediate network the way we typically do, we can also look at the people in our more immediate circle and become curious about what we can learn from each other. Co-mentorships add more diversity to our developmental network and that means more varied learning and growth.

Jone Rymer in her article “Only Connect” defines a co-mentorship as “a mutual mentorship of a pair of close, collegial friends committed to facilitating each other’s development.” More »

January is mentoring month. What a great time to devote some extra attention to the idea of mentoring and the mentors in our life. We’re at the beginning of the year when we are making our plans and setting goals for ourselves. Typically once these activities are complete we pat ourselves on the back for taking the time to set our course for the year. But wait! There’s one more step! Have you thought about who is going to provide support and guidance for you along the way? Who will be mentoring, coaching and sponsoring you as you move forward? Consciously designing our developmental network is a critical step in the process.

What is a developmental network?

According to David A. Thomas, a developmental network is “a set of relationships an individual has with people who take an active interest in and action to advance the individual’s career by assisting with his or her personal and professional development.” The key word here is relationships. More »