Working with Your Project Sponsor

Your relationship with your project sponsor is one of the most important of your professional relationships. A lot depends on it.
Because, you sponsor has a lot of roles that are all important to you in carrying out your role as project manager. Not only do they have the project governance roles of:
•Direction-setting
•Decision-making
•Oversight

But they also have a crucial role in stakeholder engagement. Yet we are still not at the core of your relationship with your Project Sponsor…

Your Project Sponsor is like Your Line Manager, within the Project Context
Project life differs from day-to-day operational life. And often, we either don’t have a permanent line manager or we do, but don’t spend a lot of time with them. But we spend a lot of time with our Project Sponsor. It is your Project Sponsor who provides you with a lot of what other employees would normally get from their line manager:
•Guidance
•Support
•Coaching
•Mentorship
•Feedback

So, there is no doubt about it: this is a critical relationship to get right.

The Trouble with Sponsors
There’s a ‘but…’
Few people in a project sponsorship role have training for how to discharge their responsibilities. Worse still, many didn’t seek the role, or have other things that, to them, appear to take priority. Your relationship with your sponsor can be problematic in many ways.

So, getting it right is what this eBook is all about:
•We’ll start with the basics, and investigate what a Project Sponsor wants
•Then, we’ll look at how to keep them happy
•Next, we’ll consider a sponsor who has other things on their mind, and see how you can engage them in your project
•Ramping up the challenge, our next chapter discovers how to handle a difficult Project Sponsor
•Finally, we have the biggest challenge of all: a Project Sponsor who goes rogue. What do you do if your sponsor turns to the ‘dark side’?

Summary
The five chapters (and one appendix) of this eBook will guide you in rising to the challenge of building a strong and positive working relationship with your Project Sponsor. Arguably, this is not solely your responsibility.
But, one thing we learn, as project managers, is that when we want something, it pays to go out and get it. If you want this relationship to thrive, you need to take on the challenge yourself.
And, the truth is, you are a project manager: a professional. You have training, expertise, and a commitment to your profession. Project sponsorship isn’t like that. So, your sponsor will likely not have thought about this, nor deliberately learned the skills. So, project manager, it’s down to you!