Why You Need a Leader, a Mentor, and a Sponsor. In corporate life, one of the most common reasons careers stall is the mistaken belief that one person—usually a direct manager—is supposed to play every supporting role in our professional lives. To use a systems metaphor: we expect our daily operating system to also act as our long-term backup and our external network. It just doesn't scale. I recently had a conversation with a friend who was feeling incredibly frustrated. The
