Iattended the Empowering Automotive conference last week in Toronto. Empowering Automotive has the mission to recruit, retain, and grow women and their allies in the auto industry. They seek to accomplish this through the annual flagship conference, mentoring, student outreach, and networking.
Universus (publishers of Canadian auto dealer and Affaires automobiles) had five people there, and it was a great event. While much is spoken about creating more opportunities for women in the automotive industry, this event is certainly working to make a difference. It was great to see our team members so energized by being surrounded by successful examples of women in automotive.
For my part, I was really taken with some of the panels and discussion around sponsorship and mentorship. While I think we do a certain amount of informal sponsorship and mentorship, I can certainly see how taking a more formal approach could be beneficial in recruitment, development and retention. Clearly, there is lots to learn about how to tailor these things to individual businesses. From some of the digging I’ve been doing since on Perplexity and other platforms, there is plenty of information available, and groups like Empowering Automotive to help you make it happen.
While there is no doubt these programs can be beneficial in helping more women find a career in automotive in Canada, I think there is plenty of benefit to staff development as a whole.
When I look back on my career, I’ve certainly benefited from both mentors and sponsors. I would guess most people in senior leadership positions would say the same thing.
For the sake of clarity, I found a nice, concise definition of both, that I share here for your information:
A sponsor opens the door to opportunities for another employee, while a mentor supports and guides an employee so that they can open the door for themselves. — Source: Gallup
Here’s another example I liked:
Unlike mentors who offer guidance and advice, sponsors take an active role in your advancement. Sponsors often identify high-potential individuals and provide them with stretch assignments or high-visibility projects. They actively recommend protégés for promotions, ensuring that their talent doesn’t go unnoticed. — Source not identified
This conference also gave me a chance to hang out with Jacqui Barker, Global OEM Strategy Director, (Strategy) at Keyloop. She was in from the UK to be the event’s emcee, and brought her usual energy intensity to the role. Earlier in the week I had the privilege of being the guest on a new podcast Jacqui is launching. We had a very enjoyable conversation covering a wide range of automotive topics. It was great fun, and I’ll be sure to share the link once I have it.
Jacqui: Always great fun to collaborate.
Finally, and somewhat adjacent to the mentorship and sponsorship discussion, I was asked to be part of a session that was seeking to identify the adjectives that are characteristic of a resilient team. This was not an automotive endeavour, but rather a big Canadian corporate entity that is feeling their industry being disrupted and want to be sure they are nurturing resilience in their teams.
Throughout the exercise, I found myself reflecting on the very obvious parallels between their situation and the automotive industry. Disruption? Yes, check. We got it.
As a simple take-away you might want to try this exercise at your end, maybe by departmental groups. Simply ask them to independently list all the adjectives that they consider are characteristic of a resilient team. Bring the group and their adjective lists together and discuss them, diving into those that are common and those that are not.
I found it to be a fascinating and very useful exercise, and one I’m going to bring to Universus for our own team to try. And I won’t share any that came up on that day. Better that you start from a blank sheet.
