Author: Elena Martineau, PMP 
On 14th January I had a chance to be a part of the workshop 'Evaluating Your Sponsor: How to Unleash Them into a Project Champion'.
The workshop was led by Eric Fingerhut.
As project leaders we are doing our best to make the project meet the targets and help all team members to sing the same tune.
But what if the project sponsor is unhelpful or disengaged? This already happened with your project, right?
How to address the problem and make such important stakeholder collaborate effectively?
During the workshop Eric gave us multiple tips and a smart tool to be used to improve involvement of the sponsor.
Let me share some of the details with you.
22 professionals, both men and women, coming from various sectors and societies with different backgrounds attended the event.
Eric started with the introduction of the topic and quickly engaged with an dynamic discussion on participants' experiences, their faced problems and the reasons why people were attracted by the topic.
Next was to split up into five working groups for 30 min brainstorming on five non-related business cases:
- FMCG - Supply Chain Digitalization Project
- IT - CRM System Upgrade
- Banking - Cybersecurity Infrastructure Upgrade
- Luxury Watches - Smartwatch Integration Initiative
- Pharma – Clinical Trials Data Management System Implementation
Very realistic project situations were described in those business cases covering delays provoked by slow decision making, scepticism on project benefits, unaddressed resistance on coming changes and bad communication with the frontline employees.
The task of every group was to evaluate the effectiveness of the sponsor based on the detailed description of every business case.
Each working group discussed how the project team in the assigned business case had to provide constructive feedback to the sponsor to encourage changes in behaviour.
By the end of the 30 min brainstorming, one speaker from each team delivered 2 minutes debrief summarizing their working group findings and recommendations.
The key element of this exercise was the "Evaluating Your Sponsor" assessment template.
This assessment covered 3 major topics with 6-8 questions per topic:
- Participation and visibility
- Building support and alignment
- Communication and engagement
We used this assessment sheet to elaborate a score for each business case sponsor.
After each group had presented their summary with findings and recommendations, there was an interactive discusion where everyone could relay their thoughts and feedback.
This discussion helped us, participants, to figure out that this assessment sheet might be used as a checklist to find the weaknesses in collaboration with a sponsor.
Depending on relationship with the sponsor and project’s constraints and risks, this assessment/checklist can be used in two different way.
Either it can be used to have an open discussion with the sponsor point per point, and questions per question.
Or by 'micromanaging' topics separately and presenting them, per example, as requests for help from sponsors.
I found the exercise very instructive thanks to Eric and all workshop participants!