She believes we need to move from mentors to sponsors because a sponsor advocates on your behalf.

Sallie says, ‘All the important decisions about your career are made when you’re not in the room. People decide to hire you, fire you, promote you, fund you, send you on the overseas assignment, all when you’re not there. So how do you ensure that you have someone in the room fighting for you? I would strongly argue that you need to have in place your Personal Board of Directors. Those are your mentors, your sponsors, your confidants, the people you can turn to when you’re thinking about a career transition—for the kind of advice your boyfriend, your parents, and your best friend from college just can’t give you.

As with his management team and employees, Pressler set the stage for working well with the company’s board of directors by being straightforward, communicative, and organized and by listening well. Gap Inc. had had only two CEOs in its entire history. As a first-time CEO, Pressler did not pretend to be an expert in working with a board, and his disarming candor about being a neophyte was exactly the right approach. The board was thrilled at the prospect of starting a partnership based on mutual openness and respect. “Later on, when I started to present strategy to them, they were very dynamic and engaged,” Pressler says.

Bosses also want good advice, not yes-men or -women who offer insincere flattery, nor downers who only play the role of devil’s advocate. All intelligent bosses instinctively separate the people they manage into three distinct categories: the sycophants, the contrarians, and the small percentage who are the balanced players. You want to be seen as one in the third group.

Finally, since your boss cares as much about his or her career as you do about yours, what managers really want is for you to make them look smart and successful. “Understand that it’s your job to polish the boss’s reputation,” D’Alessandro states unequivocally. “Do not make yourself look good at the boss’s expense.

At GE, Immelt relies on the board to take the pulse of the company, to gauge whether the business is humming along smoothly or there are glitches that need attention. “I asked each of our directors to visit the GE businesses twice a year,” he says. “You’re never going to know the intricacies of this company. There’s too much mass. But you can get a feel of the culture. So when they go to GE Aircraft Engines or GE Medical Systems, I want them by themselves [without corporate management], so they can make their own assessments - maybe we’re pushing too hard or maybe we’re not pushing hard enough.”

At The Home Depot, all directors were required to visit eighteen stores every year and spend two hours on each visit speaking with employees and customers. When he became CEO in 2000, Bob Nardelli continued that tradition and enhanced it: “I pair two board members with every division president and every functional leader for a full day. I look for their advice and counsel. These are CEOs and experienced men and women in their own right. I took advantage of their experience. Rather than being intimidated by it, I reached out and said, 'You go in and assess, give me your view of the individuals and their staffs.’ So the board is helpful.

Lucent’s Schacht offers sound advice for the new CEO in a crisis:

“If I were a new CEO coming into a new company at a tough time. I’d have a deal with the board. I would tell them, ‘I’m going to keep you informed every step of the way. But you’re not my most important problem right now. You’re asked me to come in and you’ve given me a good briefing and I thank you; now please give me a little room. I’ll be back with a status report in two or three weeks, and if something else comes up, we’ll be on the phone together. But right now my most important constituent is the internal folks and our customers.