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ResilExec® Coaching founder Brian Baldari, Pharm.D., MBA, on why senior leaders who have plenty of advice and no advocacy stall at the same level for years.
BRICK, N.J., Oct 03, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Most senior professionals have someone they go to for advice. Far fewer have someone who argues for them in a room they are not in. According to Brian Baldari, Pharm.D., MBA, founder of ResilExec® Coaching, that distinction accounts for a large share of stalled advancement among otherwise strong performers.
Baldari spent 24 years inside pharmaceutical, healthcare, and enterprise leadership organizations. He held five successive Director-level roles, moved from Director to Vice President and Senior General Manager in 18 months, and led the commercial launch of 14 brands. He now works with Associate Directors, Directors, Senior Directors, Executive Directors, and Vice Presidents inside pharmaceutical, healthcare, and enterprise IT organizations.
“A mentor talks to you. A sponsor talks about you,” Baldari says. “One of those changes your calendar. The other changes your title.”
Advice Is Not Advocacy
Mentorship is widely available and widely encouraged. Many organizations run formal programs for it. A mentor offers perspective, context, and guidance, and that guidance has real value early in a career when the primary gap is knowledge.
Sponsorship operates differently. A sponsor spends their own credibility on someone else. They put a name forward on a succession slate, defend a candidate during calibration, and accept the consequences if the bet does not pay off. That is a materially different act, and it is not something an organization can mandate.
“Leaders collect mentors because mentors are easy to ask for,” Baldari says. “Nobody feels awkward requesting advice. Asking someone to spend their reputation on you is a different conversation, and most people never have it.”
Where the Gap Shows Up
The gap becomes visible at the point where advancement decisions are made collectively. Calibration sessions and succession discussions involve people across multiple functions, many of whom have no direct experience of a given candidate’s work. In those rooms, a candidate is represented by whoever chooses to speak.
“If nobody in that room can describe what you do at enterprise scale, you are not in the conversation, regardless of your review,” Baldari says. “The decision is not made on the strength of your record. It is made on the strength of the description someone else gives of it.”
Baldari notes that this is where strong performers are most often surprised. Their performance ratings are high, their manager is supportive, and the outcome still does not change, because the people who influenced the decision were never engaged.
Sponsorship as a Variable
Sponsorship is one of five variables in Baldari’s Promotion Math
framework, alongside Performance, Visibility, Narrative, and Timing. In his assessment, strong performers optimize the first variable and leave the remaining four unattended, then attribute the result to politics.
“Performance gets you noticed. Positioning gets you promoted,” Baldari says. “Sponsorship is the variable people find hardest to work on, because it requires asking for something rather than producing something.”
What Changes the Outcome
Baldari advises leaders to identify the specific individuals who will participate in the decisions that affect them, then assess honestly whether those individuals could describe their contribution without prompting. In most cases the answer is no, and that is the actionable finding.
From there the work is practical rather than social. It involves delivering value to those individuals rather than checking in with them, framing results at enterprise level rather than functional level, and showing up in forums where that work is visible to people beyond a direct reporting line.
“You do not recruit a sponsor by asking them to be one,” Baldari says. “You give them something worth putting their name next to, and you make sure they understand what it was.”
About Brian Baldari
Brian Baldari, Pharm.D., MBA, based in Brick, New Jersey, is the founder of ResilExec® Coaching and Resilient Performance Group LLC. He spent 24 years inside pharmaceutical, healthcare, and enterprise leadership organizations, held five successive Director-level roles, and advanced from Director to Vice President and Senior General Manager in 18 months. He led the commercial launch of 14 brands across rare and chronic disease categories, led an organization of more than 250 people, and has mentored more than 50 leaders across three continents. Through ResilExec Coaching, he helps Associate Directors, Directors, Senior Directors, Executive Directors, and Vice Presidents accelerate career growth through personalized executive coaching, leadership development, and strategic career positioning.
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