Q: Is it better to be soft or tough with sponsees?

One vexed question in the area of sponsorship is whether to sponsor people gently or rigorously.

One example of the gentle approach is to give your sponsee an assignment and tell them to call when it is done. Sometimes, they complete the assignment within half an hour. Sometimes they complete the assignment two months later. The advantage of this is that the relationship with the sponsee typically remains quite cordial. However, it can be months or years before the sponsee gets through the steps, and very often they fall completely by the wayside. Meanwhile, even if they are plugging away slowly, their ego is growing back quickly, and it sometimes grows back faster than the work can dismantle it. This means that, although the sponsee is indeed doing some work, they are deteriorating, rather than improving. This does not benefit the sponsee. One also spends lots of time rehashing the same material again and again, because the sponsee has forgotten it in the meantime.

Another approach is to take a much tougher line by insisting that step work be completed daily and that the sponsee stick to a very tight regime of daily programme actions and activities. This is highly effective in terms of achieving the goals of the programme. It also helps people who otherwise might be undisciplined and abandon the process altogether acquire discipline and complete the process swiftly. One drawback, however, is that the sponsee usually resents the sponsor, sometimes to the point of hatred, backbiting, and gossip. This does not help anyone.

Examining this question more broadly, most endeavours that are worthwhile in life involve submission to an authority or a system. If you want to learn German, you cannot negotiate the case system used in German. You may not like it, but there it is, and use it you must. It is not lording it over you. It was there first, and you decided to use it. The relationship is not symmetrical: you need it but it does not need you. It need not change for you. If you want to use German, you must use it in accordance with the rules of the system in place. If you want to progress in German rather than tread water or go backwards, you have to put in the time every day, maybe considerable time, maybe sacrificing all sorts of other activities. Again, this is not German being difficult or dictatorial: it is simply a function of how human beings learn languages. A German teacher who picks you up on the misuse of cases or insists on adherence to a strict timetable is simply setting out a system for learning the language effectively. They are not bullying you: you signed up for the course. You can leave at any time, if you don’t like it, and go and watch Netflix instead.

Sponsorship is similar. Being lax as a sponsor is all well and good, but is it in the sponsee’s interests? What is loving is what is in someone’s interests.

The system of recovery is based on ancient principles of spiritual growth. Daily rigorous action is common to all religious and spiritual approaches in the world. No one made up these rules. They are rather like gravity. They simply are. Our job is to recognise the rules and to live in accordance with them. If we fail to do so, the rules will not be punishing us. They’re not capable of punishment. But, as with gravity, we will suffer if we fail to recognise them. If we jump out of a high window because we do not recognise the authority of gravity, we will fall and injure ourselves. Gravity is not judging our failure to recognise it. It is not aware of us.

A tough sponsor, therefore, is not imposing a system on the sponsee. A tough sponsor is merely setting out a system for the sponsee to follow, a system which they themselves, the sponsor, follow, in recognition of what works in accordance with spiritual laws.

Although there is certainly an advantage in the softly softly approach, in that the sponsee greatly appreciates the gentleness, if difficulties later arise because of the sponsee‘s lax approach, and the sponsor points out that the cause of these problems lies precisely in that lax approach, instead suggesting daily programme work, the sponsee will typically resent this. In being gentle for months and then pulling rank, one finds one is no farther ahead than if one had been tough from the beginning, and often one is for further behind. Not only is the cordiality lost, but there is a sense of ‘bait and switch’ or befuddlement. ‘What happened?’ (the sponsee asks themself) ‘We were getting on so well!’

My experience is that it is better to be tough from the start and therefore consistent. If the sponsee is lulled into a false sense of security with a lax approach, the awakening that dawns when the sponsor tightens up the system can be described only as rude. This is why I adopt a tough approach from the beginning. Although sponsees sometimes do become very resentful, this is an inevitable stage whatever approach one takes, unless the sponsee drops out altogether, so one might as well get over the resentment hump right at the start.

This is the view from the bridge, as it were, right now, so I may change my views, but this is what I’m currently finding effective.