Q: What's my job as a sponsor? I feel inadequate to the task.

1. Explain the principles of the programme.
2. Explain how to apply its attitudes and actions.
3. Suggest course corrections when the individual is spotted going off course.

This should be delivered with adequate patience, kindness, and encouragement.

No more than this is required.

Almost everyone is profoundly disappointed with their sponsor, at times.

But this is rarely because one of the three above commodities has not been provided.

The disappointment is usually precisely because one of these commodities is found irksome ...

... plus the fact that the sponsor appears unwilling or unable to rescue, fix, manage, or mother.

The book Alcoholics Anonymous frequently reminds us that the individual we are trying to help is very ill.

And we are not doctors, witch doctors, shamans, meditation teachers, healers, psychotherapists,  psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, counsellors, theologians, lawyers, pastoral workers, parents, elder siblings, skivvies ... or friends to our sponsees.

Almost the only instruction the book gives on actual sponsorship after the twelfth-stepping sequence is this:

Having had the experience [of the programme] yourself, you can give him much practical advice [on the programme].

That is enough.