The Doors You Can Open: A New Way to Network, Build Trust, and Use Your Influence to Create a More Inclusive Workplace

＂Chow revolutionizes our understanding of how careers advance＂ (Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Drive), taking readers on a transformative journey beyond the standard model of mentorship to embracing sponsorship.

The way we currently network and engage in mentorship isn’t working. Given the ever-evolving nature of the workplace, transactional networking and company-enforced mentorship programs simply don’t help make our professional relationships more authentic or our workplaces more equitable. What we need instead is sponsorship.

What’s the difference between mentorship and sponsorship? Mentorship involves helping a mentee change their behavior, while sponsorship involves changing how other people see a protégé. Sponsorship is as important, if not more so, than mentorship in determining who gets ahead, making it a more effective way to promote social equality and inclusion in the workplace.

In The Doors You Can Open, organizational expert Rosalind Chow shows readers that they likely already engage in sponsorship in their personal and professional networks--and how they can channel those skills to build more authentic professional relationships. We all have more agency and deeper networks to act as sponsors than we might think, and sponsoring others can lead to mutually beneficial lifelong connections rather than merely transactional interactions. Given the ever-evolving nature of the workplace, intentional and equitable sponsorship is more important now than ever for overturning traditional social hierarchies.

Based on decades of original research, The Doors You Can Open makes a bold case for completely changing the way we network. Reading it will change how we see and use our relationships in the service of creating stronger workplaces for all.

Dr. Rosalind Chow is an associate professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon University. A social psychologist by training, Chow draws on both psychological and organizational behavior research to provide empirically validated insights on managerial practice. She has particular expertise on how members of dominant groups can contribute to the dismantling of systemic bias within organizations.

Chow is the founding faculty director for the Executive Leadership Academy (ELA), an executive leadership program aimed at addressing the challenges facing the advancement of Black leaders in Pittsburgh, PA. She also serves as the faculty director for the CLIMB fellowship program, a partnership between Deloitte and Tepper Business School designed to increase the advancement of Black and Latino/Hispanic accountants. In addition, Chow leads the Fostering Organizational Equity (FORGE) Leadership Development program.

Chow’s research is published in top psychology and organizational behavior journals and featured in articles in the Harvard Business Review and the MIT Sloan Management Review. She is a consultant and speaker for a variety of organizations, such as BNY Mellon Bank, Genentech, Intel, PNC Bank, the WNBA, and others.