The Doors You Can Open
A New Way to Network, Build Trust, and Use Your Influence to Create a More Inclusive Workplace
Published on 8. April 2025
288 pages
978-1-5417-0277-6 (ISBN)
Description
"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.
A Fast Company Best Book of the Year
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.
A Fast Company Best Book of the Year
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.
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Rosalind Chow
The Doors You Can Open
A New Way to Network, Build Trust, and Use Your Influence to Create a More Inclusive Workplace
Book
04/2025
PublicAffairs,U.S.
€28.50
Available immediately
Person
Dr. Rosalind Chow is an associate professor of organizational behavior and theory at Carnegie Mellon University, where she directs executive education programs that advance the careers of Black and Latino professionals and advises corporations on their sponsorship programs. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and their two children.
