Organizational psychologist Dr. Rosalind Chow turns the concept of networking on its head, taking listeners on a transformative journey beyond the standard model of mentorship to embracing 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, Dr. Rosalind Chow helps readers recognize the various ways they likely already engage in sponsorship in their personal and professional networks to identify how they can do more of it on behalf of those often overlooked. 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 pushing against the social forces that tend to reinforce social hierarchies.

Based on decades of original research analyzing social hierarchies, corporate environments, and gender and race relations, The Doors You Can Open makes a bold case for completely changing the way we network and equips readers with practical advice to serve as a positive influence and door-opener for others. Reading it will change how we see and use our relationships in the service of creating collective benefit.