Dr. Rosalind Chow
Appearances
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Profession is about reading and learning is that we can do all those things and it still may not be enough to truly be, to truly be a part of that group or that to have that experience. And I don't think those are contradictory. But I do want to caution people from coming away and being like, oh, because I've read all these things, now I truly understand what it's like.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Because I also feel like that's intellectually a little dishonest too.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Yeah. Okay. So we're having different assumptions about where people are in their journey, I guess, is where we're perhaps miscalibrated. You're thinking about someone who's starting from a much, a starting line that's maybe a little bit further back than what I was assuming.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Well, I actually think that's a really great kind of segue into some of the things that we, like I talk about in the book, which is how do we come to really know other people? What you're describing is essentially learning about other people's lives, either or experiences and
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Through reading, right, through reading biographies or memoirs, I think most of us don't have access to that level of insight or personal introspection and personal history in our conversations with other people, but
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I think what you're pointing to is wouldn't our world be so much richer for it if we were willing to ask those questions and be willing to share those, that type of information with each other. So why maybe some of us need to go to the books because we don't have friends who are different from us, right? And so we can't ask them personally about their experiences.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And so we have to get it like indirectly through the books, but you know, what would happen if you started asking some of those questions of the people who you see every day?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Right. And so actually one of the things that I talk about in the book is just how powerful it is for us to listen. I'm probably thinking about this because I just ran this exercise in my class. I describe it in the book. It's an, it's a listening exercise where people sit facing each other. I provide a series of questions and the thing that makes the exercise very challenging.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
is when people are answering the question, they have complete, I wouldn't say control, but basically they have a certain amount of airtime that they're required to fill up by speaking. And the other person is not allowed to respond. So the other person can only listen. And we do this over three different rounds. The first round is two minutes. The second round is five minutes.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
The third round is eight minutes. So you very quickly as a speaker, learn that you run out of things you want to say about something quickly. And it's really hard for the listeners too, because they really want to interject. They really want to talk about how they understand the other person's experience. They want to share about their own experience.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
But when we're done with the exercise, there's a couple of key takeaways that the students usually come away with, which is one, it's really liberating to speak to someone who doesn't seem to have an agenda about where they want the conversation to go. And so that's what the whole, like not being able to respond part does for them. Right.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
It makes it so that they know that they have this freedom and they end up sharing so much more about themselves than they ever would have imagined. Some of them will say, I haven't even told my partner some of these things, you know, and then for the listeners, what most of them realize is that so many of us listen to respond. We listen because we want to know what we want to say next.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Like that, like we're not fully in the moment with the other person when we're listening. And they realized that when they let go of this notion that they had to know how they should respond next, that actually also let them listen in a way that they were not accustomed to.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And so maybe what I would suggest for some of your listeners is if you're looking for an assignment to do right, is one finding someone you want to learn a little bit more about, but then go into that conversation and see how much you can just listen in that conversation without putting yourself in there. You can ask questions. I think clarifying questions are really good, but turns out we
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
provide a lot of feedback to people who are speaking that guides their behavior and shapes what they're willing to tell us. And so if we can just be a little bit more mindful of those, Little tells that we give up you want it, you want the other person to know that you're paying attention.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
But you don't want them to think that you have a preference as to where they're going to go next and that's how you can you free up the conversation so that you actually can get some of these insights.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Did you get the emotion?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
It's a sad, mad, a frad. Yeah. You're reminding me of this artist whose her exhibition was actually very similar to that was just she was just sitting at a table, and then people who were coming to the exhibit were invited to sit across from her, and they would just stare at each other.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And the reason this came across my radar was because one of the people who ended up visiting her was I think like an ex-husband of hers. I don't recall the precise nature of their separation, but apparently it was incredibly moving for both of them. Not a word, but just so much conveyed through. the eyes. So it does remind me of that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Well, the first female.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Because they wouldn't have asked that of a male general manager. Like even after you make it to the top for her, at least in this role, she'd been wanting this role for probably over a decade, had been qualified to take that role probably for over a decade. And even when she got there, she was being treated differently because of who she was and what she represents for so many people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And that's an additional burden that I think a lot of people don't necessarily experience if you're not the only person in a particular space. Success, I think success comes with all sorts of responsibilities. I think we all seem to tend to understand that. But it comes with even more when you look different.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Oh, absolutely. And then that's actually why I opened the book with her example in particular. It helps that also she was a person of color, a woman in a male dominated sport where in leadership positions, people tend to be white men. But what really drew me to Kim Ang's example is that there is no version where somebody is going to argue that what she needed was a mentor.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
She did not need more mentorship. She had so much more experience Like both inside a team and within baseball, but outside of the team, she worked in the command, a commissioner's office. She looked, she worked in the main league offices. She had so much perspective about baseball, just from so many different angles in a way that other GM candidates didn't.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
She had been a part of the game for basically since she graduated from college. She did not need mentorship. And what she needed was a sponsor, right? She needed someone who was willing to step up and say, look, you all think this person is risky. If you just took her gender or her race out of the equation, there is no question that she would be the most qualified person for this role.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
But somebody had to stand up and say that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Well, unfortunately, and then so did she. I think it does also go to speak to how sponsors are really important. And unfortunately for many of us, once our sponsors leave, it also changes the context in ways that make it very difficult for us to continue on in those situations as well. But going back to your point about Jader being a very special person, he certainly was.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
He cared about, I think, larger questions in terms of inclusion and baseball. He also brought in female front of house staff in addition to Kim. So he was at the forefront, I think, of trying to diversify baseball leadership. But again, it's this question of what were other people trying to do that already? And were they just not succeeding? Or did someone like Derek Jeter need to come along?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
To me, mattering is knowing that other people would notice if you were gone. That's something I was thinking a lot more about. And so when we sponsor other people, we're essentially saying the world is better for having this person in it. And if you weren't aware of them, that would be very sad for all of us.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Like it wouldn't have happened unless someone as big as Derek Jeter was willing to plant his flag in the ground and say, this is important to me, it's important for the sport, and so this is what we're going to do. I think there is that question of how much are other people willing to put behind these sentiments that they say they have, and then how much of that is tied into
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
how much power and influence they have in their spaces.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And so when you think about people who don't get sponsored, basically, they're not having someone going out and telling other people about how much they matter and how much they should miss them if they were not there.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Thanks. So that's another thing that I think is worth pointing out to your listeners is that sponsorship is risky in a way that mentorship typically is not. And so in the book, what I, the distinction that I like to make is this question of who is being acted upon. So mentors are trying to change mentees, trying to get them to be better than who they are, give them advice on how to navigate.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
different situations, tell them what they should do next. But that's all about changing how the mentee is behaving or thinking. Sponsors are doing something completely different. They're not asking their proteges to be any different than who they are. They're asking other people around them to see the protege differently.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
So sponsors are actually managing the social environment around their proteges. And they're doing that by leaning on their own social capital. So on the trust that other people have in them. And what that means is that if you're a mentor and your mentor, your mentee, like doesn't do that well, In terms of return on investment, yeah, you're not getting great return on your investment.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Maybe it's zero, right? You've spent a lot of time with this person. Maybe psychologically you're disappointed, but your social capital, for the most part, your reputation is going to be fine. But when you sponsor someone and they end up not working out the way that you want or expect or hope, that can come back to bite you. In a way, again, that doesn't happen with mentorship. I don't know.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I also go back to Carl in the book. He was a scout for the Astros and discovered Jeter along with other scouts, but he strongly advised the Astros to pick up Jeter. And they were hesitant to do so because they thought that he was he was just going to go play baseball. I think it was like the University of Michigan. Or they didn't want to pay him as much as they thought he would want.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And so Neuhauser was basically like, if you're going to go out on a limb and pay top dollar for anyone. Like this kid is the one that you should be doing that for. They ended up not going with Jeter, obviously, since he ended up going to the Yankees.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
But this is another risk that sponsors can take on, which is that when you stick your neck out for someone and other people don't listen to you, you start to realize what your relationship is worth to them. And so Carl Neuhauser was so upset about the fact that the asterisks didn't listen to him that he actually ended up quitting.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
He just like straight up left baseball because he said, look, you have always known me as someone who is very even handed in my recommendations. I don't exaggerate people's abilities. And if I can't convince you to take this kid There's probably no one you're not going to listen to me about anything else. So then what's the point? So he ended up leaving baseball for that reason.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
But again, just going back to the risk of sponsorship that we were talking about. It's not just if your protege ends up not doing well, that's risky for sponsors. It's also risky for sponsors because then they also find out just how much influence.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Yeah, on the plus side, well, now Carl Neuhauser is known as the scout who correctly identified that Derek Jeter was going to turn out to be a big deal. So, you know, Derek Jeter, he was already famous, so it's unclear how much more famous he could have gotten. But his reputation also benefited from elevating Kim Ang, especially when she ended up
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
doing so well for the marlins people were it's a losing team she's not only is she the only the first and only woman gm that has been hired she like couldn't have been given a worse team to start off with she had to turn them around and she was making some pretty significant strides in doing so i think that really elevated derek cheater in the sense that was an indication that like
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
he's not just doing this for the optics he actually has a really deep understanding of the game as you would obviously hope he would but that he also could see potential where other people didn't so that lends him more credibility he ended up getting inducted into the hall of fame i think either the year after he hired kim or maybe the same year but
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I'm doing well. Thank you for having me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
One of the things that people remarked upon in getting in terms of his selection was not just his athletic history and performance, but also all the remarkable contributions he made off the field and contributing to the inclusivity and diversity of baseball was definitely one of those things.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
So the thing that you can get from being a sponsor is that you start getting known for one, having a good eye for talent, right? But also your values are very clear. They're clarified in terms of you're showing who you are because you're willing to put skin in the game on the things that you care about. And so that also raises people's status because you're now more of a known entity to them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
They understand who you are, what you care about, and that's a way to get status. You've shown that you Are trying to help the group, not just yourself that's another huge way of getting status so there's a lot of research that basically shows that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
The more we put into elevating other people, the more we personally benefit from doing that kind of thing and it's not just that the other person benefits right so. Sponsors and proteges both benefit from sponsorship, but so do audiences and so does the larger social ecosystem.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
So I'm a huge fan of sponsorship because I see it as one of these things where it takes something that could be seen as zero sum and you make it into something that is actually expanding value for everyone.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
That's right. That's my understanding as well.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Oh, I love this. I think sponsorship is a great way to show other people that they matter because you're socially elevating people by sponsoring them. So you're telling other people this person matters and you should pay attention to them. So in terms of getting other people to feel like they matter, being a sponsor is like an amazing way to make people feel like they matter.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And this goes into, of course, my interests in what it's like to be a person who's different from everybody else in different spaces. Oftentimes those people have this sense of being really highlighted in those spaces because they're just one of the few of their type. But it's not clear that visibility is the type of visibility they want.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And it's certainly not the type of visibility that makes them feel like they matter. To me, mattering is knowing that other people would notice if you were gone. That's something that I was thinking a lot more about. And so when we sponsor other people, we're essentially saying the world is better for having this person in it. And if you weren't aware of them, like
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
That would be very sad for all of us. And so when you think about people who don't get sponsored, basically they're not having someone going out and telling other people about how much they matter and how much they should miss them if they were not there. So I actually see sponsorship as being a great way of making people feel like they matter.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And the beautiful thing about sponsorship and I think going back to perhaps some of what you're working on is that when we tell other people that they matter, we start mattering to them. And so if you want to feel like you matter. Then make other people feel like they matter, I guess is like the way that I would put it. Right.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And the way that I put it in the book is if you want people to sponsor you, you should sponsor other people first. And just to tie back to mattering, right. You, we matter to each other only to the extent that we acknowledge and respect and uplift one another. And sponsorship is a great way to do that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
So for me, it would hands down be And I apologize to my husband because I'm sure what I'm supposed to say is when I met my husband or when I had my children. But professionally, at least for me, it was when I was asked to propose a new executive education program for Tupper Exec Ed.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Oh, that's a really big question that I feel like I need to think on a little bit more. I'm trying to figure out if what you're asking is a more systemic question about what companies as a whole, in terms of their policies and procedures could be doing. versus what leaders as individuals could be doing. So I'm hoping you can scope the question for me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Not in terms of our like skills and abilities. This is especially true in the professional world. Right. And being more open to learning about other people in all more holistic way. So when people join your group, not just figuring out, okay. What is your area of expertise? What projects have you worked on?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
What are your skills that you've demonstrated in the past that I should know about, but more deeply understanding perhaps how those experiences were gained? What those experiences meant to someone? Because you could imagine that someone has an experience that on paper looks really great.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
But if you dug a little deeper, you would find out that experience or that achievement was accomplished at great personal cost to them. But that also tells you something very deep about who they are. But all of that requires asking really good questions and being really good at listening and letting people feel free to share about those things and not being judgmental about it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I think that's the key that's really hard for a lot of us is that lack of judgment. That's why so many of us are hesitant to share that type of information about ourselves because we're worried that we will be judged. But I think it would be, our world would be so much better for it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
We would be so much more likely to find things to respect and appreciate about each other if we were more willing to share about those types of experiences.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
My recommendation, and this happens all the time where you have women in leadership roles or people of color in leadership roles and In a way they're either expected to advocate for other women or people of color, but because of this expectation, their advocacy is diluted or discounted because there's a sense of like, you're just sponsoring them because she's a woman and you're a woman too.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
They had been approached by a client who wanted someone to create a leadership program for Black professionals in the Pittsburgh region. And they wanted the program to have a strong sponsorship component. When Leanne Meyer, who was one of the people in exec ed at that time, she was the one who reached out to me because she knew that I was doing research on sponsorship.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And like, you're, this is something you care about. And so like your objectivity is questioned.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
in those sorts of circumstances so the best in my opinion the best way to deal with that is to essentially sponsor the person you want to help to other people in your network so say really great things about them introduce them to other people who are not women not people of color but help them build a relationship with the person that you want to see advance
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And then this is not to say that you can't sponsor them, but what you're essentially doing is your coalition building. So you are, you're going to sponsor them, but then you also have someone from the majority group who is there to back you up. Or if you wanted to do it more strategically, they can be the ones to. really the advocate for that person. And then you can be the one to back them up.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
But the key here is to have it just be like, it needs to be more than just one voice. So you need to get other people involved as well. Sponsors should not go it alone. You should never want to be a person's only sponsor. Going back to some of the things we were talking about earlier, right? Where if you go in and your sponsor leaves and you have no other people who are
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
powerful, who are willing to look out for you. That's a very dangerous position to be in. So if you want to be a good sponsor, don't put your protege in that kind of situation, right? Make sure that you create a network of sponsors who are going to be there for that person. We don't need to, we don't need to hoard talent. That's not the goal.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I get this question all the time. It's just being really curious about what other people have done, what's important to them, listening to them, asking good questions, not necessarily going in and saying, Hey, you have this position that I aspire to be in someday. How did you get there? Tell me how I can get there. Asking just a slight twist, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Which is, Oh, did you always want to be in this position? what led you to be in this position? What does it mean for you to be in this position? What are your underlying motivations for achievement is what you're essentially trying to get at. But once you understand that about someone, like what their underlying passions and values are, that's where the real relationship building block, right.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
That you need to create these deeper relationships because when you know, and can articulate for them what they stand for. It's going to be a lot easier for you to be able to articulate where you have overlapping aspirations and values. And once you're able to show that, people infer motivation from the fact that we assume, mostly rightly, that we're motivated by our values.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And we also assume that people who are working on things that are consistent with their values are more passionate about that and therefore more motivated and then more likely to be high performers and have high potential. Again, you're not gonna be able to make other people see you in that way
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
If you don't understand what their motivations are and find a way to articulate to them how you also share those values and motivations. So I would be saying to younger folks, think less about the outcome of like, how do I get there and think more about the why of what led people to the different stages in their career path that enabled them to get to where they ended up.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
She asked me if I would put together a curriculum for this client that they could then pitch to them. And I was just very surprised. One that I had been asked because I was still a pretty junior faculty member at that point. I didn't have tenure yet. I had done a lot of research, but I didn't have a lot of corporate experience. And my one time teaching in exec ed had not really gotten very well.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And again, that just, that requires asking really good questions and being a really good listener and then being able to articulate what it is that you hope for yourself as well. Because that's the other side of the coin, which is people can't really sponsor you effectively if they don't know what you want.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
The other thing that I would say is don't tell people what you want in terms of the actual outcome. Right. Don't say I want to be an executive director of a, like a top five consulting firm. When I grow up like that, people are going to want to know why, like, why do you want that? Right. And if you don't have a good answer for that, that's telling as well.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
So what you want to say is something more along the lines of I have this hope that I'm going to make a difference in this way in this particular field that I care about for this reason. This is one way I could imagine making that having that impact. But I'm also totally open to the possibility that I could achieve that same goal in any number of ways.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
But ultimately the thing that I care about is having this impact. So let's tell, let's talk about how I can set myself up for that. And I think people will find that much more compelling.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
You should look to the people you know already to sponsor. You probably already sponsor other people. You just haven't had a name for it. And there are probably people you know who are amazing sponsors. in all sorts of ways that you just haven't asked them about yet.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
So find out more about the people you already know, and then figure out who you know that should know about these amazing people that you already know. So that's like the very first step I would suggest for your listeners in terms of enacting some of these ideals. In terms of how to stay in touch, I post regularly on LinkedIn. My whole thing is I love to spotlight
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
fantastic research that's coming out and putting it in a way that people who are not academics can better understand why the research is important and what they can do with it. So LinkedIn, if you look for me, Rosalind Chao, that's a great way to follow me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Thank you so much for having me on, John.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
They basically didn't have me come back afterward. It was a shock to go from not having heard from exec ed in many years to wanting me to submit like a whole program design. And then there was this very little small issue. It was a program for black leaders and I'm not black. And I had a lot of misgivings about doing it for all sorts of reasons I can get into later if we want.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I did end up saying yes, it ended up being one of the most fulfilling experiences of my career, probably also of my life. I'm very proud of that program. And more importantly, I'm very thankful for the people that I met because of that program. And part of that experience is actually what led me to writing this book.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
So it very clearly is an experience that changed the trajectory of my career, turned me from an academic who normally just writes about her academic research to someone who actually, I guess I gained confidence in my ability to speak to people's experiences outside of just research.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Maybe not exactly in that way. So what is special about that program and really makes it like, it brings it close to my heart. It was a program. So we designed it in 2018 just to, cause I think the year actually matters. And it was because I was, I didn't have a track record. And I didn't know necessarily or even know or care about ruffling feathers.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I proposed a program that I wanted to be unapologetically about the black experience in America. So basically a lot of the sessions are very forthright about laying out the research on what it is like to be black, what it's like to be stereotyped, to experience bias.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And it was, I think that approach actually ended up working very well for me in the sense that it was disarming, I think, for a lot of the participants. They had never been in a space where one, they were surrounded by other leaders who looked just like them and who had incredibly similar experiences to the ones that they had. And it was
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
very affirming for them to finally hear that a lot of the questions and uncertainties that they had about how they were being treated, that it wasn't just in their heads, that it was something that had been validated by research, but also that others like them had shared those experiences. And it was an incredible bonding experience for them. And it was an incredible bonding experience for me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I was incredibly lucky that in being willing to open up about their experiences, they were willing also to open their hearts to me, because then I mentioned, right, I'm not black. And I would never claim to truly understand that experience, but I think they could tell that I was incredibly passionate about helping people to make sense of that experience and to Not just change them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
So that was the thing that was really important to me about this program was to ensure that people in the program knew that the problem was not them. The program was not some sort of remedial program where like they had things that they were lacking. The problem was the social environment around them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And that was where the sponsorship component came in, where we brought in corporate leaders from the region. and had them engage with program participants in what was called a mentorship relationship. But in reality, what we were trying to do was get those leaders, many of whom were white, to understand that mentorship is great.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I'm not saying mentorship is bad, because that's not what I'm saying at all, but it's not enough. And that sponsorship is really something that they could be doing, more of us could be doing, and is for many people, the difference between being able to advance and not. And so I think they could see how much that meant to me personally and how much I really wanted all of them to succeed.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
And high cohort one, truly, they're very special to me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
That's a great question. I was lucky that the client we were working with, so this is the Advanced Leadership Institute, or TALI is the acronym that we use for it. So Evan Frazier is the CEO of TALI. He was the one who approached the school to have us develop this program for them. He didn't bat an eye when they proposed to me. as a potential faculty director.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I will say that his partner in crime, Greg Spencer, was definitely not on board. And part of that was because I'm not Black. Part of it is because I'm quite young, or at least I look young. And part of it was because I had no corporate experience. And so he thought I didn't have any... Anyway, I was out of my lane. I'm happy to say that I was able to convert him. into a believer.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
He's a good friend and a mentor and a sponsor of mine now. But one of the things that they did was they made sure that I met with all the constituents that they were dealing with. So it was a lot of other black leaders. I also reached out to my network to talk with black professionals to figure out what would they want out of a program like this. And
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I think what I really got from all of that kind of research was that I will never understand. And that's okay. Like that is something that I think all of us should be able to sit with is this idea that we can study things. We can know things in a way, but it's also okay to be intellectually humble and recognize where We can't go all the way on some of these issues.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
I will never be able to understand, truly understand what it's like to be a Black American or trans or disabled. I will never truly understand that experience as much as I want to.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Rosalind Chow on How Sponsors Fuel Your Career Growth | EP 602
Oh, I think I want to be clear that I'm not saying that I don't take the, try to take the perspective of other people. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I do want to caution people on, however, is that this idea of just because we read it and we can read as much as we want and ironic coming to this statement as an academic, right, who my whole