Title: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Author: Sheryl Sandberg
Synopsis: Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, gives women career advice. She also discusses the problems women face in getting leadership roles and how to overcome them.
Why I Read It: Someone at a convention raved about the book during a talk.
Full Disclosure: My opinions may be biased by my dislike of her employer. I don’t do Facebook; the whole phenomenon seems at best a waste of mental resources, and at worst a dismaying invasion of privacy. All that said, I read the book because Sandberg is an accomplished woman writing on a topic, women in leadership, which is interesting and relevant being that I’m a woman and all.
Highlights: It was a quick, easy, well-organized read. Every chapter is concentrated into its one sentence essence (so tidy!!), which made the content memorable. There were a couple of these that stood out:
- Don’t Leave before You Leave, in which she discusses the problem of being focused on some future event rather than on your present job, and
- It’s a Jungle Gym Not a Ladder, in which she discusses the trajectory of a career and how it’s ok to move laterally and all around instead of constantly climbing up, up, up. I appreciate the playfulness of this metaphor.
Lowlights: I had a hard time relating to Sandberg. First off, I am drawn to work that is academic and not corporate. My fields are already dominated by women. I’ve been mentored by women, promoted by women. Likewise, I teach women and promote them. As a result, sometimes the issues she wrote about seemed remote. Secondly, her writing style was safe and overly-processed….a little too polished.
Recommended to: 1.) Men – every last one of you should read it. 2.) Working women with children. 3.) Ambitious women just beginning their careers.
If You Liked This Book You Might Also Like: Leadership by Rudy Giuliani, which I reviewed (very briefly) here, and which I found equally as helpful and more compelling.
Best Quote:
“It’s not about biology, but about consciousness”
–Gloria Steinem
If you want to learn more here’s a Ted Talk she gave on the topic.
6 comments
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November 10, 2013 at 12:56 am
Nat Koch
Interesting. But what source is she citing when she says (video) men attribute doing a good job to themselves (“I’m awesome”)? And (does she ask) why do men hold almost all top political offices? Is the answer simple?
November 10, 2013 at 2:06 am
Lunar Euphoria
I can’t remember whether she cited sources in the book or not – I’ve already returned it to the library. However, gender differences in success attribution was apparently a hot research topic in the 1980s with articles published in the psych and educational research literature by the likes of Rickman & Peckham; Sweeney, Mooreland, & Grubber and various others.
She suggests several possible reasons for why women do not hold top leadership positions, ranging from cultural pressures to conform to certain norms, to self sabotage (mommy gatekeepers), to women being harsher judges of other women.
November 11, 2013 at 1:13 am
Dana
I like how your “best quote” is actually a Steinem quote and not a Sandberg one. That pretty much sums it up for me! 🙂
November 11, 2013 at 1:35 am
Lunar Euphoria
Yep. I am happy someone caught that. Summed it up for me too.
November 12, 2013 at 7:07 pm
Dana
Excellent. 🙂
January 2, 2014 at 5:19 pm
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