Lean in - Sheryl Sandberg as edited by UDU

                                Lean in 

             Women Work, & the Will to Lead

          By Sheryl Sandberg, edited by UDU Dragomir and with Nell Scovell

Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. As our company grows we have 5 strong values that guide the way we work and the decisions we make each day to help achieve our mission.

Abstract from ze editor : I have tried to keep most things that discriminate between people out of this book. For example; Name-dropping, leaning on job titles for credential of significance & respect (a persons function and where for a founding of legitimacy - think a priest deemed a holy man) had to get toned down.

Pushing opinions for accrediting strangers (I like this person, you should too), and a few generalization were edited into more comfortable statements. 

Sheryl does a great job at keeping generalizations down to the point where I often only noticed them on my third or fourth read through. Of the thousands of statements in this book most of them are based on research/polls. 

Generalizations that have data based on research are rather statements. A generalizations is something such as 'women are scared to look men in the eyes' 

Every time there is a '*' it is my direct input. Every time there is a (gigity), remember the humor behind shows like The Simpsons or Familyguy.

Yes I have mirrored negative statements into positive and I have removed so many 'but's and 'so's that I surprised everyone in the world still has what to sit on :)  

Yes 'it's' is read 'it is' and so 'its' without the ' ' ' is a possessive form and though the possessive form bounced from words with an ' ' ' and words without an ' ' ' - apostrophe - in the original text now for the comfort of our OCD readers is now benched onto one side.

Last detail, I removed capitalization from many things, leaving only capitalization of places and people. This is to place importance on people rather then abstract ideas.

   

                             Introduction 

                   Internalizing the Revolution

                     *The only way out is in*

         

        I became pregnant with my first child in the summer of 2004. 
At the time, I was running the online sales and operations groups for google where I have been for three and a half years. Google was an obscure start-up in a run-down office, with a few hundred employees.
By my first trimester, google had grown into a company of thousands of employees and moved into a multibuilding campus.
       My pregnancy was not easy. The typical morning sickness that often accompanies the first trimester affected me every day for 9 long months and I had gained almost 70 pounds. My feet had swelled 2 entire shoe sizes, turning into odd-shaped lumps.
I could only see my feet when they were propped up on a coffee table.
The 'cherry on the cake' was that their was a project at google named after me ; “Project whale.”

        One day (after another rough morning spent staring at the bottom of a toilet) I had to rush to make an important client meeting. Since google was growing so quickly that parking was an ongoing problem, I had only found a parking spot quite far away.
Still,
I sprinted across the parking lot, which, in reality meant lumbering a bit more quickly than my absurdly slow pregnancy crawl. This only made my nausea worse, and I had arrived at the meeting praying that a sales pitch was the only thing that would come out of my mouth.
        That night, I recounted these troubles to my husband Dave. He pointed out that at Yahoo!(where he worked at that time) there was designated parking for expectant mothers at the front of each building.

        The very next day I marched in – or more like I waddled in – to see google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in their shared office. Their office was really just a large room with toys and gadgets strewn all over the floor. I found Sergey in a yoga position in the corner of the room and announced that "we need pregnancy parking! preferably sooner rather than later!" Sergey looked up at me and agreed immediately, noting that he had never thought about pregnancy parking before.
        To this day I am embarrassed that I did not realize that pregnant women needed reserved parking until I experienced it on my own aching feet. As one of googles most senior women, did not I, have a special responsibility to think of this ? Just like Sergey, it had never occurred to me.
The other pregnant women must have suffered in silence, not wanting to ask for special treatment. Or perhaps those same women lacked the confidence or seniority to demand that the problem be fixed. Having one pregnant woman at the top – even one who looked like a whale – made all the difference.

        Today in the United States of America and as well, in the developed world, women are better off than ever. We women stand on the shoulders of the women whom came before us. Women whom had to fight for the rights that are now, often taken for granted.
        In 1947, Anita Summers (the mother of my longtime mentor Larry  Summers) was hired as an economist at the Standard Oil Company. When she had accepted the job, her new boss said to her “I am so glad to have you. I figure I am getting the same brains for less money.”

Anitas reaction was to feel flattered. It was a huge compliment, to be told that she had the same brains as a man. It would have been unthinkable for Anita to ask for equal compensation.

        We women should feel even more grateful when comparing our lives to those of other women around the world. There are still countries that deny women their basic civil rights. Worldwide, about 4.4 million women and even girls are trapped in the sex trade (human trafficking). In places like Afghanistan or Sudan, girls receive little or no education. Wives are treated as the property of the husbands. Women whom are raped are routinely cast out of their homes for disgracing their families.
Worse still, some rape victims are sent to prison for committing a 'moral crime'. Jail is where people await a sentence in court, prison is where a person is condemned. *In countries like these, we are, at the very least, centuries behind the acceptable treatment of women. Places such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran, U.A.E, and so on do not respect nor honor women*.

        For us, on the better side (a strange acceptable judgement) of the world the knowledge that things could be worse should not stunt our pursuit to grow, develop and improve the world we all live in. 
When the suffragettes marched in the streets, they had envisioned a world where women and men would truly be equal (be truly equal?). A century later, 100 years, we are still squinting in the dark trying hard to bring that vision to light.

        Our blunt truth is that men still run the world (even if behind every successful man there is a women). Of the, 195 independent countries of the world, only 17 are led by women at the time of publication. As well, globally, women hold just 22% of the seats in parliaments. 

In the United States of America (where the national pride is of Liberty, Justice for all, and the pursuit of happiness) the gender division of leadership roles is not much better. Women became 50% of college graduates in the United States of America in the early 1980s. Afterwards the number have steadily and slowly advanced. Women have been earning more and more college degrees, taking more entry level jobs, and entering more fields that were previously dominated by men.
        Despite these gains, the percentage of women at the actual top of corporate America has barely budged over the past decade. A meager 23 of the S&P 500 CEOs are women. Women hold about 25% of senior executive position, 19% of board seats, and constitute 19% of our elected congressional officials. This gap is even worse for women of color, whom hold just 4% of top corporate job, 4% percent of board seats, and 6% of congressional seats. While women continue to outpace men in educational achievement, it seems women have ceased making real progress at the top of any industry. 
        This means that when it comes to making the decisions that most affect our world, women's voices are not heard equally.

        Progress remains equally sluggish when it comes to compensation. In 1970, American women were paid 59 cents for every dollar that their male counterparts made. By 2010, women had protested, fought, and worked their butts off to raise that compensation to 77 cents for every dollar men made. As activist Marlo Thomas wryly joked on Equal Pay Day 2011 “Forty years and eighteen cents. A dozen eggs have gone up ten times that amount.”
        I have watched these disheartening events from a front-row seat. I graduated from college in 1991 and from business school in 1995. In each entry level job I had after graduation, my colleagues were a balanced mix of both female and male homo sapiens (hopefully :). I did see that the senior leaders were almost entirely male, but I thought that was due to historical discrimination against women. 
To me, the proverbial glass ceiling had been cracked in almost every industry! I believed that it was just a matter of time until my generation took our fair share of the leadership roles. Yet with each passing year, fewer and fewer of my colleagues happened to be women. More and more often, I was...the only women in the room.
        Being the sole woman has resulted in some awkward yet, revealing situations. 2 years after I joined facebook as the chief operating officer, our chief financial officer suddenly departed.
I of course had to step in to complete a funding round. Since I had spent my career in operations and not finance, to me; the process of raising capital was new and a bit scary.
        My team and I flew to New York for the initial pitch to all forms of private equity firms. Our first meeting was held in the kind of corporate office featured in movies, complete with a sprawling and majestic view of Manhattan. I had offered an overview of our business and answered questions. So far so good. Then someone suggested that we break for a few minutes. I had asked of one of the hosts where the womans bathroom was, to which he stared at me blankly. My one question had completely stumped him.

I asked “How long have you been in this office?” and he said “One year” I continued “Am I the only women to have pitched a deal here in an entire year ?” he said 'I thinks so' adding “or maybe you're the only one who had to use the bathroom”.
        It has been more than 2 decades (20 years) since I entered the workforce, and so much is still the same. It is time for us to face the fact that this revolution has stalled. The mere promise of equality is not the same as true equality.

        A truly equal world would be one where women run half of our countries and companies and men run half of our homes, *homie. I believe that this would make for a better world. The laws of economics as well as many studies of diversity tell us that if we are to tap the entire pool of human resources and talents, our collective performance would improve.
         Investor Warren Buffett has stated generously that one of the reasons for his great success was that he was competing with only half of the population. The 'Warren Buffetts' of my generation are still largely enjoying this advantage. When more people get in the race, more records will be broken. And our achievements will extend beyond those of individuals to benefit us all.

        The night before Leymah Gbowee won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize (for helping to lead the womens protests that toppled Liberia's dictator) she was at a book party in my home. We were celebrating the publication of her new autobiography: 'Mighty be our powers'. Tis was a somber night.
A guest had asked Leymah 'how American women could help those whom have experienced the horrors and mass rapes of war in places like Liberia'. Leyman answered with four simple words “more women in power.”

Leymah and I could not have come from more different backgrounds, yet we have both arrived at the same conclusion; that conditions for all women will improve when there are more women in leadership roles whom are giving strong and powerful voices for what those women value (*Sheryl limits here to needs and concerns, but what about visions and moral standards? Just needs and concerns, hellllloooooo, moral fabric and a titanium backbone are way important to a righteous life).
        This brings me to the obvious question – how ? How are we as a people going to take down the barriers that prevent more women from getting to the top?
Women face real obstacles in the professional world. These obstacles include blatant or subtle sexism, raw discrimination, and even sexual harassment. Too few workplaces offer the flexibility and access to child care and parental leave that are a necessity for pursuing a career while raising children (or a child).
        Men have an easier time finding the mentors and sponsors that assist career progression. Plus, women seem to have to prove themselves to a far greater extent than men do. There is empirical evidence to breathe life into these opinions as well. A 2011 McKinsey report noted that men are promoted based on potential, with women being promoted based on past accomplishments (holding a job for 2 years is an accomplishment, closing 4 deals in a month is a result, to clarify).
        In addition to the external barriers we have erected in our society, women are hindered by barriers that exist within the human spirit. Women hold themselves back in both big and small ways.

There are women whom lack self-confidence, that do not raise their hands and whom pull back when they should lean in. Women whom internalize the negative messages they got throughout their lives – the messages- that say it is wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, and more powerful than a man. 

Women whom lower their own expectations of what they can achieve. Women that continue to do the majority of the housework and child-care. Women whom compromise on career goals to make room for partners and, children who may not even exist, yet. Compared to male colleagues, fewer of these women aspire to senior positions!
        This is not a list of things other women have done wrong. I, have made every mistake on this list. At times, I still make them.
        Our argument is that getting rid of these internal barriers is critical to gaining power. Others have argued that women can only get to the top when the institutional barriers are gone. This is the ultimate chicken-and-egg situation.

The chicken: Women whom will tear down the external barriers once they have achieved leadership roles. These revolutionaries will march into their bosses' offices and demand what they need, including pregnancy parking and paid maternal leave. Even better is the possibility that they will become the bosses and make sure all women have what they need.

The egg: We need to eliminate the external barriers to get women into those roles in the first place! Both sides are of course, right. So, rather than engage in philosophical arguments over which comes first, let's agree to wage battles on both fronts because both fronts are equally significant.
        I am encouraging women to address the chicken, while I fully support those who are focusing on the egg. 
        I have seen that internal obstacles are rarely discussed and often underplayed. Throughout my life, I was told over and over about inequalities in the workplace and how hard it would be to have a career alongside a family. I rarely heard anything, however, about the ways I may hold myself back. 

These internal obstacles deserve a lot more attention, in part because they are under our own control. We can dismantle whatever hurdles are with-in ourselves, today. We can start right now, in this very moment.

         I never had thought I would write a book. I am not a scholar, a journalist, or a sociologist. But I decided to speak out after talking with hundred of women and listening to their struggles. My drive to write this book comes from sharing my own struggles with people and realizing that the gains we have made in our society are not enough and may even be slipping. 
        The 1st chapter of this book lays out some of the complex challenges women face. Each subsequent chapter focuses on an adjustment or difference anyone can make: increasing self-confidence (chapter - Sit at the table), getting your partner to do more at home (chapter - make your partner a real partner), not holding ourselves to unattainable standards (the myth of doing it all). 
        I do not pretend to have the perfect solution to these deep and complicated issues. I rely on hard data (empirical data) academic research, my own observations, and lessons I have learned all along the way.
        This book, is more than a small memoir and so I have included stories about my life. It is in part a self help book too, and so I do offer my honesty, from the heart advice. BUT it is not a feminist manifesto – ok, it is a sort of a feminist manifesto and it is one I hope inspires men as much as it inspires women.
        Whatever this book is, I am writing it mainly for any women that wishes to increase her chances of making it to the top of her field and/or to pursue any of her goals vigorously. This includes women at all stages of their lives and their careers, from those who are just starting out to those who are taking a break and may want to jump back in-it.
        I am also writing this for any man who wants to understand what a women – a colleague, a wife, a partner, a mother, or a daughter (did I miss anything, a cousin, an aunt, a facebook influencer?) is up against so that the men whom do read this book can help do their part and help build an equal world.
Even if it is something as simple as a more proper comment on an instagram post.
        Though, the objectification of women and the sexual implications of the 'sex sells' industry is in vast, void from the words in this book, it is implied in the terms of respect and honor instead of objectification.        This book pursues to make the case for leaning in, for being ambitious in any pursuit. And while I believe that increasing the number of women in positions of power is a necessary element of true equality, I also believe there are more than just one definition of success or/and happiness (because obviously, one can be successful but unhappy, and vice-versa).
        Not all women want careers. Not all women want children. Not all women want both. I would never advocate that we should all have the same objectives. Many people are not interested in acquiring power, not because they lack ambition, but because they are living their lives as they desire. Some of the most important contributions to our world are made by caring for just one person at a time. 
        I strongly believe we each have to chart our own unique course and define which goals fit our lives, values and dreams, what happens when our goals undermines someone elses is called taking responsibility.
        I am also acutely aware that the vast majority of women are struggling to make ends meet and take care of their families. Parts of this book will be most relevant to women fortunate enough to have choices about how much and when and where to work; other parts of this book apply to situations that women face in every workplace and within every community and in every home. So if we succeed in adding more female voices at the highest levels, it should expand opportunities and extend fairer treatment to all.
        Some, especially other women in business, have cautioned me about speaking out publicly on these issues. When I have spoken out anyways, several of my comments have upset people of both genders. I know some believe that by focusing on what women can change themselves – pressing these women to lean in – seems like I am letting our institutions off the hook (by shifting the blame). Or even worse, these same people accuse me of blaming the victim. I am far from blaming the victim because I believe that female leaders are key to the solution.
         Yet, some critics will also point out that it is much easier for me to lean in, since my financial resources allow me to afford any help I may need. My intention is to offer advice that would have been useful to me long before I had heard of google or facebook. Advice that will resonate with women in a broad range of circumstances.
        I have heard these criticisms in the past and I know that I will hear them – and others – in the future. My hope is that my message will be judged on its merit and that we can not avoid these conversations. These issues, which I have touched on, and will continue to bring up in this book transcend all of us.
        The time is long overdue to encourage more women to dream the possible dream and encourage more men to support women in the workforce and in the home. We can reignite the revolution by internalizing the revolution. I hope the shift to a more equal world will happen person by person.
        Today we move closer to the larger goal of true equality with each women who leans in.

                                     C

                                     1

The Leadership Ambition Gap – what would you do if you were not afraid ?

        My Grandmama Rosalind Einhorn was born exactly 52 years before I was. She was born August 28th, 1917. Like many poor jewish families in the boroughs of New York city, her family lived in a small, crowded apartment, close-by to their relatives. Her parents, aunts, and uncles addressed my grandmothers male cousins by their given names, but she and her sisters were referred to only as 'girlie'.              During the time of The Great Depression, my grandmother was pulled out of Morris high-school to help support the household by sewing fabric flowers onto undergarments that her mother could then resell for a tiny profit. No-one in the community would have considered taking a boy out of school. For a boys education was the family's hope to move up the financial and, social ladder!
Education for girls, however, was far less important both financially, since girls were seen as unlikely to contribute to the family's income or cultural growth.         Since girls were only expected to 'run a proper home'. Boys were also expected to study the Torah, and this religious discrimination of Men from Women is one place where the root of our problems begins.                Luckily, a local teacher insisted that my grandmother get put back in school. Rosalind went on, not only to finish high school but to then graduate from U.C. Berkeley. After college, 'girlie' worked selling pocketbooks and accessories at David's 5th Avenue (think - selling mobile phones and airbuds).
        When my grandmother left her job to marry my grandfather, my familys legend has it that David had to hire 4 people to replace her. Years later, when my grandfathers paint business was struggling, Rosalind jumped in and took some of the hard steps her husband was reluctant to take, helping to save the family from financial ruin.
        She had displayed her business acumen again in her forties. After being diagnosed with breast cancer, she had beat cancer and dedicated herself to raising money for the clinic that treated the cancer by selling knockoff watches out the trunk of her own car. Girlie ended up with a profit margin that even Microsoft would envy (sorry Apple is evil - why - because recovering the data on an apple is extremely complicated when the device fails). 
        I have never met anyone with more energy and determination than my grandmother. When Warren Buffett talks about competing against only half of the population, I end up thinking about my grandmama and wonder how different my nanas life may have been if she was born just half a century later.
        When my nana (grandmother) had children of her own (my mother and two brothers) she emphasized education for all of her kids, and so my mother had attended the University of Pennsylvania, where classes were coed. Then when she graduated in 1965 with a degree in French literature, she surveyed a workforce that she believed consisted of two career options for women; Either teaching or nursing. Thus my mother choose teaching. She began a Ph.D program, got married, and then dropped out when she became pregnant with me. 
        It was though in society, thought to be a sign of weakness if a husband needed 'his wifes' -*the waifus- help to support their family, thus my mother became a stay-at-home parent and an active volunteer. The centuries-old division of labor had stood.
        Even though I grew up in a traditional home, my parents had the same expectations of my sister, my brother and me. All three of us were encouraged to excel in school, do equal chores, and engage in extracurricular activities. We were also all supposed to be athletic too. While my brother and sister joined sports teams, I was the kid that got picked up last in gym class. Despite my athletic shortcomings, I was raised to believe that girls could do anything boys could do and that ALL career paths were open to me.
        When I had arrived at college in the fall of 1987, my classmates of both genders seemed equally focused on academics and I don't remember thinking about my future career differently from the male students. I also do not remember any conversations about someday balancing work with children. My friends and I assumed that we would have both. Women and Men competed openly and aggressively with one another in classes, activities, and job interviews. Just two generations removed from my grandmother and the playing field had seemed to be level.
        More than twenty years after my college graduation, the world has not evolved nearly as much as I believed it would.
Almost all my male classmates work in professional settings now and only some of my female classmates work full-time or part-time jobs outside the home. While, just as many of my female classmates are stay-at-home mothers and volunteer like my Mom. This mirrors the national trend. 
        In comparison to their male counterparts, highly trained women are scaling back while dropping out of the workforce in high numbers. In turn, these diverging percentages teach institutions and mentors to invest more in men, who are statistically more likely to stay. Judith Rodin (president of Rocketfeller Foundation and the first woman to serve as president of an Ivy League University *just in case anyone is looking for fine accomplishments from women) once remarked to an audience of women my age:
        "My generation fought so hard to give all of you choices. We believe in choices. But choosing to leave the workforce was not the choice we thought so many of your would make".
        So what (T*F*) happened?! My generation was raised in an era of increasing equality, a trend that even I thought would continue (so people got comfortable*). In retrospect, women were rather naïve and idealistic (irresponsible?*, and they were probably thinking it was naturally occurring).
        For women, like me, integrating professional and personal aspirations it proved far more challenging than anyone could have imagined. During the same years that womens careers demanded maximum time invested, female biology demanded to mate and have children. Yet many of the womens partners did not share the housework and child rearing responsibilities, and so women found themselves with two full-time jobs (three if ya' count being a 'good stepford wife') -in a nutshell. 
        Then, the icing on the cake: the workplace did not evolve to give women the flexibility needed to fulfill their responsibilities at home. It was all unanticipated, and a surprise to everyone.
        If my generation was too naïve, the generations that have followed may be to practical. My generation knew to little, while the young girls know to much. Girls growing up today are not the first generation to have equal opportunities, but they are the first to know that all this opportunity does not guarantee professional achievement. For many girls they have grown up watching their mothers 'try to do it all' and then, these same mothers deciding that something had to be given up and that something was usually a career (instead of giving up on a family, good choice :).
        There is no doubt that women have the skills to lead in the workplace. Girls are increasingly outperforming boys in the classrooms, attaining about 57% of the undergraduate and 60% of the masters degrees in the United States. This gender gap in academic achievement has even caused some to worry about the 'end of men'. While compliant raise-your-hand-and-speak-when-called-on behaviors might be rewarded in school, these behaviors are less valued in workplaces. Career progression often depends upon taking risks and advocating for oneself traits that girls are discouraged from exhibiting. This may explain why girls' academic gains have not yet translated into significantly higher numbers of women in top jobs.
        The pipeline that supplies the educated workforce is chock-full of women at the entry level, but by the time that same pipeline is filling leadership positions, it is overwhelmingly stocked with men.
        There are so many reasons for this winnowing out, but one important contributor is a leadership ambition gap. Of course, many individual women are as professionally ambitious as any individual man. Yet drilling down, the data clearly indicates that in field after field, less women than men aspire to the most senior jobs. A 2012 McKinsey survey of more than 4,000 employees of leading companies found that 36% of the men wanted to reach the C-suite (senior executive positions), which compared to only 18% of the women.
        When a job is described as powerful, challenging, and involving high levels of responsibility, these jobs appeal to more men than women (whom would prefer, normal, team-oriented responsibilities, with straight forward tasks...I'm guessing).
        So while the ambition gap is most pronounced at the highest levels, the underlying dynamic is evident at every step of the career ladder/jungle gym. A survey of college students found that more men than women chose 'reaching a managerial level' as a career priority in the first 3 years after graduating. Even among highly educated professional women and men, more men than women describe themselves as 'ambitions
        There is some hope that a shift is starting to occur in the next generations. A 2012 Pew study found for the first time that among young people ages 18 to 34, more young women (66%) than young men (59%) rated 'success in a high-paying career or profession' as an important goal to their lives. A survey of 'Millennials' found that women were just as likely as men in their generation to agree to the statement 'I aspire to a leadership role in whatever field I ultimately work' as a descriptive of themselves. In this survey, Millennial women were also less likely than their male peers to characterize themselves as : leaders, visionaries, self-confident, and willing to take risks. 
        Since more men aim for leadership roles, it it not surprising that they obtain them, especially given all the other obstacles that women have to overcome. This pattern starts long before anyone is even legally allowed to work. For example, Author Samantha Ettus and her husband read their daughter's kindergarten yearbook, where each child answered the question 'What do you want to be when you grow up?'. The couple noted (to me*) that several of the boys wanted to be the President of the United States of America, while none of the girls wanted to be President. As well current data I have seen indicated that these same girls will continue to feel the same way when they grow up.
        So, lets assume in middle school, more boys than girls aspire to leadership roles in future careers. At the top 50 colleges, usually less than a third of student government presidents are women. These views of reality show us all that women are busy doing something else (*obviously putting on make-up, applying anti-aging cream, and pursuing the stereotypes that bind us to our loyal and great advertisers).
        A general shared opinion is that professional ambition is expected of men but is optional or worse, sometimes even a negative for women. 'She is very ambitious' is not a compliment in our culture. Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, though women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishments seem to come at a cost.
        For all the progress, there is still societal pressure for women to keep an eye on marriage from a young age. When I attended college, the whole while, my parents set an emphasis on both academic achievements and for me to get married (setting a higher on emphasis on marriage). My parents told me that the most eligible women marry young to get a 'good man' before the men are all taken. I followed their advice and throughout college, I vetted every date as a potential husband (which trust me, is a sure fire way to ruin a date at age 19).
        When I was graduating, my thesis advisor, Larry Summers, suggested that I apply for international fellowships. I rejected the idea on the grounds that a foreign country was not a likely place to turn a date into a husband.
Instead I moved to Washington D.C., which was full of eligible men. It worked. My first year out of college, I met a man who was not just eligible, but also wonderful, so I married him. I was 24 and convinced that marriage was the first and necessary step to a happy and productive life.
        It did not work out that way. I was just not mature enough to have made this lifelong decision, and the relationship quickly unraveled. By the age of 25, I had managed to get married and also divorced. At the time, this felt like a massive personal and public failure. For many years, I felt that no matter what I accomplished professionally, it paled in comparison to the scarlet letter D stitched to my heart.
        *Strange that Sherly takes full credit for the failure of the marriage. I mean everybody knows that it takes two to tango, and pulling all the guilt that her marriage failed - is like - wait , what , why ? Are you still harboring feelings for that dude and wish deep down to try again ? Que'?*
        Almost ten years later, I learned that the 'good ones' were not all taken, and I wisely and very happily married Dave Goldberg.
        Like me, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (deputy director of the council on foreign relations' women and foreign policy program) was encouraged to prioritize marriage over career. As she described in 'the atlantic' "When I was 27, I received a posh fellowship to travel to Germany to learn German and to work at the wall street journal...It was an incredible opportunity by any objective standards, and I knew that it would help prepare me for graduate school and beyond. My friends, however, expressed both shock and horror that I would leave my boyfriend at the time to live abroad for an entire year.
My relatives asked whether I was worried that I'd never get married. And when I attended a barbecue with my then-beau, his boss took me aside to remind me that 'there aren't many guys like that out there'"
        The result of these negative reactions, in Gayle's view, is that many women 'still see ambition as a dirty word' and since then she has yet to be convinced other-wise.
        Many have argued with me that ambition is not the problem. They argued that women are not less ambitious than men, but that women are enlightened with more meaningful goals.
      And Yes! I do agree there is far more to life than achieving a steady job with a good position. To me some of these things are; raising children, seeking personal fulfillment, contributing to society, and improving the lives of myself and others.
        There are many people who are deeply committed to their roles and do not 'aspire to run their organizations'. Leadership roles are not the only way to have a profound impact. *Sometimes just showing up to work and doing a shitty job is much better than hitting the streets and camping in the park with barely any food or water, even just doing the work for the sole purpose of having a disposable income works just as well.
        I also acknowledge that there are biological differences between women and men. I have breast-fed two children and noted, at times with great disappointment, that this was simply not something my husband was equipped to do. Are there characteristics inherent in sex differences that make women more nurturing and men more assertive ? I believe so. Still, in today's world, where we no longer have to hunt in the wild for our food, our desire for leadership is largely a culturally created and reinforced trait. How individuals view what they can and should accomplish is in a large part formed by our societal expectations.
        From the moment we are born, girls are treated differently than boys, and boys are treated differently from girls. Girls are told to play with dolls while Boys with robots and guns. Parents tend to talk to girl babies more than boy babies. Mothers overestimate the crawling ability of their sons and underestimate the crawling ability of their daughters. Reflecting the belief that girls need to be helped more than boys ? Mothers often spend more time comforting and hugging infant girls and more time watching infant boys play alone.
        Other cultural messages are more blatant. Gymnboree once sold onesies for boys proclaiming 'Smart like Daddy' and onesies for girls stating 'Pretty like Mommy'. That same year J.C. Penny marketed a T-shirt to teenage girls that bragged 'I'm to pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me'.

These things did not happen in 1951 but in 2011. 

        Even worse, the messages sent to girls can move beyond encouraging superficial traits and veer into explicitly discouraging leadership. When for example, a girl tries to lead, she is often labeled bossy (tom-boyish). Boys how-ever are seldom called bossy because a boy taking the role of a boss does not surprise or offend, it is rather expected as a coming of age, the sooner the better.

As a girl that was called bossy for much of my childhood, I know that it was not a compliment. *Editors note; She was called bossy, that is a good acknowledgment from her peers (de other kids). Though Sherly was not a liked boss, she choose to ignore the fun that being a 'baby'/kid boss could have been and focused her attention that being called bossy is a bad thing.
        I - the editor - was a Romanian in school and because I started off with an accent and barely speaking English that gave me the freedom to really do what I want when I wanted, and I knew that and I loved it baby ! Sure, I could have begged for 'companionship' but I was more focused on 'getting the fuck outta this prison' - kids should not sit in a chair 8 hours a day listening to some idiot tell um that 2+2 is 4. It is bad for a growing persons development on all levels. Heck when in 2nd grade I found out about the GED program I tried hard to drop out and wait till I could take the exam at the age of 16!*.
      Alot of a kids growing up is about having a proper perspective of things. For a kid, that's where a good parent (good parents) comes in, to help avoid thinking distortions, throwing a kid into a mass of chaos to only receive divided attention ? How the heck is that a good thing ?*

        The stories of my (Sheryl Sandberg) childhood bossiness are told (and retold) with great amusement by my family. Apparently, when I was in elementary school, I had taught my younger siblings, David & Michelle, to follow me around, listen to my monologues, & scream the word 'Right' when I concluded a speech. As a child I was the eldest of the neighborhood children and allegedly spent my time organizing shows that I could direct and clubs that I could run. 
        People usually laugh at these accounts of my childhood (it is a matter of set and setting, honestly), but to this day I always feel slightly ashamed of my behavior (which is remarkable given that I have now written an entire book about why girls should not be made to feel this way, or maybe this partially explains my motivation).
Even when my siblings and I were in our thirties, pointing out these behaviors was still the best way for my siblings to tease me (luckily, it was not bullying, just roasting).
        When Dave and I got married, David and Michelle gave a beautiful, hilarious toast, which kicked off with this:
        "Some of you think we are Sheryl's younger siblings, but really we were Sheryl's first employees, employee number one and employee number two."

"Initially, as a one-year-old and a three-year-old, we were worthlessly weak, disorganized and lazy.
We would just as soon spit up on ourselves as read the morning paper. But Sheryl could see that we had potential."

"For more than ten years, Sheryl took us under her wing and whipped us into shape."
Everyone laughed. My siblings continued: "To the best of our knowledge Sheryl never actually played as a child, but really just organized other children's play."

"Sheryl supervised adults as well. When our parents went away on vacation, our grandparents used to babysit. Before our parents left, Sheryl protested: 'GREAT! now I have to take care of David and Michelle and Grandma and Grandpa too. It's not fair!!'" 

Everyone, of course, laughed even louder. I laughed too, but there is still some part of me that feels it was unseemly for a little girl to be thought of as so....domineering. Cringe.
        From a very early age, it seems boys are encouraged to take charge and offer their opinions. Teachers seem to interact more with boys, call on boys more frequently, and ask boys more questions.
Boys are also more likely to call out answers (without raising their hands), and when the boys shout out answers the teachers tend to listen. It seems when girls shout out answers, teachers often scold them for breaking the rules and remind them to raise their hands if they want to speak.
        I was recently reminded that these patterns persist even when we are all grown up. I see it all the time! Not so long ago, at a small dinner with other business executives, the guest of honor spoke the entire time without taking a breath.
        This meant that the only way to ask a question or make an observation was to interrupt. 3 or 4 men jumped in, and the guest politely answered their questions before resuming the lecture. At one point, I tried to add something to the conversation and the speaker barked at me with "Let me finish! You people are not good at listening!".
        Eventually, a few more men interjected and the speaker allowed it. Then the only other female executive at the dinner decided to speak up, and of course, the speaker again chastised another women for interrupting.
        After the meal, one of the male CEOs pulled me aside to say that he had noticed that only the women had been silenced. He told me the he empathized, because as a Hispanic, he too had been treated like that, many times.
        The danger goes beyond authority figures silencing female voices. Young women internalize societal cues about what defines 'appropriate' behavior and, in turn, silence themselves. They are rewarded for being 'pretty like mommy' and encouraged to be nurturing like Mommy too. 

        The album 'Free to be....You and Me' was released in 1972 and it had became a staple of my childhood. My favorite song, 'Williams Doll', is about a five-year-old boy who begs his reluctant father to buy him a traditional girl's toy. Almost forty years later, the toy industry remains riddled with stereotypes. *Editors note If little boys play with girl dolls, they may play with girls the same way they play with the dolls, food for thought.*
        Right before Christmax, in 2011, a video featuring a four-year-old girl named Riley went viral. Riley paces in a toy store, upset because companies are trying to 'trick the girls into buying the pink stuff instead of stuff that the boys want to buy, right?'. Right. As Riley reasons "Some girls like superheros, some girls like princesses. Some boys like superheroes, some boys like princesses. So why do all the girls have to buy pink stuff and all the boys have to buy different color stuff'.
        It takes a near act of rebellion for even a 4 year-old to break away from society's expectations.
        William still has no doll, while Riley is drowning in a sea of pink. I now play 'Free to be...You and Me' for my children and hope that if they ever play it for their children, its message will seem quaint.
        The gender stereotypes introduced in childhood are reinforced throughout our lives and become self-fulfilling prophesies. Most leadership positions are held by men, so women do not expect to achieve them, and that becomes one of the reasons they do not. The same can be said for pay. Men generally earn more than women, so people expect women to earn less. And guess what, they do. Compounding the problem is a social-psychological phenomenon called 'stereotype threat'. Social scientists have observed that when members of a group are made aware of a negative stereotype, they are more likely to perform according to that stereotype (same for minorities?).

For example, stereo-typically, boys are better at math and science than girls. When girls are reminded of their gender before a math or science test, even by something as simple as checking off an F (female) or M (male) box at the top of a test, the girls perform worse! Stereotype threat discourages girls and women from entering technical fields and is one of the key reasons that so few study computer science. As a facebook summer intern once told me "In my schools computer science department, there are more Dave's than girls".
        The stereotype of a working woman is rarely attractive. Popular culture has long portrayed successful working women as so consumed by their careers that they have no personal life (think Sigourney Weaver in 'Working Girl' and Sandra Bullock in 'The Proposal'). If a female character divides her time between work and family, she is almost always harried and guilt ridden (think Sarah Jessica Parker in 'I don't know how she does it'). These characteristics have moved beyond fictional worlds. A study found that of Millennial women and men who work in an organization with a woman in a senior role, only about 20% want to emulate their careers.
        This unappealing stereotype is particularly unfortunate since most women have no choice but to remain in the work-force. About 41% of mothers are primary breadwinners and earn the majority of their family's income. Another 23% of mothers are co-breadwinners, contributing at least a quarter of the family's earnings. The number of women supporting families on their own is increasing quickly; between 1973 & 2006, the proportion of families headed by a single mother grew from 1 in 10 to 2 in 10 (or from 10% to 20%). These numbers are dramatically higher in Hispanic and African-American families. 27% of Latino children and 51% of African-American children are being raised by 1 single mother.
        Our country lags considerably behind other countries in efforts to help parents take care of their children (what about in homes, and 'foster care?') and for the parents to stay in the work-force. Of all the industrialized nations in the world, the United States of America is the only one without a paid maternity leave policy. As Ellen Bravo, director of the Family Values @ Work consortium, observed " Women are not thinking about 'having it all', they are worried about 'losing it all' - their jobs, their children's health, their family's financial stability. Because of the regular conflicts that arise between being a good employee and a responsible parent".
        For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst. We are surrounded by headlines and stories that are just warning signs that women 'cannot commit to both families and careers'.         These ideas resonate further ideas that there is a choice to be made, because if people try to be all that they can be, they will be harried and unhappy (*a bit of carrot and stick routine - the articles headline being the stick and the 'what to do' being the carrot).
Framing the issue as 'work-life balance' as if the two are diametrically opposed. Practically, this work-life balance idea ensures that work will always lose out.        Who would choose work over life (obviously someone who understands that 'my life is my work and my work is my life).
        Well, the good news is that women can have both a family along-side a career, additionally these 2 can thrive. In 2009 Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober published 'Getting to 50/50', a comprehensive review of governmental, social science, and original research that led them to conclude that children, parents, and marriages can all flourish when both parents have full careers. The data plainly reveals that sharing financial and child-care responsibilities leads to less guilty Moms, more involved Dads, and thriving children. Professor Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University did a comprehensive review of studies on work-life balance and found that women whom participate in multiple roles actually have lower levels of anxiety and higher levels of mental well-being. Employed women reap rewards including greater financial security, more stable marriages, better health, and in general, an increased life satisfaction.
        It may be less dramatic or humorous to make a movie about a woman who loves both her job and her family, but that would be a better reflection of reality. Portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers should be as lavishly adored as the contrast. Even a portrayal of a happy female professional and just a competent mother is a better stereo-type for us to maintain. The current negative images may make us laugh, but they also make women unnecessarily fearful by presenting life's challenges as insurmountable. Our culture remains baffled: " I don't know how she does it".  Yet we should remember that theater makes its money on tragedy and come-die.

   Moving on.

        Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure (because fear and doubt have killed more dreams than failure ever has). Then there is the holy trinity of fear ; the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter. This is just simple logic based on universal truths.
        Without fear, women can pursue professional success and personal fulfillment and freely choose one, or the other, or both. At facebook, we work hard to create a culture where people are encouraged to take risks. In our offices we have motivational posters that reinforce this attitude. In bright red letters, one poster declares 'Fortune favors the bold' while another speaks to us with 'Proceed and be bold' My favorite reads, 'What would you do if you were not afraid'.

        In 2011, Debora Spar, president of Barnard College, an all-women's liberal arts school in the big apple (New York city), invited me to deliver the schools commencement address. This speech was the first time I openly discussed the leadership ambition gap. Standing on the podium, I felt nervous. I told the members of the graduating class that they should be ambitious not just in pursuing their dreams but in aspiring to become leaders in their fields. I knew this message could be misinterpreted as 'me judging women for not making the same choices that I have'. Nothing could be further from the truth (*farther is for measured distance further is for abstractions pro-tip from ze editor & originally it was further in ze book).

I believe that choice means freedom to arbitrate our choices for everyone & anyone. I believe that that we need to do more to encourage women to reach for leadership roles. If we can not tell women to aim high at a college graduation speech, than where can we?        As I addressed the enthusiastic women, I found myself fighting back tears. I made it through the speech and concluded with this:

(no edits)
        "You are the promise for a more equal world. So my hope for everyone here is that after you walk across this stage, after you get your diploma, after you go out tonight and celebrate hard, you then will lean way in to your career. You will find something you love doing and you will do it with gusto. Find the right career for you and go all the way to the top.
        As you walk off this stage today, you start your adult life. Start out by aiming high. Try and try hard.        Like everyone here, I have great hopes for the members of this graduating class. I hope you find true meaning, contentment, and passion in your life. I hope you navigate the difficult times and come out with greater strength and resolve. I hope you find whatever balance you seek with your eyes wide open. And I hope that you, yes, you - have the ambition to lean in to your career and run the world. Because the world needs you to change it. Women all around the world are counting on you.
        So please ask yourself: What would I do if I weren't afraid? And then go do it.".
        As the graduates were called to the stage to collect their diplomas, I shook every hand. Many stopped to give me a hug. One young women even told me I was the baddest bitch (which, after having checked with someone later, it actually turned out to be a compliment).
        I know my speech was meant to motivate them, but they actually motivated me. In the months that followed, I started thinking that I should speak up more often and more publicly about these issues. I should urge more women to believe in themselves and aspire to lead. I should urge more men to become part of the solution by supporting women in the workforce and at home. And I should not just speak in front of friendly crowds at Barnard. I should seek out larger, possibly less sympathetic audiences. I should take my own advice and be ambitious. 
        Writing this book is not just me encouraging others to lean in. This is me leaning in. Writing this book is what I would do if I were not afraid.

                                 CH  I I 

                           Sit at the Table.

        A few years ago, I hosted a meeting for Treasury secretary Tim Geithner at facebook. We Invited 15 executives from across Silicon Valley for breakfast and a discussion about the economy. Secretary Geithner arrived with four members of his staff, two senior and two junior, and so we all gathered in our one nice conference room at facebook. After the usual milling around, I encouraged the attendees to help themselves to the buffet and take a seat. Our invited guests, mostly men, grabbed plates and food and sat down at the large conference table. Secretary Geithner's team, which was all women, took their food last and sat in chairs off to the side of the room. I motioned for the women to come sit at the table, waving them over so they would feel welcomed. They demurred and remained in their seats.
       The four women had every right to be at this meeting, but because of their seating choices, they seemed like spectators rather than participants. I knew I had to say something. So after the meeting, I pulled them aside to talk. I pointed out that they should have sat at the table even without an invitation, but when publicly welcomed, they most certainly should have joined. At first, they seemed surprised, then they agreed.
         It was a watershed moment for me. A moment when I witnessed how an internal barrier can alter women's behavior. A moment when I realized that in addition to facing institutional obstacles, women face a battle from within. 
         When I had given my TED talk on how women can succeed in the workforce, I told this story to illustrate how women hold themselves back, literally choosing to watch from the sidelines. And yet as disappointed as I was that these women made that choice, I also deeply understood the insecurities that drew them to the side of the room and kept them glued to those chairs.
        My senior year of college, I was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. At the time, Harvard and Radcliffe had separate chapters, thus my ceremony was for women only. The keynote speaker, Dr. Peggy McIntosh from the Wellesley Centers for women, gave a talk called 'Feeling like a Fraud'. She explained that many people, but especially women, feel fraudulent when they are praised for their accomplishments. Think Japanese culture when praises are responded with "oh sensei, I am not worthy, I am grateful for your discussion and I will do even better". 

Instead of feeling worthy of recognition, they feel undeserving and guilty, as if a mistake has been made. Despite being high achievers, even experts in their fields, women can not seem to shake the sense that it is only a matter of time until they are found out for whom they really are, 'impostors with limited skills or abilities'.
        I thought it was the best speech I had ever heard. I was leaning forward in my chair, nodding vigorously. My brilliant and totally-not-a-fraud room-mate Carrie Weber was doing the same thing. At last, someone was articulating exactly how I felt. Every time I was called on in class, I was sure that I was about to embarrass myself. Every time I took a test, I was sure that it had gone badly. Every time I did not embarrass myself, or even excelled, I believed that I had fooled everyone yet again.

One day soon.....the jig would be up.

        At the joint reception that followed the ceremony (an after-party for nerds, so I fit right in) I told one of my male classmates about Dr. McIntosh's fantastic speech explaining how we all feel like frauds. He looked at me, confused, and asked "why would that be interesting?". Carrie and I later joked that the speech to the men was probably something like "How to Cope in a World Where Not Everyone Is as Smart as You"        This phenomenon of capable people being plagued by self-doubt has a name - 'The impostor syndrome, but women tend to experience it more intensely and are even more limited by it (studies show!). Even the wildly successful writer and actress Tina Fey has admitted to these feelings. She once explained to a British newspaper "The beauty of the impostor syndrome is you vacillate between extreme egomania, and a complete feeling of: 'I'm a fraud! Oh God, THEYR ON TOOO ME!!! I AM A FRAUD!'. 

Tina continued

"So you just try to ride the egomania when it comes and enjoy it, and then slide through the idea of fraud. Seriously, I've just realized that almost everyone is a fraud, so I try not to feel to bad about it".

        For women, feeling like a fraud is a symptom of a greater problem. We consistently underestimate ourselves. Multiple studies in multiple industries show that women often judge their own performances as worse than it actually is, while men judge their own performance as better than it actually is. Assessments of students in a surgery rotation found that when asked to evaluate themselves, the female students gave themselves lower scores than the male students even despite faculty evaluations that showed the women outperformed the men. A survey of several thousand potential political candidates revealed that despite having comparable credentials, the men were about 60% more likely to think that they were 'very qualified' to run for political office. A study of close to 1000 Harvard law students found that in almost every category of skills relevant to practicing law, women gave themselves lower scores than men. 

Even worse, when women evaluate themselves in front of other people or in stereo typically male domains, their underestimations can become even more pronounced.
        Ask a man to explain his success and he will typically credit his own innate qualities and skills. Ask a woman the same question and she will attribute her success to external factors, insisting she did well because 'she worked really hard', or 'got lucky' or 'had help from others'. Men and women also differ when it comes to explaining failure. When a male fails, he points to factors like 'I didn't study hard enough', or 'I am not interested in this subject matter'. 

When a woman fails, she is more likely to believe it is due to an inherent lack of ability. And in situations where a man and a woman each receive negative feedback, the womans self-confidence and self-esteem drop to a much greater degree. The internalization of failure and the insecurity it breeds hurts future performance, so this pattern has serious long-term consequences. 
        It's not just women who are tough on themselves. Colleagues and the media are also quick to credit external factors for a woman's achievements. When facebook filed to go public, The New York times ran an article that kindly reminded me and everyone else ,that I...'had been lucky' and 'had powerful mentors along the way'.
        Journalists and bloggers rose up to highlight the double standard, pointing out that the New York times rarely ascribed men's success to having been lucky. But the Times did not say anything that I had not already told myself a thousand times. At every stage of my career, I have attributed my success to luck, hard work, and help from others.
        My insecurity began, as most insecurities do, in high school. I attended a big public high school in Miami, think ' Fast Times at Ridgemont High ' - the school was more concerned with preventing fights in the halls and keeping drugs out of the bathrooms, than with actual academics. 
        Later, when I was accepted into Harvard, many of my high school classmates asked me why I would want to go to a school filled with geeks and nerds. Then they would stop short, remember who they were talking to, and sheepishly walk away without waiting for an answer, realizing that already had it.
        Freshman year of college was a huge shock for me. First semester, I took a course called 'The Concept of the Hero in Hellenic Civilization' which was nicknamed 'Heroes for Zeroes'. Protip * the hero always dies. 
        I did not actually have any interest in studying Greek mythology, but it was the easiest way to fulfill the literature requirement. The professor began the first lecture by asking which students had read these books before. I whispered to my friend next to me "What books?" she replied "The Iliad and The Odyssey, of course". Almost every single hand went up. Not mine. The professor then asked "And who has read these books in the original?" where again, I asked "What original?" and my friend replied "Homeric Greek" A good third of the class kept their hands up. It seemed pretty clear that I was one of the zeroes.
        A few weeks later, my professor of political philosophy assigned a 5 page paper. I was panicked. 5 whole pages! I had only written one paper of that length in high school, and it was a year-long project! How could anyone write 5 pages in just one week? I stayed in every night, plugging away, and based on the time I put in, I should have gotten an A for effort. I got a C. It is virtually impossible to get a C at Harvard if the assignment is turned in. I am not exaggerating, this was the equivalent of a failing grade. I went to see my dorm proctor, who worked at the admissions office. She told me that I had been admitted to Harvard for my personality, not my academic potential. Very comforting indeed.
        I buckled down, worked harder, and by the end of the semester, I learned how to write a 5 page papers. But no matter how well I did academically, I always felt like I was about to get caught for not really knowing anything. It was not until I heard the Phi Beta Kappa speech about self-doubt that it struck me: the real issue was not hat I felt like a fraud, but that I could feel something deeply and profoundly and be completely wrong (about it ?).
        I should have understood that this kind of self-doubt was more common for females from growing up with my brother. David is two years younger than I am and one of the people in the world whom I respect and love the most. At home, he splits child care duties with his wife 50-50; at work, he is a pediatric neurosurgeon whose days are filled with heart-wrenching life-and-death decisions *note from the editor; although if the job was seen as providing aid to help alleviate life threatening physical aliments it would allow for less pressure for a liability law-suite since the fault would be on the diagnosis/disease rather than the surgeons skill and knowledge*.
        So Although we had the same upbringing, David has always been more confident. Once, back in high school, we both had Saturday night dates that canceled on us in the late afternoon. I spent the rest of the weekend moping around the house, wondering what was wrong with me. David laughed off the rejection, announcing "That girl missed out on a great thing" and went off to play basketball with his friends. Luckily, I had my younger sister, wise and empathetic way beyond her years, to help console me.
        A few years later, David joined me at college. When I was a senior and he was a sophomore, we took a class in European intellectual history together. My roommate, Carrie, also took the class, which was a huge help since she was a comparative literature major. Carrie went to all of the lectures and read all 10 of the assigned books, in the original languages (and by then, I knew what those were). I went to almost all of the lectures and read all of the books, in English.
       David went to 2 lectures, read one book, and then marched himself up to our room to get tutored for the final exam. We all sat together for the test, scribbling furiously for three hours in our little blue books.
        When we walked out, we asked one another how it went. I was upset. I had forgotten to connect the Freudian ID to Schopenhauer's conception  of the will. Carrie, too, was concerned and confessed that she had not adequately explained Kant's distinction between the sublime and the beautiful. We turned to my brother. How did he feel about the test? He announced " I got the flat one" We were confused "The flat one?" He said "Yea, the flat A"
        He was right. He did get the flat one. Actually, we all got flat A's on the exam. My brother was not overconfident. Carrie and I were overly insecure.
        These experiences taught me that I needed to make both an intellectual and an emotional adjustment. I learned over time that while it was hard to shake feelings of self-doubt. I could however, understand that there was a thinking distortion. I would never possess my brother's effortless confidence, but I could challenge the notion that I was constantly headed for failure. When I felt like I was not capable of doing something, I'd remind myself that I did not fail all of my exams in college. I did not fail even one. I learned to undistort the distortion. 
        We all know supremely confident people who have no right to feel that way. We also all know people whom could do so much more if only they believed in themselves. Like so many things, a lack of confidence can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I do not know how to convince anyone to believe deep down that they are the best person for the job, not even myself.  To this day, I joke that I wish I could spend a few hours feeling as self-confident as my brother. It must feel so, so good, like receiving a cosmic flat one every day.
        When I do not feel confident, one tactic I have learned is that it sometimes helps to fake it. I, discovered this when I was an aerobics instructor in the 1980s (which meant a silver leotard, leg warmers, and a shiny headband, all of which went perfectly with my big hair). Influenced by the gospel of Jane Fonda, aerobics also meant smiling solidly for a full hour. Some days, the smile came naturally. Other days, I was in a lousy mood and had to fake it. Yet after an hour of forced smiling, I often felt cheerful.
        Many of us have experienced being angry with someone and then having to pretend everything's great in public. My husband, Dave and I have our moments, and just when we are getting into it, it will be time to go to a friend's house for dinner. We put on our 'everything's great smiles' and amazingly after a few hours, it often is.
        Research backs up this 'fake it till you feel it' strategy. One study found that when people assumed a high-power pose (for example, taking up space by spreading their limbs) for just two minutes, their dominance hormone levels (testosterone) went up and their stress hormones levels (cortisol) went down (*dominance dynamics?). As a result, they felt more powerful and in charge and showed a greater tolerance for risk. A simple change in posture led to a significant change in attitude as well.
        I would not suggest that anyone move beyond feeling confident into arrogance or boastfulness. No one likes that in men or in women. But feeling confident, or pretending that you feel confident is necessary to reach for opportunities. It's a cliché, but opportunities are rarely offered; they are seized. During the six and a half years I worked at Google, I hired a team of 4000 employees. I did not know all of them personally, but I knew the top 100 or so.
What I noticed over the years was that for the most part, the men reached for opportunities much more quickly than women.
        When we announced the opening of a new office or the launch of a new project, the men were banging down my door to explain why they should lead the charge. Men were also more likely to chase a growth opportunity even before a new opening was announced. They were impatient about their own development and believed that they were capable of doing more. And they were often right, just like my brother.
        The women, however, were more cautious about changing roles and seeking out new challenges. I often found myself trying to persuade them to work in new areas. I have had countless conversations where women responded to this encouragement by saying " am just not sure I would be good at that" or "that sounds exciting, but I've never done anything like it before" (Gigadity) or "I still have a lot to learn in my current role" I rarely, if ever heard these kinds of comments from men.
        Given how fast the world moves today, grabbing opportunities is more important than even. Few managers have the time to carefully consider all the applicants for a job, much less to convince more reticent people to apply. And increasingly, opportunities are not well defined but, instead, opportunities come from someone jumping in to do something. That something then becomes a job.
      When I first joined facebook, I was working with a team to answer the critical question of how to best grow our business. The conversations were getting heated, with many people arguing their own positions strongly. We ended the week without consensus. Dan Rose, leader of our deals team, spent the weekend gathering market data that allowed us to reframe the conversation in analytics. His efforts broke the logjam. I then expanded Dans responsibilities to include product marketing. Taking initiative pays off. It is hard to visualize someone as a leader if they are always waiting to be told what to do.
        Padmasree Warrior, Cisco's chief technology officer, was asked by the huffington post "What is the most important lesson you have learned from a mistake you have made in the past?" Padmasree responded with " I said no to a lot of opportunities when I was just starting out because I thought, 'that's not what my degree is in or I don't know about that domain'" In retrospect, at a certain point it is your ability to learn quickly and contribute quickly that matters. One of the things I tell people these days is that there is o perfect fit when you are looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have."
        Virginia Rometty, IBM's first female CEO, told the audience at the 2011 Fortune Most powerful women summit that early in her career, she was offered a 'big job'. She worried that she lacked the proper experience and told the recruiter that she needed to think about it. That night, she discussed the offer with her husband, who pointed out "Do you think any man would have ever answered that question that way?".
        Ginni said "What it taught me was you have to be very confident, even though you are so self critical inside about what it is you may or may not know. And that, to me, leads to taking risks.".
        I continue to be alarmed not jut at how we as women fail to put ourselves forward, but also at how we fail to notice and correct for this gap. And that 'we' does include 'me' (you). A few years ago, I gave a talk on gender issues to a few hundred employees at facebook. After my speech, I took questions for as long as time permitted. Later that afternoon, I came back to my desk, where a young woman was waiting to talk to me. She began "I learned something today" she paused a bit and I asked her what, feeling good, as I figured she was about to tell me how my words had touched her. Instead she continued - "I learned to keep my hand up". 
        She explained that toward the end of my talk, I had said that I would take only 2 more questions. I did so, and then she put her hand down, along with all of the other women. But several men kept their hands up. And since hands were still waving in the air, I took more questions, only from the men. Instead of my words touching her, her words hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though I was giving a speech on gender issues, I had been blind to one myself.
       If we want a world with greater equality, we need to acknowledge that women are less likely to keep their hands up. We need institutions and individuals to notice nd correct for this behavior by encouraging, promoting, and championing more women. Women have to learn to keep their hands up, because when they lower them, even managers with the best intentions might not notice.
      When I first started working for Larry Summers, then chief economist at the World Bank, he was married to a tax attorney, Vicki. He was very supportive of Vicki's career and used to urge her to "Bill like a boy". His view was that the men considered any time they spent thinking about an issue, even time in the shower, as billable hours. His wife and her female colleagues, however, would decide that they were not at their best on a given day and discount hours they spent at their desks to be fair to the client.
        Which lawyers were more valuable to that firm? To make his point, Larry told them the story of a renowned Harvard law school professor who was asked by a judge to itemize a bill. The professor responded that he could not because he was so often thinking about two things at once.
        Even now, I'm a long way from mastering the art of feeling confident. In August 2011, Forbes put out its annual 'worlds 100 most powerful women list'. I'm savvy enough to know that the list was not based on a scientific formula and that magazines love to these features because it generates lots of page views as readers click through each name. Still, I was shocked ,no!, horrified to learn that forbes ranked me as the fifth most powerful woman in the world, right after German chancellor, Angela Merkel, secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff and the CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi. This put me ahead of First Lady Michelle Obama and Indian politician Sonia Gandhi. Absurd! My own mother called to say "Well, dear, I do think you are very powerful, but I am not sure you are more powerful than Michelle Obama".

You think?

        Far from feeling powerful, I felt embarrassed and exposed. When colleagues at facebook stopped me in the halls to say congratulations, I pronounced the list 'ridiculous'. When friends posted the link on facebook, I asked them to take it down. After a few days , my longtime executive assistant, Camille Hart, summoned me into a conference room and closed the door. This was serious. She told me that I was handling the forbes thing poorly and that I needed to stop subjecting anyone who brought up the list to a diatribe on its absurdity. I was showing too many people how uncomfortable I felt and revealing my insecurity. Instead, I needed to simply say "thank You".
        We all need colleagues like Camille, who was honest enough to point out my less-than-gracious response. She was right. Whether the list was ridiculous or not, I didn't write it and I didn't have to react negatively to it. I doubt a man would have felt so overwhelmed by others perception of his power.               I know that my success comes from hard work, help from others, and being at the right place at the right time. I feel a deep and enduring sense of gratitude to those who have given me opportunities and support. I recognize the sheer luck of being born into my family in the United States of America rather than one of the many places in the world where women are denied basic rights. I believe that all of us (women and men alike) should acknowledge good fortune and thank the people who have helped us. No one accomplishes anything alone (heck it took an entire empire to put one man on a cross *zing).
        I also know that in order to continue to grow and challenge myself, I have to believe in my own abilities. I still face situations that I fear are beyond my capabilities. I still have days when I feel like a fraud. And I still sometimes find myself spoken over and discounted while men sitting next to me are not. Now I know how to take a deep breath and keep my hand up. I have learned to sit at the table.

     

                                  Cha

                                  2+1

Success                    and                             Likability

        

        Okay, so all a women has to do is ignore society's expectations, be ambitious, sit at the table, work hard, and then it's smooth sailing all the way. What could possibly go wrong?
        In 2003, Columbia business school professor Frank Flynn and New York university professor Cameron Anderson ran an experiment to test perceptions of women and men with-in the workplace. They started with a Harvard business school case study about a real-life entrepreneur named Heidi Roizen. The case described how Roizen became a successful venture capitalist by using her "outgoing personality...and vast personal and professional network that included many of the most powerful business leaders in the technology sector". Flynn and Anderson assigned half of the students to read Heidi's story and gave the other half of the students the same story with just one difference - Heidi was changed to Howard.
        Professors Flynn and Anderson then polled the students about their impressions of Heidi and Howard. The students rated Heidi and Howard as equally competent, which made sense since 'their' accomplishments were completely identical. Yet while students respected both Heidi and Howard, Howard came across as a more appealing colleague. Heidi, on the other hand, was seen as selfish and not 'the type of person you would want to hire or work for'. The same data with a single difference - gender - created vastly different impressions.
        This experiment supports what research has already clearly shown; success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. When a man is successful, he is liked by both men and women. When a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less. This truth is both shocking and unsurprising: shocking because no one would ever admit to stereotyping on the basis of gender and unsurprising because clearly we do.
        Decades of social science studies have confirmed what the Heidi/Howard case study so blatantly demonstrates: we evaluate people based on stereotypes (gender, race, nationality, and age, among others). Our stereotype of men holds that they are providers, decisive, and driven. Our stereotype of women holds that they are caregivers, sensitive, and communal. Because we characterize men and women in opposition to each other, professional achievement and all the traits associated with it get placed in the male column. By focusing on her career and taking a calculated approach to amassing power, Heidi violated our stereotypical expectations of women. Yet by behaving in the exact same manner, Howard lived up to our stereotypical expectations of men. The end result? Liked him, disliked her.
         I believe this bias is at the very core of why women are held back. It is also at the very core of why women hold themselves back. For men, professional success comes with positive reinforcement at every step of the way. For women, even when they are recognized for their achievements, they are often regarded unfavorably. Journalist Shankar Vedantam once cataloged the derogatory descriptions of some of the first female world leaders : 'England's Margaret Thatcher' he wrote was called 'Attila the hen'. Gold Meir, Israel's first female prime minister was 'the only man in the cabinet'. President Nixon called Indira Gandhi, India's first female prime minister 'the old witch' and Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, has been dubbed 'the iron frau'.
      I have seen this dynamic play out over and over. When a woman excels at her job, both female and male coworkers will remark that she may be accomplishing a lot but is 'not well-liked by her peers'. She is probably also 'too aggressive', 'not a team player' 'a bit political' 'can't be trusted' or 'difficult'. At least, those are all things that have been said about me and almost every senior woman I know. The world seems to be asking why we can't be less like Heidi and more like Howard.
         Most women have never heard of the Heidi/Howard study. Most of us are never told about this downside of achievement. Still, we sense this punishment for success. We are aware that when a woman acts forcefully or competitively, she is deviating from expected behavior. If a women pushes to get the job done, if she is highly competent, if she focuses on results rather than on pleasing others, she is acting like a man. And if she acts like a man, people tend to dislike these women. In response to this negative reaction, we temper our professional goals. Author Ken Auletta summarized this phenomenon in the New Yorker when he observed that for women ; "Self-doubt becomes a form of self-defense.".

In order to protect themselves from being disliked, women question their abilities and downplay their achievements, especially in the presence of others. Women like that put themselves down before others can (hopefully, they can own it*).

        During the summer between my first and second year in business school, I had received a letter in the mail congratulating me on becoming a Henry Ford Scholar and for having the highest first-year academic record. The check was for $714.28, an odd number that immediately signaled that several students had split this prize. When we returned to school for our second year, six men let it be known that they had won this award. I multiplied my check by seven and it revealed a nearly round number. Mystery solved. There were seven of us - six men and me...one woman.
      Unlike the other six wieners (gigity), I didn't let my award status become general knowledge. I told only my closet friend, Stephen Paul, and knew he would keep my secret. On the surface, this decision might have worked against me, since grades at Harvard business school are based 50% on class participation. Professors teach 90 minute classes and are not allowed to write anything down so they have to rely on their memory of class discussion.
        When a student makes a comment that others refer to "If I can build on what Tom said' - that helps the professor remember the critical points and who made them. Just as in real life, performance is highly dependent upon the reaction people have to one another. The other six Ford scholars quickly became the most-quoted speakers as their academic standing gave them instant credibility. They also received early job offers from prestigious employers before the official recruiting period even began.
        One day in class, one of the exalted six made a comment that, to my mind, demonstrated that he had not even read the case being discussed. Everyone fawned all over him. I wondered if I was making a huge mistake not letting people know that I was the seventh student. It would have been nice to float through my second year of business school without even reading the material.
        But I never really considered going public. I instinctively knew that letting my academic performance become known was a bad idea. Years later, when I learned about the Heidi/Howard case study, I understood the reason why. Being at the top of the class may have made life easier for my male peers but it would have made my life harder.
          I did not reach this conclusion in a vacuum. All through my life, culturally reinforced signals cautioned me against being branded as too smart or too successful. It started when I was young. As a girl, I knew that being smart is good in lots of ways, but it didn't make me particularly popular or attractive to them boys.
         In school I was called 'the smartest girl in the class'. I hated that description. Who wants to go to the prom with the smartest girl in the class? Senior year, my class voted me 'most likely to succeed' along with a boy. I was not going to take any chances with the prom, so I convinced my friend, who worked on the yearbook, to remove my name from the title of 'most likely to succeed'. I got a prom date who was fun and loved sports. In face, he loved sports so much that two days before the prom, he canceled on me to go to a basketball game saying "I know you'll understand since going to the playoffs is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.". I did not point out that as a high school girl, I thought going to the prom was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Luckily I had found a new date who was less of a sports fan.
        I never really thought about why I went to such efforts to mute my achievements from such a young age. Then, about 10 years after I graduated from business school, I was seated at dinner next to Deborah Gruenfeld, a professor of leadership and organizational behavior at Stanford. Our friendly small talk quickly turned into an intense discussion. Having studied this issue (of muting ones own achievement), professor Gruenfeld was able to explain the price women pay for success. She said "Our entrenched cultural ideas associate men with leadership qualities and women with nurturing qualities and put women in a double blind, we believe that women are not only nurturing but that they should be nurturing above all else. When a woman does anything that signals she might not be a nice pleasant person, first and foremost, it creates a negative impression and makes us uncomfortable.".
       Let's recap a bit, if a woman is competent, she does not seem nice enough. If a woman seems really nice, she is considered more nice than competent. Since people want to hire and promote those who are both competent and nice, this creates a huge stumbling block for women. Acting in stereo-typically feminine ways makes it difficult to reach for the same opportunities as men, but defying expectations and reaching for those opportunities leads to being judged as undeserving and selfish.
        Nothing, nothing has changed since highschool; intelligence and success are not clear paths to popularity at any age. This complicates everything, because at the same time that women need to sit at the table and own their success, doing so causes them to be liked less.
        Most people, myself included, really want to be liked, and not just because it feels good. Being liked is also a key factor in both professional and personal success. A willingness to make an introduction or advocate for or promote someone depends upon having positive feelings about that person. We need to believe in their ability to do the job and get along with everyone while doing the job. That is why, instinctively, many of us feel pressure to mute our accomplishments.
        In October 2011, Jocelyn Holdfein, one of the engineering directors at facebook, held a meeting with our female engineers where she encouraged them to share the progress they had made on the products they were building. Silence. No one wanted to toot their (her) own horn. Who would want to speak up when self-promoting women are disliked? Jocelyn switched her approach. Instead of asking the women to talk about themselves, she asked them to tell one anothers stories. The exercise became communal, which put everyone at ease.
        Owning one's success is key to achieving more success. Professional advancement depends upon people believing that an employee is contributing to good results. Men can comfortably claim credit for what they do as long as they don't veer into arrogance. For women, taking credit comes at a real social and professional cost. In fact, a woman who explains why she is qualified or mentions previous success in a job interview can lower her chances of getting hired.
        As if this double bind were not enough to navigate, gendered stereotypes can also lead to women having to do additional work without additional reward. When a man helps a colleague, the recipient feels indebted to him and is highly likely to return the favor. But when a woman helps out, the feeling of indebtedness is weaker. She is communal, right? She wants to help others. Professor Flynn calls this the 'gender discount problem', and it means that woman are paying a professional penalty for their presumed desire to be communal. On the other hand, when a man helps a coworker, it is considered an imposition and he is compensated with more favorable performance evaluations and reawrds like salary increases and bonuses. Even more frustrating, when a woman declines to help a colleague, she often receives less favorable reviews and fewer rewards. But a man who declines to help ? He pays no penalty!.
        Because of these unfair expectations, women find themselves in 'damned if they do and doomed if they don't' situations. This is especially true when it comes to negotiations concerning compensation, benefits, titles, and other perks. By and large, men negotiate more than women. A study that looked at the starting salaries of students graduating with a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon university found that 57% of the male students, but one 7% of the female students, tried to negotiate for a higher offer on their first job offerings. 
         Instead of blaming women for not negotiating more, we should recognize that women often have good cause to be reluctant to advocate for their own interests : because doing so can easily backfire.                There is little downside when negotiate for themselves. People expect to advocate on their own behalf, point out their contributions, and be recognized and rewarded for them. For men, there is truly no harm in asking. Since women are expected to be concerned with others, when they advocate for themselves or point to their own value, both men and women react unfavorably.
       Interestingly, women can negotiate as well as or even more successfully than men when negotiating for others (such as their company or a colleague). Because in these cases, their advocacy does not make them appear self-serving. However, when a woman negotiates on her own behalf, she violates the perceived gender norm. Both male and female colleague often resist working with a woman who has negotiated for a higher salary because she is seen as more demanding than a woman who refrained from negotiations.
       Even when a woman negotiates successfully for herself, she can pay a longer-term cost in goodwill and farther advancement. Regrettably, all women are Heidi. Try as we might, we just cannot be a Howard.

        When I was negotiating with facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for my compensation, he made me an offer that I thought was fair. We had been having dinner several nights a week (no gigities - out of respect) for more than a month and a half, discussing facebooks mission and his vision for the future. I was ready to accept the job. No I was DYING to accept the job. My husband, Dave kept telling me to negotiate, but I was afraid of doing anything that might botch the deal. I could play hardball, but then maybe Mark would not want to work with me. Was it worth it when I knew that ultimately I was going to accept the offer?
        I concluded that negotiation was not important to this job offer! But right before I was about to say yes, my exasperated broth-in-law, Marc Bodnick, blurted out "Dammit Sheryl! Why are you going to make less than any man would make to do the same job!?"
        My brother-in-law did not know the details of my deal. His point was simply that no man at my level would consider taking the FIRST OFFER. This was motivating. I went back to Mark and said that I could not accept, but I prefaced it by telling him "Of course you realize that you are hiring me to run your deal teams, so you want me to be a good negotiator. This is the only time you and I will ever be on opposite sides of the table" Then I negotiated hard (gi...shhhhh), followed by a nervous night wondering if I had blown it (:O). But Mark called me the next day. He resolved the gap by improving my offer, extending the terms of my contract from four to five years and allowing me to buy into the company as well. His creative solution not only closed the deal, but also set up up for a longer-term alignment of interest.

        The goal of a successful negotiation is to achieve our objectives and continue to have people like us. Professor Hannah Riley Bowles, (whom studies gender and negotiations at Harvard's kennedy school of government) believes that women can increase their chances of achieving a desired outcome by doing two things in combination.

First, a women must come across as being nice, concerned about others (empathetic) and 'appropriately' female. When women take a more instrumental approach (this is what I want and deserve) people react far more negatively.

There is a saying; 'Think globally, act locally'. When negotiating, 'think personally, act communally'. I have advised many women to preface negotiations by explaining that they know that women often get paid less than men so they are going to negotiate rather than accept the original offer. By doing so, women position themselves as connected to a group and not just out for themselves; in effect, they are negotiating for all women. And as silly as it sound, pronouns matter.
         Whenever possible, women should substitute 'we' for 'I'. A woman's request will be better received if she asserts: "We had a great year" as opposed to "I had a great year".

         A communal approach is not enough. 

The second thing professor Bowls says a women must do is to provide a legitimate explanation for the negotiation. Men don't have to legitimize their negotiations; they are expected to look out for themselves. Women, however, have to justify their requests. One way of doing this is to suggest that someone more senior encouraged the negotiation (my manager suggested I talk with you about my compensation) or to cite industry standards (my understanding is that jobs that involve this level of responsibility are compensated in this range). Still, every negotiation is unique, so women must adjust their approach accordingly.
        Telling a current employer about an offer from another company is a common tactic but works for men more easily than it works for women. Men are allowed to be focused on their own achievements, while loyalty is expected from a woman. Also, just being nice is not a winning strategy. Nice sends a message that the woman is willing to sacrifice pay to be liked by others. This is why a woman needs to combine niceness with insistence, a style that Mary Sue Coleman (president of the university of Michigan) calls 'relentlessly pleasant'.

This method requires smiling frequently, expressing appreciation and concern, invoking common interests, emphasizing larger goals, and approaching the negotiation as solving  problem as opposed to taking a critical stance. Most negotiations involve drawn-out, successful moves, so women need to stay focused....and smile (like during aerobics !).
        No wonder women do not negotiate as much as men. It is like trying to cross a minefield backwards in high heels. So what should we women do? Should we play by the rules that others have created? Should we figure out a way to put on a friendly expression while not being too nice, displaying the right levels of loyalty and using 'we' language ?
I understand the paradox of advising women to change the world by adhering to biased rules and expectations. I know it is not a perfect answer but a means to a desirable end.
         It is also true, as any good negotiator knows, that having a better understanding of the other side leads to a superior outcome. So at the very least, women can enter these negotiations with the knowledge that showing concern for the common good, even as they negotiate for themselves, will strengthen their position.
        In addition, there are huge benefits to communal effort in and of itself. By definition, all organizations consist of people working together. Focusing on the team leads to improve results for the simple reason that well functioning groups are stronger than individuals.
Teams that work together well outperform those that do not work together well. And success feels better when it is shared with others. So perhaps one positive result of having more women on top (gigadty) is that our leaders will have been trained to care more about the well-being of others. 
          My hope, of course, is that we won't have to play by these archaic rules forever and that eventually we can all just be ourselves. 

*So in other words, that our superficial public persona can just bugger off and die and we are left with a true-honest-to God public representation of whom we are, individually.*

        We still have a long way to go. In November 2011, San Francisco magazine ran a story on female entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and illustrated it by superimposing the featured women's heads onto male bodies. The only body type they could imagine for successful entrepreneurship was wearing a tie or a hoodie. Our culture needs to find a robust image of female success that is first, not male, and second, not a white woman on the phone, holing a crying baby. In fact, these 'bad mother with a briefcase' images are so prevalent that writer Jessica Valenti collected them in a funny and poignant blog post called 'Sad White Babies with Mean Feminist Mommies'.
        Until we can get there, I fear that women will continue to sacrifice being liked for being successful. When I first arrived at facebook, a local blog devoted some serious pixels to trashing me. They posted a picture of me and superimposed a gun in my hand. They wrote 'liar' in big red letters across my face. Anonymous sources labeled me 'two faced' and 'about to ruin facebook forever' I cried.

   I lost some sleep.

        I worried that my career was over. Then I told myself it didn't matter. Then everyone else told me it did not matter, which only reminded me that they were reading these awful comments too. I fantasized about all sorts of rejoinders, but in the end, my best response was to ignore the attacks and do my job.              Arianna Huffington (founder of 'The huffington post) believes that learning to withstand criticism is a necessity for women. Early in her career, Arianna realized that the cost of speaking her mind was that she would inevitably offend someone. She does not believe it is realistic or even desirable to tell women not to care when we are attacked. Her advice is that we should let ourselves react emotionally and feel whatever anger or sadness being criticized evokes in us. And then we should quickly move on.
        She points to children as her role model. A child can cry one moment and run off to play the next. For me, this has been good advice. I wish I were strong enough to ignore what others say, but experience tells me I often can not. Allowing myself to feel upset, even really upset, and then move on, that's something I can do.
        It also helps to lean on one another. We can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that the attacks are not personal. We can joke, as Marlo Thomas did when he said "A man has to be Joe McCarthy in order to be called ruthless. All a woman needs to do is put you on hold.".
Real change will come when powerful women are less of an exception. It is easy to dislike senior women because there are so few. If women held 50% of the top jobs, it would just not be possible to dislike that many people.
        Sharon Meers was motivated to write 'Getting to 50/50' after observing this kind of tipping point firsthand. In the late 1990s. Amy Goodfriend was chosen to lead Goldman Sach's U.S. Derivatives team (and later became the first female partner in the equities division). Amy Goodfriend being chosen to lead was a seismic event and caused 4 senior men to quit the group. Amy faced a lot of skepticism and criticism. Before Sharon joined the team, a male friend told her "Amy's a bitch, but an honest bitch".
Sharon found that Amy was a great boss, and over the next few years, the derivatives group was transformed under her leadership. Once there were more than 5 female managing directors in the division - a critical mass - the negativity and grumbling began to die down. It became normal to have female leaders, and by 2000, the stigma seemed to have dissipated.
         Sadly, when those senior women later left and the critical mass shrank, the faith that women could be as successful as their male peers shrank with it (ungigidty?).
         Everyone needs to get more comfortable with female leaders (gigity~!) - including female leaders themselves (GIGITY). Since 1999, editor Pattie Sellers of 'fortune magazine' has overseen an annual conference that she calls 'the most powerful women summit'.
On my first night there in 2005, I was in the lounge with 2 close friends (Diana Farrell, then head of Mckinsey's global institute and Sue Decker, then CFO of Yahoo!). We were talking about the name of the conference, and I mentioned that when I saw the title on googles corporate calendar, I ran to find Camille to ask her to change the name to 'fortune women's conference'. Diana and Sue laughed and said that they had done the exact same thing.
        Later, Pattie explained that she and her colleagues chose this name on purpose to force women to confront their own power and feel more comfortable with that word. I still struggle with this. I am fine applying the word 'powerful' to other women - the more the better - but I still shake my head in denial when it is applied to me. The nagging voice in the back of my head reminds me, as it did in business school "Don't flaunt your success miss, or ever let people know about your success. If you do, people won't like you".

         Less than six months after I started at facebook, Mark and I sad down for my first formal review. One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back. He said that "When you want to change things, you can't please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren't making enough progress".

Mark was right. 

                                  CHAP

                                  FOUR

 

               It is a jungle gym not a laddeR

         About a month after I joined facebook, I got a call from Lori Goler, a highly regarded senior director of marketing at eBay. I knew Lori a bit socially, but she made it clear this was a business call and cut to the chase. Her reason for calling was "I want to apply to work with you at facebook, so I thought about calling you and telling you all of the things I'm good at and all of the things I like to do. Then I figured that everyone else doing that. So instead, I want to ask you: what is your biggest problem, and how can I solve it?".
         My jaw hit the floor. I had hired thousands of people over the previous decade and no one had ever said anything remotely like that. People usually focus on finding the right role for themselves, with the implication that their skills will help the company. Lori put facebook's needs front and center. It was a killer approach. I responded "Recruiting is my biggest problem. And, yes, you can solve it.".
        Lori never dreamed she would work in recruiting, but she jumped right in. She even agreed to drop down a level, since this was a new field for her and she was willing to trade seniority for acquiring new skills. Lori did a great job running recruiting and within months was promoted to her current job, leading 'People@facebook'. When I asked her recently if she wanted to go back to marketing someday, she responded that she believes human resources allows her to have a greater overall impact.

           The most common metaphor for careers is a ladder, but this concept no longer applies to most workers. As of 2010 the average American had eleven jobs from the ages of 18 to 46 alone.
This means that the days of joining an organization or corporation and staying there to climb that one ladder are long gone. Lori often quotes Pattie Sellers, who conceived a much better metaphor; "Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder.".
        As Lori describes it, ladders are limiting, people can move up or down, on or off. Jungle gyms offer more creative exploration. There is only one way to get to the top of a ladder, but there are many ways to get to the top of a jungle gym. The jungle gym model benefits everyone, but especially women who might be starting careers, switching careers, getting blocked by external barriers, or re-entering the workforce after taking time off. The ability to forge an unique path with occasional dips, detours and even dead ends presents a better chance for fulfillment. Plus, a jungle gym provides great views for many people, not just those at the top. On a ladder most climbers are stuck staring at the butt of the person above (gigidty).
        A jungle gym scramble is the best description of my career. Younger colleagues and students frequently ask me how I planned my path. When I tell them that I did not plan it, they usually react with surprise followed by relief. They seem encouraged to know that careers do not need to be mapped out from the start. This is especially comforting in a tough market where job seekers often have to accept what is available and hope that it points in a desirable direction. We all want a job or a role that truly excites and engages us (gigidty). This search requires both focus and flexibility, so I recommend adopting two concurrent goals; a long-term dream and an 18-month plan.

        *Note from the editor, I feel that there is much confusion between a paycheck, a job, and a career. Personally, I doughnut care for money and a job for me is just something to do, something that defines who I am.

        I could never have connected the dots from where I started to where I am today. For one thing, Mark Zuckerberg was only 7 years old when I graduated from college.
        Also, back then, technology and I did not exactly have a great relationship. I used Harvard's computer system only once as an undergraduate, to run regressions for my senior thesis on the economics of spousal abuse. The data was stored on large, heavy magnetic tapes that I had to lug in big boxes across campus, cursing the entire way and arriving in a sweaty mess at the sole computer center, which was populated exclusively with male students. I then had to stay up all night spinning the tapes to input the data. When I tried to execute my final calculations. I took down the entire system. That's right. Years before Mark famously crashed that same Harvard system. I beat him to it.
        When I graduated from college, I had only the vaguest notion of where I was headed. This confusion was a deep contrast to my fathers clear conviction of what he wanted to do from a young age. When my dad was 16, he felt a sharp abdominal pain during a basketball practice. My grandmother, a good jewish mother that she was, assumed it was hunger and fed him a big dinner. That made it worse. He ended up in the hospital, where he was diagnosed with acute appendicitis, but because he had eaten, they could not operate for 12 excruciating hours. The next morning, a surgeon removed his appendix and, along with it, the pain. My father chose his career that day, deciding that he would become a physician so he could help ease other people suffering (*a buddhist also has the goal of easing the worlds suffering suffering).
        My mother shared my father's desire to help others. She was only 11 when she heard her rabbi give a sermon on the importance of civil rights and tikkun olam, a hebrew phrase that means 'repairing the world'. She responded to the call, grabbing a tin can and knocking on doors to support civil rights workers in the south. She has remained a passionate volunteer and human rights activist ever since. I grew up watching my mother working tirelessly on behalf of persecuted jews in the soviet union. She and her friend Margery Sanford would write heartfelt appeals calling for the release of political prisoners.
In the evenings, my dad would join them and thanks to the collective efforts of concerned people all over the world, many lives were saved.

        Throughout my childhood, my parents emphasized the importance of pursuing a meaningful life. Dinner discussions often centered on social injustice and those fighting to make the world a better place (*figthing is not the proper way to peace). As a child, I never thought about what I wanted to be, but I thought a lot about what I wanted to do. As sappy as it sounds, I hoped to change the world. My sister and brother both became doctors, and I always believed I would work at a nonprofit or in government. That was my dream.
        While I do not believe in mapping out each step of a career, I do believe it helps to have a long-term dream or goal. A long term dream does not have to be realistic or even specific. It may reflect the desire to work in a particular field or to travel throughout the world. Maybe the dream is to have professional autonomy or a certain amount of free time. Maybe it is to make something lasting or win a coveted prize.
        Some goals require more traditional paths; anyone who aspires to become a supreme court justice should probably start by attending law school. Even a vague goal can provide direction, a far-off guidepost to move toward (like a light house!). With an eye on my childhood dream, the first job I took out of college was at the world bank as a research assistant to Larry Summers, who was serving a term as chief economist. Based in Washington D.C. The banks mission is to reduce global poverty. I spent my first nine months in the stacks of the banks library on the corner of 19th and Pennsylvania looking up facts and figures for Larry's papers and speeches. Larry then generously arranged for me to join an India health field mission to get a closer look at what the bank actually did.
        Flying to India took me into an entirely different world. The team was working to eradicate leprosy, which was endemic in Indias most remote and poorest regions. The conditions were appalling. Due to the stigma of the disease, patients were often exiled from their villages and ended up lying on dirt floors in awful places that passed for clinics. Facts and figures could never have prepared me for this reality (but video games could have*). I have the deepest respect for people whom provide hands-on help to those in crises. It is the most difficult and selfless work in the world.

        I returned to D.C. With a plan to attend law school, but Lant Pritchett, an economist in Larry's office who has devoted his life to the study of poverty, persuaded me that business school would be a better alternative. I headed back to Cambridge. I tried to stay socially conscious by joining the highly unpopular nonprofit club. I also spent my second year studying social marketing - how marketing can be used to solve social problems with professor Kash Rangan. One of the cases we worked on concerned the shortage of organ donations, which results in 18 deaths each day in the United States of America alone. I will never forget this case, and 17 years later facebook worked with organ registries around the world to launch a tool to encourage donor registration.
        After business school, I took a job as a consultant at Mckinsey & Company in Los Angeles. The work never entirely suited me, so I stayed for only a year and then moved back to D.C. To join Larry. At first, I served as his special assistant. Then, when he was named secretary, I became his chief of staff. My job consisted of helping Larry manage the operations of the department and its 14,000,000,000$ budget (14 billion). It gave me the opportunity to participate in economic policy at both a national and an international level. I also ran point on some smaller projects, including the administration's proposal to promote the development of vaccines for infectious diseases.
        During my four years at the treasury of the United States of America. I witnessed the first technology boom from a distance. Its impact was obvious and appealing even beyond being able to wear jeans to work. Technology was transforming communication and changing lives not just in the Unites States of America and developed countries, but everywhere. My longer-term dream instinct kicked in. When president Clinton's administration ended. I was out of a job and decided to move to Silicon Valley. In retrospect, this seems like a shrewd move, but in 2001, it was questionable at best.
        The tech bubble had burst, and the industry was still reeling from the aftershocks. I gave myself four months to find a job but hoped it would take fewer. It took almost a year.
        My Silicon Valley job search had some highs, like getting to meet my business crush, eBay CEO Meg Whitmen (gigidty). It also had some lows, like meeting with a high level executive who started my interview by stating that her company would never even consider hiring someone like me because government experience could not possibly prepare anyone to work in the tech industry. It would have been so cool to have thanked her for being honest and to have walked out of her office. But alas, I was never cool. I sat there hemming and hawing until every last molecule of oxygen had been sucked from the room. True to her word, she never even considered hiring me.
       Fortunately, not everyone shared her view. Eric Schimdt and I had met several times during my treasury years, and I went see him just after he became CEO of the then relatively unknow google. After several rounds of interviews with googles founders, they offered me a job. My bank account was diminishing quickly, so it was time to get back to paid employment, and fast. In typical, and yes, annoying MBA fashion, I made a spreadsheet and listed my various opportunities in the rows and my selection criteria in the columns. I compared the roles, the level of responsibility, and so on. My heart wanted to join google in its mission to provide the world with access to information, but in the spreadsheet game, the google job fared the worst by far.
        I went back to Eric and explained my dilemma. The other companies were recruiting me for real jobs with teams to run and goals to hit. At google, I would be the first 'business unit manager', which sounded great except for the glaring fact that google had no business units and therefore nothing to actually manage. Not only was the role lower in level than my other options, but it was entirely unclear what the job actually was, in the first place.
        Eric responded with perhaps the best piece of career advice that I have ever heard. He covered my spreadsheet with his hand and told me not to be an idiot (also a great piece of advice). Then he explained that only one criterion mattered when picking a job -fast growth -. When companies grow quickly, there are more things to do, than there are people to do them. When companies grow more slowly or stop growing, there is less to do and too many people to not be doing them. Politics and stagnation set it, and everyone falters. He told me "If you are offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask what seat, you just get on.". I made up my mind that instant. Google was tiny and disorganized, but it was a rocket ship. Even more important to me, it was a rocket ship with a mission I believed in deeply.
        Over the years, I have repeated Eric's advice to countless people, encouraging them to reduce their career spreadsheets to one column: potential for growth. Of course, not everyone has the opportunity or the desire to work in an industry like high tech. But within any field, there are jobs that have more potential for growth than others. Those in more established industries can look for the rocket ships within their companies, divisions or teams that are expanding. And in careers like teaching or medicine, the corollary is to seek out positions where there is a high demand for those skills (ie; move to a city that requires doctors or teachers). For example, in my brother's field of pediatric neurosurgery, there are some cities with too many physicians, while others have too few. My brother has always elected to work were his expertise would be in demand so he can have the greatest impact.
        Just as I believe everyone should have a longer-term dream, I also believe everyone should have an 18 month plan. I say 18 because 2 years seems too long, and one year seems too short, but it does not have to be any exact amount of time. Typically, my 18 month plan sets goals on 2 fronts. First and most important, I set targets for what my team can accomplish. Employees who concentrate on results and impact are the most valuable, like Lori, who wisely focused on solving facebook recruiting problem before focusing on herself. This is not just thinking communally - the expected and often smart choice for a woman - but simply, just good business.
        Second I try to set more personal goals for learning new skills in the next 18 months. It is often painful, but I ask myself 'how can I improve?'. If I am afraid to do something, it is usually because I am not good at it or perhaps am too scared even to try. After working at google for more than 4 years, managing well over half of the companys revenues, I was embarrassed to admit that I had never negotiated a business deal. Not one. So I gathered my courage and came clean to my boss, Omid Kordestani. Omid was willing to give me a chance to run a small deal team.         In the very first deal I attempted, I almost botched the whole thing by making an offer to our potential partner before fully understanding their business. Fortunately, my team included a talented negotiator, Shailesh Rao, who stepped in o teach me the obvious: letting the other side make the first offer is often crucial to achieving favorable terms.
        Everyone has room to improve. Most people have a style in the workplace that overshoots in one direction, too aggressive or too passive, too talkative or too shy. In that first deal, I said to much. This was not a shock to anyone who knows me. Once I identified this weakness, I sought help to correct it. I turned to Maureen Taylor, a communications coach, who gave me an assignment. She told me that for one week I could not give my opinion unless asked. It was one of the longest weeks of my life. If I had bitten my tongue each time I started to express my opinion, I would have had no tongue left.
        Trying to overcorrect is a great way to find middle ground. In order for me to speak the right amount in a meeting, I have to feel as if I am saying very little. People who are shy will have to feel like they are saying way too much. I know a woman who naturally talks softly and forces herself to 'shout' in business meeting just to speak at an average volume. Overriding our natural tendencies is very difficult. In all the years I have been trying, I can only think of a few times when someone said to me "Sheryl, I wish you had spoken up more in that meeting"
Omid did it once and I hugged him.
        Eric turned out to be absolutely right about google, and I will always be grateful to him and to Larry Page and Sergey Brin for taking a chance on me. My 18 month plan at the company extended into a 6 and a half years, and I learned more than I ever could have hoped while working with true visionaries. Eventually I felt that it was time to make a move on the jungle gym.
         In my personal life, I am not someone who embraces uncertainty. I like things to be in order. I file documents in colored folders (yes still) and my enthusiasm for reorganizing my closet continually baffles Dave. In my professional life, I have learned to accept uncertainty and even embrace it. Risk and a great deal of luck landed me at google. That worked out so well that I decided to embrace risk again, which led me to facebook. At the time, other companies were willing to hire me as CEO, but I joined facebook as COO. At first, people questioned why I would take a 'lower lever' job working for a 23 year old. No one asks me that anymore. As I did when I joined google, I prioritized potential for fast growth and the mission of the company above title.
        I have seen both men and women miss out on great opportunities by focusing to much on career levels. Like a friend of mine that had been working as a lawyer for 4 years when she realized that instead of shooting for partner, she'd rather join a company in a sales and marketing role and one of her clients was willing to hire her in this new capacity but wanted her to start at the ground level. Since she could afford the temporary pay cut, I urged her to make the jump, but she decided against taking a job that put her 'back 4 years'. I understood how painful it was for her to lose hard-earned ground. Still, my argument was that if she was going to work for the next 30 years, what difference does going 'back' 4 years really make? If the other path made her happier and offered her a chance to learn new skills, that meant she was actually constantly moving forward.
        Like this, and in many more cases, women need to be more open to taking risks with their careers. When I left google to join facebook, as a percentage of my team, fewer women tried to follow me. As they had been all along, the men were more interested in new and, as we say in tech, 'higher beta opportunities', where the risks were great but the potential rewards even greater.
Many of the women on my team eventually showed interest in joining facebook, but not until a few years later, when the company was more established. The cost of stability, is often diminished opportunities for growth.
        Of course, there are times in life when being risk averse is a good thing; adolescent and adult males drown in much greater numbers than adolescent and adult females. In business though, being risk averse can result in stagnation. An analysis of senior corporate management appointments found that women are significantly more likely than men to continue to perform the same function even when they take on new duties. When female managers move up, they are more likely to do so internally, instead of switching to a different company. At times staying in the same functional area and in the same organization creates inertia and limits opportunity to expand. Seeking out diverse experiences is useful preparation for leadership.
        I understand the external pressures that force women to play it safe and stay put. Gender stereo-types can make it hard to move into positions traditionally held by men. Women are also more likely to accommodate a partner's career than a man to accommodate a woman's. A job change that includes moving to another city may be a nonstarter for a woman in a relationship.

The result is the unfortunate tautology that the tendency to stay put leads to staying put.

        Being risk averse in the workplace can also cause women to be more reluctant to take on challenging tasks. In my experience, more men look for stretch assignments and take on high-visibility projects, while more women hang back. Research suggests that this is particularly true for women in environments that emphasize individual performance or when women are working closely with men.
         One reason women avoid stretch assignments and new challenges is that they worry too much about whether they currently have the skills they need for a new role. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, since so many abilities are acquired on the job. An internal report at hewlett-packard revealed that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100% of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60% of the requirements. This difference has a huge ripple effect. Women need to shift from thinking 'I am not ready to do that' to thinking 'I want to do that' (gigity) �and 'I'll learn by doing it' (g).
        My first day at work at the world bank, Larry Summers asked me to perform some calculations. I was at a loss on how to proceed, so I turned to Lant Pritchett for help. Who said "Just put it into Lotus 1-2-3" I told him that I didn't know how to do that. He exclaimed "Wow! I can't believe you've gotten this far or even how you can understand basic economics without knowing how to use Lotus".
I went home convinced that I was going to get fired. The next day, Lant sat me down. My heart pounding. But instead of firing me, he taught me how to use the program. That is a great boss.

        Women are also more reluctant to apply for promotions even when deserved, often believing that good job performance will naturally lead to rewards (arrogance?). Carlo Frohlinger and Deborah Kolb, (founders of 'negotiating women inc.) describe this as the 'Tiara syndrome', where women 'expect that if they keep doing their job well someone will notice them and place a tiara on their heads'. In a perfect meritocracy, tiaras would be doled out to the deserving, but I have yet to see one floating around an office. Hard work and results should be recognized by others, but when they are not, advocating for oneself becomes necessary. As discussed earlier, this must be done with great care. 

Yet, it must be done.

        Taking risks, choosing growth, challenging ourselves, and asking for promotions (with smiles on our faces, of course) are all important elements of managing a career. One of my favorite quotes come from author Alice Walker, who observed "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any". Do not wait for power to be offered, like that stupid tiara, it might never even materialize, and anyways who wears a tiara on a jungle gym anyways ?!

                          Chapt - #Five

                     Are you my Mentor?

         When I was a child, one of my favorite books was 'are you my mother?'. It is the story of a baby bird that emerges from its shell to discover an empty nest. The hatchling heads off in search of its missing mother, asking a kitten, a hen, a dog, and a cow the burning question: "Are you my mother". Each animal responded with a "No". 

The hatchling eventually grows more desperate, eventually shouting "are you my mother?" at a car, a boat, a plane, and even a steam shovel's jaws. The hatchling appears doomed until, miraculously, the shovel lifts the bird back to its nest. The mother returns and the hatchling announces "You are a bird, and you are my mother!".
        This childrens book poignantly mirrors the professional question "are you mentor?". If someone has to ask the question, the answer is probably no. When someone finds the right mentor, it is obvious. The question becomes a statement. Chasing or forcing that connection rarely works, and yet I see women attempt this all the time. When I give speeches, or attend meetings, a startling number of women introduce themselves and, in the same breathe, ask me to be their mentor. I cannot recall a single man asking me to do the same (although men have asked me to mentor their wives or girlfriends).
        The question is a total mood killer, the equivalent of turning to a pensive date and asking, 'what are you thinking about, how about now, now?'. Every senior woman I have talked to about this deluged with the same request. Their reaction is unanimous: "Oh, I never know what to say when people I don't know ask me to be their mentor.". The interaction is flattering, but awkward. Even media mogul Oprah Winfrey, who has taught so much to an entire generation, admits that she feels uncomfortable when someone asks her to be a mentor. She once explained "I mentor when I see something and say 'I want to see that grow.'".
        In part, we've brought this on ourselves. For the past decade, talk of mentorship and sponsorship has been topic number one at many a womens career seminar. It is the focus of many blogs, newspaper articles, and research reports. This leads many young women with a response to the often repeated advice that if they want to scale the corporate ladder, they need to find mentors (people whom will advise them, well) as well as sponsors (people whom will use their influence to advocate for them). Now, of course the difference between apprentice and mentor is left for open discussion.
        The emphasis on finding a mentor became especially clear to me when I went back to speak at Harvard business school in the spring of 2011. I was invited by dean Nitin Nohria, who joined me onstage and conducted the interview. His first question centered on facebook and what it was like to work for Mark. I told him that I loved it, except on days when co-workers said things like "Sheryl, can you look at this? We need to know what old people will think of this feature." We discussed the Arab Spring and a slew of other timely topic. Dean Nohria then asked me a question about women in the workforce. I am not sure what possessed me, but I turned to look at the audience, paused, and answered with brutal honesty. "If current trends continue, 15 years from today, about 1/3 of the women in this audience will be working full-time and almost all of you will be working for the guy you are sitting next to.
        Dead silence in the large auditorium. I continued "I'm sorry if this sounds harsh or surprises anyone, but this is where we are. If you want the outcome to be different, you will have to do something about it.".        On that strained note, dean Nohria ended the interview and turned to the audience for a Q&A. A number of men leapt to the microphone and posed thoughtful, big-picture questions like "What did you learn at google that you are applying at facebook ?". And "How do you run a platform company and ensure stability for your developers ?". Then 2 women rose to the microphone. The first asked "Do you think it's okay to work for a company that competes with the company you worked for before business school?". The second lady asked "How can I get a mentor". My heart sank.
        The men were focusing on how to manage a business and the women were focusing on how to manage a career. The men wanted answers and the women wanted permission and help. I realized that searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent of waiting for 'prince charming'. We all grew up on the fairy tale 'sleeping Beauty' which instructs women that if they just wait for their prince to arrive, they will be kissed and whisked away on a white horse to live happily every after. Now young women are told that if they can just find the right mentor, they will be pushed up the ladder and whisked away to the corner office to live happily ever after.

Once again, we are teaching women to be too dependent on others.

        To be clear, the issue is not whether mentorship is important. It is important! Mentorship and sponsorship are crucial for career progression. Both men and women with sponsors are more likely to ask for stretch assignments and pay raises than their peers of the same gender without sponsors. Unfortunately for women, men often have an easier time acquiring and maintaining these relationships. One recent study shows that men are significantly more likely than women to be sponsored and that those with sponsors are more satisfied with their rates of advancement.
        Because it is harder for young women to find mentors and sponsors, they are taking a more active role in seeking them out. And while normally I applaud assertive behavior, this energy is sometimes misdirected. No matter how crucial these connections are, they probably won't develop from asking a virtual stranger "will you be my mentor?".

I find that the strongest relationships spring out of a real and often earned connection felt by both sides.

        I have been lucky to have strong mentors and sponsors over the course of my career. The acknowledgments in this book include a long list of people who have been generous enough to guide and advise me. During my junior year of college, I took Larry Summer's public sector economics class. He offered to supervise my senior thesis, something very few Harvard professors volunteer to do for undergraduates. Larry has been a major part of my life ever since. I met Don Graham, chairman of the Washing post company, more than 15 years ago when I was working in D.C., and he has helped me navigate some of my most challenging professional situations. If it had not been for Pat Mitchell's encouragement and support, I might have never have spoken publicly about women in the workplace. These 3, among so many others, have encouraged me, made introductions, and taught me by example. Their wisdom helped me avoid mistakes, and clean up the ones I wasn't smart enough to avoid.|
         In turn, I have tried to mentor others, including friends of friends, and as I get older, children of friends. I get so much joy, out of watching the career of whom I consider my mentee, Emily White. She started working with me right, when she finished college and now happily runs mobile partnerships for facebook. Another mentee is Bryn Shreier, I remember when I first met him, he had never worked in a tech company or traveled abroad, but having displayed his unusually strong leadership and analytical skills. I hired him to build googles global operations, and he exceeded every expectation. Years later, when he wanted to pursue a new career as an investor, I introduced him to his current partners at sequoia capital. He is now a highly successful early stage venture capitalist, and I can see the impact he has on the companies he advises. I am fortunate to have Emily and Bryan and so many other talented people in my life.
        Studies show that mentors select proteges based on performance and potential. Intuitively, people invest in those who stand out for their talent or who can really benefit from help.
Mentors continue to invest when mentees use their time well and are truly open to feedback. It may turn into a friendship, but the foundation is a professional relationship. Given this, I believe we have sent the wrong message to young women. We need to stop telling them "Get a mentor and you will excel.". Instead we need to tell them excel and you will get a mentor.".
        Clara Shih is a superb example. I met Clara about 5 years ago at a conference and was immediately impressed by her ideas about social media. She went on to write a thoughtful book on the subject and founded 'hearsay social' a software company that helps businesses manage their social media presence. Every so often, Clara would contact me, always with an interesting point or a thoughtful question. She never asked to get together to 'catch up'. She never asked a question that she could have found the answer to on her own. When I was leaving the Starbucks board of directors in 2012. I gave them a few names of social media experts who might join in my place and included Clara. She was only 29 years old at the time, but she was invited to join the board.        While asking a stranger to be a mentor rarely, if ever, works, approaching a stranger with a pointed, well-thought-out inquiry can yield results. Garrett Neiman stopped me after I gave a speech at Stanford to explain that he had founded 'collegespring' and wanted to meet with me, making it clear that he only needed a few minutes of my time just to ask for introductions to some people who could help expand his organization. He had done his homework and knew that I care deeply about education. In our first meeting and in every interaction we've had since, Garrett has been respectful of my time. He is crisp, focused, and gracious. He always follows up to let me know the results of our discussions as well.
        Capturing someone's attention or imagination in a minute can be done, but it usually takes planning to tailor the interaction individually. Leading with a vague question such as "What is facebooks culture like?" It shows more ignorance than interest in the company, since there are hundreds of sources/articles that provide this answer. Preparation is especially important when looking for a job. When I left the treasury department (of the United States of America), former chief of staff Josh Steiner gave me great advice about asking for advice. He told me to figure out what I wanted to do before I went to see the people who had the ability to hire me. That way I would not waste my one shot seeking general guidance, but would be able to discuss specific opportunities that they could offer.
        Mentorship is often a more reciprocal relationship than it may appear, especially in situations where people are already working at the same company. The mentee may receive more direct assistance, but the mentor receives benefits too, including useful information, greater commitment from colleagues, and a sense of fulfillment and pride. Sociologists and psychologists have long observed our deep desire to participate in reciprocal behavior. The fact that humans feel obligated to return favors has been documented in virtually all societies and underpins all kinds of social relationships. The mentor/mentee relationship in no exception. When done right, everybody flourishes.
        Erin Burnett, a journalist, credits a TV correspondent and editor for mentoring her when she first started out. The mentor had little knowledge of finances and the mentee had worked at a financial company. The mentee got to watch the mentor work in the 'news room' while the mentor got to pick the mentees brain for financial industry knowledge. See what I mean by it's a beneficil relationship ?       

       Justin Osofsky caught my attention at facebook years ago when we were getting ready for our first senior-level meeting with the Walt Disney company. Each of our teams, including the sales, business development, and marketing, had submitted ideas for the partnership, but no one was coordinating, which left our presentation disjointed and unwieldy. Rather than just submitting his section, Justin took the initiative to pull the group together and integrate all the ideas. I have been 'mentoring' him ever since, which in his case means that I often turn to Justin to solve problems. This helps the company and makes new opportunities for him.
        Getting the attention of a senior person with a virtuoso performance does work well. Yet, there are many ways to get a mentor. I have seen lower-level employees nimbly grab a moment of time after a meeting or in a hall to ask advice from a senior-level employee. Because gender equality starts at level equality, a senior-level worker bee is just as important as a noob-level worker bee.
So these exchanges, of nimbly grabbing someones attention, and no a mentor does not always have to be a senior-level person.

These exchanges, should be casual and quick (as opposed to demanding and long). After one takes the advice, the would-be mentee should say thanks and then uses the opportunity to say thanks as another time-frame in where to ask for advice and repeat the cycle again (as opposed to a constant bombardment of d.m.s about everything all at once). 
       To me the label is open for interpretation. For years, I kept an eye on an enormously talented young woman on my team at google. I had advised her each time she had a major decision to make. But I never used the word 'mentor'. I instead invested time in her actual development. So I was surprised that one day when she stated flatly "I have never ever had a mentor or anyone really looking out for me". I asked what a mentor meant to her. She explained that it would be someone she spoke to for at least an hour every week. I smiled, thinking "that's not a mentor, that is a therapist".
        Few mentors have time for excessive hand-holding. Most are dealing with their own high-stress high-capacity jobs. A mentee who is positive and prepared can be a bright spot in a day. For this same reason, mentees should avoid complaining excessively to a mentor. Using a mentors time to validate feelings may help psychologically, but it's better to focus on specific problems for real solutions. Most people in the position to mentor are quite adept at problem solving, just give them a problem to solve! Sometimes high-potential women have a difficult time asking for help because they don't want to appear stumped. Being unsure about how to proceed is the most natural feeling in the world. I feel that way all the time, so asking for input is not a sign of weakness but often the first step to finding a path forward.
         Mentoring and sponsoring relationships often form between individuals whom have common interests or when the two remind themselves of each other. So for men to sponsor women, they'd have to find some kind of friendship between each other first.

This means that men will often gravitate toward sponsoring other men, with whom they connect more naturally. Since there are so many more men at the top of every industry, thus the proverbial old-boy network continues to flourish. Since, there is also an already reduced number of women in leadership roles, it is not possible for junior women to get enough support unless senior men jump in too. We need to make male leaders aware of this shortage and encourage them to widen their circle.
        It's wonderful when senior men mentor women. It's even better when they champion and sponsor them. Any male leader who is serious about moving toward a more equal world can make this a priority and be part of the solution. It should, though be a badge of honor for men to sponsor women. Since we know that different perspectives improve performance, companies should foster and reward behavior.
        Of course, there are some tricky issues to be solved here, including the perceived sexual context of female-male relationships. Once during my United States of America treasury years, Larry Summers and I traveled together to South Africa, where we holed up in the living room of his hotel suite to work on his speech on fiscal policy for the next day. Jet-lagged and oblivious to the time change, we suddenly noticed it was 3:00a.m. We both knew it would look awful if anyone saw me leaving his hotel suite at 3 in the morning. We discussed the options. Maybe he should check to see if anyone was in the hall? Then we realized we were stuck because there is no difference between trying not to be seen leaving someones hotel room early in the morning and actually just leaving that same hotel room. I strode into that (luckily) empty hall and made it to my room undetected.
        Women and men often avoid engaging in mentoring or sponsoring relationship out of fear of what other may think. A study published by the center for work-life policy at where else but Harvard. Reported that 64% of men at the level of vice president and above are hesitant to have a one-on-one meeting with a more junior woman. For their part, half of the junior women avoided close contact with senior men. This evasiveness must end! Personal connections lead to assignments and promotions, *not to sex, children babies and lawsuits, though it could lead men to discussion with people whom communicate much differently and in ways that could be understood as disrespectful. So it goes without saying that it needs to be okay for women to spend informal time with men the same way men can spend informal time with both women or men.
        A man and a woman at a bar can be just there to be talking shop, but it can very easily appear that they are dating, even more so if the man is in a senior position and the woman in a junior position...it could look like someone is trying to sleep their way to the top or someone else is looking for a quick and easy shag. It can also display a betrayal to the social click either belongs to (its really complicated).
These possible interpretations holds people back and makes for a plenty of double binds. If a woman tries to cultivate a close relationship with a male sponsor, it risks generating workplace gossip. If women may try to reach the top without sponsors, their careers may actually stall.
        We cannot assume that interactions between men and women have a sexual component all the time, we should think it's always a professional thing (well, than we should stop having so many prostitutes and strippers , wait I'm confused *). Where were we ? 

Right...everyone has to make sure to behave professionally so women and men feel safe in all settings.

        *But, California being the nest of all sorts of professional sexual escorts and workers, heck even I, the editor met the daughter of the first Geisha in L.A. Did I fall in love with her, yes, have I talked to her since :( no, but I tried. Than we can bring in Los Vegas to the discussion, Sin fawking city. If we want gender equality we have to stop being so obsessed with sex (and substance abuse).

        At Goldman Sachs in the late 1990s, Bob Steel recognized that many people see co-ed co-workers mingling as actual dating. Bob, being the father of three daughters simply had a 'breakfast or lunch only policy' with employees. Bob felt uncomfortable going out to dinner with female employees and wanted to make access to him equal. Sharon Meers whom, worked at Goldman at the time said Bobs' discussion caused a bit of a stir, but she thought his candor was heroic (prince charming). 
        Anything that evens out the opportunities for men and women is the right practice and we need more of them.
        Many companies are starting to move from informal mentoring that relies on individual initiative to more formal programs. When taken seriously, these formal mentorships/sponsorship programs can be remarkably successful. Structured programs also take the pressure off junior women from having to ask the difficult 'are you my mentor' question.
        One study showed that women who found mentors through formal programs were 50% more likely to be promoted than women who found mentors on their own. The most effective formal programs help educate men about the need to mentor women and establish guidelines for appropriate behavior. These programs can be a great way to help normalize the male/female model.
        I feel that official mentorship programs are not sufficient by themselves and work best when combined with other kinds of development and training. Deloittes leading to WIN womens initiative is a good example.

Deloitte had already established a program to support female employees, who still remained underrepresented at the highest levels of the company so much so that Chet Wood even noticed. The leading to WIN womens initiative was afterwards launched in 2008. The program targeted senior women in the tax division who were close to promotion. The women were assigned sponsors, received executive coaching, shadowed members of the executive committee, and took on global assignments. Of the 21 members of the inaugural group 18 were promoted.
       As helpful as these formal program can be, they are not always offered, and in some situations, there is no available guidance whats-so-ever. The good news is that guidance can come from all levels. When I first joined facebook, one of my biggest challenges was setting up necessary business processes without harming the freewheeling culture. The company operated by moving quickly and tolerating mistakes, and lots of people were nervous that I would not just ruin the party, but squash innovation. Naomi Gleit had joined facebook right out of college several years earlier. As one of facebooks earliest employees, she had a deep understanding of how the company worked. Naomi and I became close. I bet most people, including Naomi herself, probably assumed that I was mentoring her. But the truth is she mentored me. She helped me implement the changes that needed to be made and jumped in to stop me from getting things wrong. Naomi always told me the truth, even if she thought it would be hard for me to hear. She still does this for me today.
        Peers can also mentor and sponsor one another. There is a saying that 'all advice is autobiographical'. Friends at the same stage of their careers may actually provide more current and useful counsel. Several of my older mentors advised me against taking a job at google in 2001. Yet almost all my peers understood the potential of Silicon valley. Peers are also in the trenches and may understand problems that superiors do not, especially when those problems are generated by superiors in the first place.
         On one of my early assignment I had at McKinsey & company I was on a team that consisted of three men. One was the boss of the four of us, we will call him 'Senior engagement manager (Sem)'. The other two were Abe Wu and Derek Holley. While Sem would casually walk over to either dudes table and talk to them, when Sem wanted to talk to me he would sit at his desk and yell as if calling a child over or worse a dog "Sandberg, please come here, girl.". It made me cringe every time. I never said anything, but one day Abe and Derek started calling each other ' Sandberg' in the same loud dog owner voice. The self-absorb Sem never seemed to notice. The two of course kept it up.
      When having too many Sandbergs got confusing, the two decided we needed to differentiate. Abe started calling himself 'Asian Sandberg' Derek dubbed himself 'good-looking Sandberg' and I became 'Sandberg Sandberg'. My colleagues turned an awful situation into one where I felt protected. They stood up for me and made me laugh. They were the best mentors I could have had.
          Since when it rains, it pours, on that same project, the senior client leader wanted to fix me up with his son. The client declared this intention in front of his team over and over. I knew he meant it as a compliment, but it undermined my professional authority. How could I get my clients to take me seriously if their boss was constantly reminding everyone that I was his sons age, oh!! and that I should date him ?! 
        One day, I gathered my courage and asked to speak to him in private. I told him (nicely) that I did not think it was appropriate for him to keep bringing up his son. He laughed it off and kept up at it.
        Having tried to deal with the situation myself, I went to my manager, the same 'Sandberg' shouting Sem *jackass. He listened to my complaint and then told me that I should think about what I was 'doing to send these signals'. Yup, it was my fault (f***d*wa). I told the two other Sandbergs, who were also outraged (and anyone who isn't is really good at staying chill).

They encouraged me to go over Sems head and talk to the senior partner, Robert Taylor. Robert, he understood my discomfort immediately. He explained that sometimes those of us who are different (himself being African American) need to remind people to treat us appropriately (equally*). He aid he was glad I told the client 'no' on my own and that the client should have listened. He then talked to the client and explained that, that behavior had to stop. Robert also spoke to Sem about the insensitive response. I could not have been more grateful for Roberts protection. I knew exactly how that baby bird felt when it* (because we cannot assume the bird is a he or she) finally found its mother.

                                     Chapte

                                      SsiixX

My friend Betsy Cohen was pregnant with her second child when her toddler, Sam became curious about where the baby was in her body. "Mommy! Are the babys arms in your arms?"

"No, the baby is in my tummy"

"Are the babys legs in your legs?"

"Nop, the whole baby is in my tummy Sam"

"Really, the whole baby is in your tummy mommy, are you sure ?"

She enforced again "Yes, the whole baby is in my tummy". To which Sam asked again "well, mommy, what's growing in your butt?

        This kind of honesty is common from children and virtually unheard of from adults. As kids grow up, we teach them to be polite, watch what they say, not 'hurt each others feelings'. This is, of course is not a bad thing. As a former pregnant 'whale', I'm glad that most people keep some observations to themselves. As we learn to speak appropriately though, we lose something in authenticity.
        To me, authentic communication is often hard and it is the basis for my successful relationships at home and for real effectiveness at work. Yet I find people to constantly back away from honesty, just to protect themselves and others. This reticence seems to cause and perpetuate all kinds of problems: uncomfortable issues that never get addressed (the elephant in the room), resentment that builds (envy?), unfit managers who get promoted rather than fired, and on and on. Often these situations do not improve because no one tells anyone what is really happening. Rarely do I see people brave enough to tell the truth.        I'll admit that being honest in the workplace is especially difficult for me. All organizations that I have been a part of have some form of hierarchy, which means that someones performance is assessed by someone elses perception. This, logically will make people less likely to tell the truth (either as a favor for someone else, or revenge for something else*). Every organization probably faces this challenge, no matter how flat they try to be.
        At facebook, we work to be nonhierarchical. Everyone sits at open desks in big open spaces with no offices, cubes, or partitions for any of us. We hold a company wide Q&A every Friday where anyone can ask a question or make a comment (or complaint). When any of us disagrees with any decision, they have the option to post it on the company wide facebook group. Still, I would be an idiot, or lying to myself, if I thought that my coworkers always felt free to criticize me, Mark, or any other peers.
        When psychologists have studied power dynamics, most of what I found in these studies is that people in low-power positions are more hesitant to share their views and often hedge their statements when they do. This helps explain why for many women, speaking honestly in a professional environment carries an additional set of fears: Such as

Fear of not being considered a team player. 

Fear of seeming negative or nagging. 

Fear that constructive criticism will come across as just plain old criticism. 

Fear that by speaking up, it will call attention to themselves.

Fear that speaking up leaves them vulnerable to attack/ridicule (a fear brought to us by that same voice in the back of our heads that urges us not to sit at the table).

         Communication, I feel works best when we combine appropriateness with authenticity, finding that sweet spot where opinions are not brutally honest but delicately honest. 
To speak truthfully and without hurting another persons feelings, should be what we all aspire to do. And though it comes naturally to some people, it's an acquired skill for others, like me. I am one of those people that needed help in this area. Fortunately, I found plenty of it.
        When Dave (my husband) was at Yahoo!, he attended a management training program taught by Fred Kofman. Dave hates training of any kind, and the human resources team at Yahoo! had to force him to attend the 2 day session. When he came home after the 1st day, Dave surprised me by describing the training as 'not to bad'. By the end of the 2nd day, he started quoting Fred and making observations about our communication. I was in shock! I thought; This guy must be good. So I called Fred, introduced myself, and said "I don't know what you do, but I want you to do it for my team at google".
        Fred showed up, and his teaching changed my career and my life. To me he is one of the most extraordinary thinkers on leadership and management I have ever encountered. 
        Many of the concepts discussed in this chapter originated with Fred and it reflects his belief that 'great leadership is conscious leadership'.
       I learned from Fred that effective communication starts with understanding that there is 'my point of view' (my truth) and 'someone elses truth' (their truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, even in federal court. Now with that equation set, there comes in the third; people whom believe they are speaking the true truth, whether 'my truth' or 'their truth' they do not really give a hoot about anyone elses opinion (*asshole is the word right?).
        So please try to recognize that we, as individuals can only see things from our own perspectives, we can share our views in a nonthreatening ways allowing others to participate and contribute to a shared vision of reality.
Some of you readers know about I statements, and agree that it is more constructive to state something in the first person. I. 

*Let me present these three examples;

1:) You never take my suggestions seriously.

2:) I feel frustrated that you have not responded to my last four emails, which leads me to believe that my suggestions are not important to you, is that so ?

3:) You alright? I have yet to hear back from you on those emails, what's going on?

*The first can obviously elicit a quick and defensive 'that's not true statement' as the statement itself is clearly accusatory, bold and with little to continue from. The statement then generates negative space because the possible openings begin with "No", sure one can try and find a positive happy way to rebuttal that statement but, the first speaker could probably have time to die, reincarnate, write a screen-play about and have the happy response on their grave stone.

*The second one, while providing evidence for the accusation, being more long winded provides soft interjection to correct, and even begs for affection.

*The third is just, keepin i'd real. (yes that is a joke on the id-of psychology Froids fowl attempt to make up another attribute to the I-ego-sine-me me, myself, and I separation of body, mind, and role).
Since the initial question is an inquiry into the persons actual 'hi how are you thingy' the second provides a good motivation (cause for concern), and yet the, demand at the end is to be served as a wake up call to finally open up and be honest.

         I wish I could always preserve a communications line that invites discussion. I don't, but I continue to try. I use simple language to speak truthfully (*I wonder if she complicates her lexicon when lieing). Office-speak though often contains nuances and parentheticals that can bury not just the lead but the entire point. Comedies like 'office space' ring true for a reason. It is believed people fear insulting others, especially the boss, so people hedge. I have seen people play it safe and instead of saying " I disagree with your expansion strategy", they would make matters worse by saying something like "While I think there are many good reasons why we are opening this new line of business and I feel confident that the management team has done a thorough ROI analysis, I am not sure we have completely thought through all of the downstream effects of taking this step forward at this time"
Huh?
With all of these caveats, it's hard to decipher what the speaker actually thinks! Worse what they are taking about and what we should think.

That* is where a Nelson is helpful to have around to give the dork a wedgie and then everyone can move on.
        When communicating hard truths, less is often more.
        A few years ago, Mark Zueckerberg decided to learn Chinese. To practice, he would spend time with a group of facebook employees who were native speakers. One might think that Marks limited language skills would have kept these conversations from being substantively useful.
Instead, they gave him a greater insight into what was going on in the company. For example.
One of the women was trying to tell Mark something about her manager. Mark didn't understand, so he said "Simpler please" and then she spoke again, but he still didn't understand so he had to ask her to simplify things further.
This happened a few more times. Eventually, she got frustrated and just blurted out "My manager is bad.". The conversation was still in Chinese, but now simple enough that Mark understood. If more people were this clear (*and persistent) I am 100% certain, the performance of many organizations would improve dramatically.
        The ability to listen is as important as the ability to speak. From the time my siblings and I were very young, whenever we had arguments, our mother taught us, or more like forced us to mirror each other, which means restating the other persons point before responding to it.
For example, one day my sister and I were fighting over a lollipop. "Sheryl ate the last lollipop!" Michelle screamed. "But she had a lollipop yesterday and I didn't!" I screamed back, making an excellent point. My mother sat us down facing each other. I was not allowed to explain how gravely inequitable the lollipop allocation was until I acknowledged my sisters feelings. "Michelle, I understand that you are upset because I ate the last lollipop and you wanted it.".

As painful as this was at the time, reflecting someones viewpoint clarified the disagreement and became a starting point for a resolution.
We all want to be heard, well except for insels. To become a better listener, show people you listen.
        I now do this with my children (the lollipop game), and while they probably dislike the process as much as I did when I was their age, I love hearing my son explain to my daughter "I'm sorry you're upset because you lost at Monopoly, but I'm older than you so I should win.". Yup, not bad for a 7 year old (although Fred would caution my son to take out the 'but' and everything after, since it tends to deny the preceding statement. Imagine someone saying: " really like you.....but....".
        Being aware of a problem is the first step to correcting it. It is nearly impossible to know how our actions are perceived by others. We can try to guess what they're thinking but asking directly is far more effective. With real knowledge, we can adjust our actions and avoid getting tripped up. Still, I'm pretty sure people rarely seek enough input.
        A few years ago, Tom Brokaw interviewed me for a piece on facebook. I felt that I stumbled through some of my answers. After we wrapped, I asked him how I could have done better. He seemed surprised by my question, so I asked him again. He then told me that in his entire career, I was only the second person to ask him for feedback.
        The strategy of soliciting input broadly was first demonstrated for me by Robert Rubin back in 1996. I was invited to a meeting on restructuring the IRS. About ten senior staffers were sitting at the table when we entered. Since I knew nothing about the topic, I took a seat in the back corner of the room (yup, not even close to the table). Toward the end of the meeting, secretary Rubin suddenly turned and asked "Sheryl, what do you think?" I was stunned silent, my mouth opened but nothing came out. When he saw how shocked I was, Rubin explained why he had put me on the spot: "Because you're new and not fully up to speed on how we do things, I thought you might see something we were missing.". Apparently, not in my case. But secretary Rubin sent a powerful message to all of us about the value of soliciting ideas from every corner (literally).
        Secretary Rubin was also aware of the dangers of blindly following leaders, or in his case, being blindly followed. Before becoming the United States of Americas Treasury Secretary, Rubin had served as co-chairman of the board of Goldman Sachs.
At the end of his first week, he noticed that Goldman was heavily invested in gold. He asked someone why the firm had taken such a big position. The startled employee answered "Ahm that was you, sir." "Me?"

Apparently, the day before, Rubin had been taking his initial tour of the trading floor and he commented "Gold looks interesting.". This got repeated as "Rubin likes gold." Then someone spent millions of dollars to please the new boss.
        More than a decade later, I experienced my own 'Rubin likes gold' moment. When I joined facebook, I faced a dilemma: I needed to bolster the business side of the company while respecting its unconventional culture. Most corporations love powerpoint presentations (sorry not an opinion, universal truth), so I encouraged people not to prepare them for meetings with me, but instead to come with a simple list of topics. I repeated this frequently, but every meeting seemed to include a detailed powerpoint anyway. After more than two years of frustration, I announced that although I hated making rules, I was making one: no more powerpoint in my meetings.
        A few weeks later, as I was getting ready to speak to our global sales team, Kirsten Nevill-Manning came to find me. Kirsten thought I should know that everyone in Europe was upset with me. Really?? I angered an entire continent?? (*The editor angered an entire continent too). She explained that client meetings were very difficult without powerpoint and asked why I would make such a stupid rule. 
        I explained that I had intended the rule to apply only to presentations directed to me, but just as the Goldman team heard 'Gold=good', the facebook team heard 'powerpoint=out'. I got onstage in front of our entire sales team and apologized for the misunderstanding. I also let them know that if they hear a bad idea, even one they believe is coming from Mark or me, they should either fight it or ignore it, but don't go with it blindly and doubtfully.

        As hard as it is to have an honest dialogue about business decisions, it is even harder to give individuals honest feedback. This is true for entry-level employees, senior leaders, and everyone in between. One thing that helps is to remember that feedback, like truth, in not absolute. Feedback is an opinion, by definition, grounded in observations and experiences, which allows us to know that impression we make on others. The information is revealing and potentially uncomfortable, which is why all of us would rather offer feedback to those who welcome it.
        If I make an observation or recommendation and someone reacts badly, or even just visibly tenses up I quickly learn to save my comments for things that really matter. This is why I so admire Molly Grahams approach. Sure, Molly joined facebook in 2008 and held a number of jobs and roles throughout the company in communications, human resources, and mobile products but she performed extraordinarily well in all of these very different roles, not just because she is uniquely talented but because she is always learning. Now, one day, she and I hosted a tricky client meeting. She navigated the discussion effectively, and after the clients left, I praised her effort. She paused and said "Thanks but you must have ideas for me on what more I could have done.".         'How can I do better? 'what am I doing that I don't know?' 'what I am not doing that I don't see?'. Believe me you, these questions lead to many benefits, and though the truth hurts. Even when I have solicited feedback, any judgment can feel harsh. The upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.
        Requesting advice can also help build relationships. At facebook, I knew that the most important determinant of my success would be my relationship with Mark. When I joined, I asked Mark for a commitment that he would give me feedback every week so that anything that bother him would be aired and discussed quickly. Mark not only said yes but immediately added that he wanted it to be reciprocal. For the first few years, we stuck to this routine and voiced concerns big and small every Friday afternoon. As the years went by, sharing honest reactions became part of our ongoing relationship. Now we do so in real time rather than waiting for the end of the week.
        I wouldn't suggest that all relationships need this much feedback, there is such a thing as asking for too much, for Mark and I, this kind of feedback loop has been critically important.
        I have also learned the hard way that being open to hearing the truth means taking responsibility for mistakes. In my first week as the United States of American treasury, I had the chance to work directly with the heads of the department bureaus. There is a right and a wrong way to start a working relationship. I chose the wrong way.
My first call was to Ray Kelly, who was then commissioner of the Unites States of America customs service and now serves as NYC police commissioner.         Instead of reaching out to offer assistance, I called Kelly with a request from the secretary. The impression I made was that my job was to demand and his job wsa to listen. It was a mistake. Rays response was quick and clear - "FAQ.U. Sheryl. Just because I'm not in Larry Summers Fking 30 year old brain trust doesn't mean that I don't know what I'm doing! If secretary Summers wants something from me, tell him to Fawking call me himself!" Then he hung up the phone. I thought 'this is not going well'. My first week on the job and I'd angered a man who knows a thing or two about firearms.
        After I stopped shaking. I realized that commissioner Kelly had done me a huge favor. His 'feedback' was extremely helpful and delivered in a way that I would never forget. I reassessed my outreach strategy. With the other bureau chiefs, I initiated conversation by asking what I could do to help them achieve their goals. It's no surprise that they reacted more positively and with far fewer expletives. After I employed my 'What have I done for you lately?' approach, they were far more eager to return the favor.
        As often as I try to persuade people to share their honest views, it is still a challenge to elicit them. When I started building my team at google, I interviewed every candidate before we made an offer. Even when the team had grown to about 100 people, I still spoke with each finalist.
One day at a meeting of my direct reports, I offered to stop interviewing, fully expecting everyone to insist that my input was an essential part of the process. Instead, they applauded. They all jumped in to explain - in unison - that my insistence on speaking personally to every candidate had become a huge bottleneck.
        I had no idea that I had been holding the team back and was upset that no one had told me. I spent a few hours quietly fuming, which, given that I have no pokerface, was probably obvious to everyone. Then I realized that if my colleagues had kept this to themselves, I was clearly not communicating that I was open to their input. Miscommunication is always a two-way street. If I wanted more suggestions, I would have to take responsibility for making it clear that I want input. 
I went back to my team and agreed that I would not interview anymore. And more important, I told them that I wanted their input early and often.
       Another way I try to foster authentic communication is to speak openly about my own weaknesses. To highlight just one, I have a tendency to get impatient about unresolved situations. My reaction is to push for people to resolve them quickly, in some cases before they realistically can. David Fischer and I have worked closely together for 15 years, at treasury, google and facebook. He jokes that he can tell from my tone of voice whether he should bother to complete a task or if I'm about to just do it myself. I acknowledge my impatience openly and ask my colleagues to let me know when I need to chill out.         
        By mentioning this myself, I give others permission to bring up my impatience, and joke about it too. My colleagues will say to me "Sheryl, you asked us to tell you when you get nervous and push the teams too hard. I think you're doing that now".
If I never said anything, would anyone at facebook walk up to me and announce "Hey Sheryl, clam down! You're driving everyone nuts!" Somehow I doubt it. They would think it. They might even say it to one another. But they wouldn't say it to me.
        When people are open and honest, thanking them publicly is great to encourage them to continue while sending a powerful signal to others as well. At a meeting with about 60 facebook engineers, I mentioned that I was interested in opening more facebook offices around the world, especially in one particular region. Since the group included members of the security team, I asked what they were most worried about. Without being called on Chad Greene blurted out "Opening a facebook office in that region" he explained why it wouldn't work and why I was dead wrong in front of the entire group. I loved it.
We had never met before, and I will never forget that strong introduction. I ended the meeting by thanking Chad for his candor and then posted the story on facebook to encourage the rest of the company to follow his example. Mark feels the same way.
        At a summer barbecue four years ago, an intern told Mark to work on his public speaking skills. Mark thanked him in front of everyone and then encouraged us to extend him a full-time job offer.
       
        Humor can be an amazing tool for delivering an honest message in a good-natured way. A recent study even found that 'sense of humor' was the phrase most frequently used to describe the most effective leaders.
I have seen humor get results so many times.
        Marne Levine needed a colleague from another team to finish drafting a few paragraphs for an upcoming congressional testimony. The colleague was dragging his heels. He kept coming to Marne to ask questions, which she would duly answer, then she would wait, but still no paragraphs.
When he came to her again with yet another question, she turned to him with a huge smile and said "I am going to answer all of your questions, I really am. Right now, the only thing that is going to keep me from falling down on the floor and having a heart attack right in front of you is for you to get out of your chair, go back to your desk, and write the paragraphs we need for congress.". It worked beautifully.
        With another colleague at google, Adam Freed and I were frustrated by someone at work who was making our jobs very difficult. I met with her several times and earnestly explained that I felt that she was second-guessing our every move and preventing progress (gas lighting?). During each heartfelt discussion, she would listen and nod and thank me for raising the matter. I would leave feeling better. Then the situation would get worse.
        Adam took a totally different approach. He invited her to lunch. They met at the google cafe, chatted a bit, and then he looked at her and jokingly asked "Why do you hate me ?". Where I had failed repeatedly, Adam broke through. She asked why he would make that joke, which gave him a chance to explain in a way she was able to hear (and not just listen).
        Unfortunately, our sense of humor sometimes fails us when we need it most. When I get emotional, it's very hard for me to treat a problem lightly.
        I had been at google about three months when an uncomfortable situation erupted. I had started at the company reporting to Erich Schimdt but was transitioning to working for Omid Kordestani. During the process, Omid and I had a major misunderstanding. I went to discuss it with him, intending to explain calmly why I was upset, and as soon as I started talking. I burst into tears. I was horrified to be crying in front of my new boss whom I barely knew. which just made more tears flow. I got lucky though, and Omid was patient and reassuring, insisting "Everyone gets upset at work, Its okay.".
        Most women I met believe and even research suggests. as well as basic common sense : that it is not a good idea to cry at work. It is never something that I plan to do and is hardly recommended in 'the secret habits of highly effective people.'. On those rare occasions when I have felt really frustrated, or worse, betrayed, tears have filled my eyes. Even as I have gotten older and more experienced, it still happens every so often.
        I had been working at facebook for almost a year when I learned that someone had said something about me that was not just false, but cruel. I started telling Mark about it and despite my best efforts, I started to cry. He assured me that the accusation was so untrue that no one could possibly believe it. Then he asked "Do you want a hug ??" I did. It was a breakthrough moment for us. I felt closer to him than ever before. I then recounted this story publicly, figuring that it might make it easier for other who face have faced unwanted tears. The press reported the incident as 'Sheryl Sandberg cried on Mark Zuckerbergs shoulder' Which is not exactly what happened. What happened was that I expressed my feelings and Mark responded with compassion.
        Sharing emotions builds deeper relationships. Motivation comes from working on things we care about, we are passionate about. It also comes from working with people we care about. To really care about others, we have to accept them with what they like and dislike, what they feel as well as think. Emotion drives both men and women and influences every decision we make. Recognizing the roles emotions play and being willing to discuss them makes us better managers, partners, and peers.

        I did not always understand this. I used to think that being professional meant being organized and focused and keeping my personal life separate. Early on, at google, Omid and I would have a one-on-one meeting each week (no gigity) I would enter his office with a typed agenda and get right to it (ok...yes...just setting it up right here) I thought I was being so efficient, but my colleague Tim Armstrong kindly pulled me aside one day to give me some advice. He told me that I should take a moment to connect with Omid before diving in.
Since Omid and I were the only people in those meeting, it was clear who had mentioned this to Tim. I made the adjustment and started asking Omid how he was feeling before leaping into my to-do list. It was a good lesson. An all-business approach is not always good business.

        It has been an evolution, but I am now a true believer in bringing our whole selves to work. I no longer think people have a professional self for Mondays through Friday and a real self for the rest of the time. That type of separation probably never existed, and in todays era of individual expression, where people constantly update their facebook status and tweet their every move, it makes even less sense.
         Instead of putting on some kind of fake 'all-work persona'. I think we benefit from expressing our truth, talking about personal situations, and acknowledging that professional decisions are often emotionally driven. I should have learned this lesson years earlier.         When I was graduating from business school in 1995, Larry Summers offered me a job, and I wanted that job desperately, but there was an issue: I did not want to move back to D.C., where my soon-to-be-ex-husband lived. One of the hardest calls I have ever had to make was to tell Larry that I could not accept the job. Larry pressed me on why, and I thought about telling him that I really wanted to try consulting in Los Angeles. Instead, I opened up. I explained that I was getting divorced, and I wanted to move far away from D.C., which held too many painful memories. Larry argued that it was a big city, but it didn't seem big enough for me.
        A year later when enough time had passed and I felt ready to return to D.C. , I called Larry and asked if the opportunity was still available. It was one of the easiest calls I have ever made, in part because I had been honest the year before. If I had told Larry that I was passing on the job for professional reasons, I would have appeared impulsive when I reversed that decision. Since the real reason was personal, sharing it honestly was the best thing to do.

       People I know often pretend that professional decisions are not affected by their personal lives. They are afraid to talk about their home situations at work as if one should never interfere with the other, when of course they can and do. I know many women who won't discuss their children at work out of fear that their priorities will be questioned. I hope this won't always be the case. (*when peoples priorities are to provide for their family and they go to work for their families, the two are very much dependent on each other, cybernetic if you will).
        My sister-in-law, Amy Schefler, had a college roommate, Abby Hemani. Now for Abby the line between personal and professional was erased when her 7 month old daughter was diagnosed with Dravet syndrome a rare and severe form of epilepsy. Abby explained that her mostly male partners got used to seeing her cry at the office and their response was heartwarming. Abby said" It was as if they envisioned me as one of their own daughters and wanted to comfort me.".
         Abby insists that her public emotion improved her work situation both by turning her colleagues into a source of support and by leading to more flexible hours. Abby continued "I know several men at my firm who have had similar experiences with sick children, but they didn't feel they could be as forthcoming as I was. In the end, I think my female manner of relating served me well.".
         Not every workplace and every colleague will be as generous and caring. But I do think we are moving toward at least blurring the line between personal and professional. Increasingly, prominent thinkers in the field of leadership studies like Marcus Bucking are challenging traditional notions of leadership. Their research suggests that presenting leadership as a list of carefully defined qualities (like strategic, analytical, and performance-oriented) no longer holds.
        Instead, true leadership stems from individuality that is honest and sometimes imperfectly expressed. They believe leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection. This shift is good news for women, who often feel obliged to suppress their emotions in the workplace in an attempt to come across as more stereotypically male. It's also good news for men, whom may be doing the exact same thing.
        I had the opportunity to see the power of authentic communication in a leader firsthand when I served on the board for Starbucks. Howard Schultz was CEO of Starbucks from 1987 till 2000, and during his tenure, the company grew from just a few stores into what it is today. Howard stepped down as CEO in 2000, and over the next 8 years Starbucks' performance faltered.
        When Howard returned as CEO in 2008, he had a meeting with all of the companys global managers and it was help in New Orleans. He openly admitted that the company was in serious trouble. The he allowed his emotions to show, tearing up as he confessed that he felt that he had let down his employees and their families. The entire company rose to the challenge. Starbucks turned around and delivered its highest revenue and earnings a few years later.

         Maybe someday shedding tears in the workplace will no longer be viewed as embarrassing or weak, but as a simple display of authentic emotion. Maybe the compassion and sensitivity that have historically held some women back will make them more natural leaders in the future. In the meantime, we can all hasten this change by committing ourselves to both seek and speak our truth.

                         Chapter
                        7Seven7

                   Dont leave before you leave

        A few years ago, a young woman at facebook came to my desk and asked if she could speak to me privately. We headed into a conference room, where she began firing off questions about how I balance work and family.
As the questions came faster and faster, I started to wonder about her urgency. I interrupted to ask if she had a child. She said no, but she would like to plan ahead. I inquired of her if she and her partner were considering having a child. She replied that she did not have a husband, then added with a little laugh "Actually, I don't even have a boyfriend.". It seemed to me that she was jumping the gun - big time - but I understood why.
        In America there is a 'cultural trend', from an early age, to make young girls grow comfortable with the idea that they will have to choose between succeeding at work and being a good mother. By the time these girls grow up and get to college, they are already thinking about the trade-offs they will make between professional and personal goals.
        When asked to choose between marriage and career, female college students are twice as likely to choose marriage as compared to their male classmates.
        This concern, for marriage or work, can start even younger. Peggy Orestein, related the story of a 5 year old girl who came home distraught from her after-school program, and told her mother that both she and the boy she had a crush on wanted to be astronauts, but that they couldn't figure out one problem. When her mother asked why that was a problem, the little girl replied "When we go into space together, who will watch our kids?". At 5 years of age the little girls biggest problem to space travel was dependable child care.
Also, Peggy Orestein wrote a nice book - 'Cinderlla ate my daughter', in case your looking for something nice to read :).
       As I've mentioned, I am a big believer in thoughtful preparation. Everywhere I go, I carry a little notebook with my to-do list - yes an actual note book that I write in with an actual pen. In the tech world, this is like carrying a stone tablet and chisel around.
        I hold to the discussion about integrating career and family that planning too far in advance can close doors rather than open them. I have seen this happen over and over. Women I know rarely made just one big decision to leave the workforce, they instead made alot of small decisions along the way. Making accommodations and sacrifices that they believed would be required to have a family. |
        I think, of all the way women hold themselves back, the most pervasive is that they leave before they leave.
        The classic scenario unfolds like this (I'll explain it again much more simpler*). An ambitious and successful woman heads down a challenging career path with the thought of having children in the back of her mind. At some point, this thought moves to the front of her mind, typically once she finds a partner. 
The woman considers how hard she is working and reasons, that to make room for a child she will have to scale back. 
        An even simpler explanation of this phenomena; A law associate might decide not to shoot for partner because someday she hopes to have a family. A teacher might pass on leading curriculum development for her school. A sales representative might take a smaller territory or not apply for a management role. Often without even realizing it, women stop reaching for new opportunities for the sake of a family.
If any opportunities are presented, their either declined, or given a hesitant, confidence lacking, 'yes' that gets the opportunity into someone elses lap.
        The problem is that: Even if these women from this rhetorical proposition, are to get pregnant as soon as they even thought it, there is still a full nine months before having to care for an actual child, and since woman usually start this mental preparation well before trying to conceive. Several years often pass between the thought of conceiving a child and the actual conception, let alone the birth happen. The whole time there is the constant nag of "your gonna have to give up your job for the kid!".

In the case of my colleagues curiosity, it might even be a decade.

        By the time the baby arrives, the woman is likely to be in a drastically different place in her career than she would have been had she not leaned back in anticipation (of a family). Before, she was a top performer, on par with her peers in responsibility, opportunity, and pay.
       By not finding ways to stretch herself in the years leading up to motherhood, she has fallen behind. When our examples' woman is to return to the workplace, after her child is born, she is probably going to feel less fulfilled, underutilized, or unappreciated. She may wonder why she is working for someone (usually a man) who has less experience than she does. Or she may wonder why she does not have the exciting new project or the corner office.
        At this point, she probably scales her ambitions back even further, since she no longer believes that she can get to the top. If she does have the financial resources to leave her job, she will more likely choose to do so.
        The more satisfied she is with her position, the less likely she is to leave. Thus, the irony - and to me, the tragedy - is that women wind up leaving the workforce precisely because of things they did to stay in the workforce. With the best of intentions, they end up in a job that is less fulfilling and less engaging. When they finally have a child, the choice - for those who have one - is between becoming a stay-at-home mother or returning to a less-than-appealing professional situation.

        Joanna Strober (co-author of 'Getting to 50/50) credits a compelling job for her decision to return to the workforce after becoming a mother. She recounted a bit of that to me.
         "When I first started working, there were lots of scary stories about female executives who ignored their kids or weren't home enough, almost everyone in our office talked about one executive whose daughter supposedly told the exec that when she (the daughter) grows up she wanted to be a client because they get all the attention.
        I found these stories so depressing that I gave up before even really starting down the partner track. However, when 5 years later I was in a job I really loved, I found myself wanting to return to work after a few weeks of maternity leave. I realized those executives weren't scary at all. Like me, they loved their kids alot, and like me they also loved their jobs.".
        There are many powerful reasons to exit the workforce. Being a stay-at-home parent is wonderful, and often necessary choice for many people. Not every parent needs, wants, or should be expected to work outside the home. In addition, we do not control all of the factors that influence us, including the health of our children. Plus, many people welcome the opportunity to get out of the rat race. 
No one should pass judgement on these highly personal decisions. I fully support any man or woman who dedicates his or her life to raising the next generation. It is important and demanding and joyful work.
        What I am arguing is that the time to scale back is when a child arrives - not pre-maturely before, and certainly not years in advance. Trust me, the months and years leading up to having children (or a child) are not the time to lean back, but the critical time to lean in.
        Several years ago, I approached an employee at facebook to manage an important new project. She seemed flattered at first but then became noticeably hesitant. She told me that she wasn't sure she should take on more responsibility. Obviously, something else was going on, and so I quietly asked "Are you worried about taking this on because you're considering having a child sometime soon?".
        A few years earlier, I would have been afraid to ask this question. Managers are not supposed to factor childbearing plans into account in hiring or management decisions. Raising this topic in the workplace would give most employment lawyers a heart attack. But after I have watched so many talented women pass on opportunities for unspoken reasons, I started addressing this issue directly.
       I always give people the option of not answering, but so far, every woman I have asked has appeared grateful for a chance to discuss the subject. I also make it clear that I am only asking for one reason : to make sure they aren't limiting their options unnecessarily.
        In 2009, we were recruiting Priti Choski to join facbook. After we extended an offer, she came in to ask some follow-up questions about her role with us. She did not mention lifestyle or hours, but she was the typical age when women have children in the i.t. world. 
        As we were wrapping up, I went for it - "If you think you might not take this job because you want to have a child soon, I am happy to talk about this.". I figured if she didn't want to discuss it, she would just keep heading for the door. Instead, she turned to me, sat back down, and said "Lets talk.". 
        I explained that although it was counterintuitive, right before having a child can actually be a great time to take on a new job. If she found her new role challenging and rewarding, she would be more excited to return to it after giving birth. If she were to stay put, she might decide that her job was not worth the sacrifice (implying that she wasn't really vibing with de job first of all*).
         Priti accepted our offer. By the time she started at facebook, she was already expecting. 8 months later, she had her baby, took four months off, and came back to a job she loved. She later told me that if I had not raised the topic, she would have turned us down.
         Like, so many women, Caroline O'Connor believed that someday she'd have to choose between a career and a family. That day came sooner than she expected. Caroline was finishing up at Standfords institute of design when she was offered the chance to start a company and at the same time she learned that she was pregnant.
         Her knee-jerk reaction was to think that she could not do both, but...she decided to question this assumption instead. As she wrote - " I began thinking of my dilemma as I would a design challenge and rather than accepting that launching a successful start-up and having a baby are utterly incompatible, I framed it as a question and then set about using tools I've developed as a designer to begin forming an answer.". 
       O'Connor gathered data from dozen of mothers about their experiences and coping mechanisms. She did fieldwork on sleep deprivation by taking a night shift with foster infants. She concluded; that with a team culture that drew support from her husband and friends, it would be possible to proceed with both. O'Connor now refers to herself as 'a career-loving parent', a nice alternative to 'working mom'.
        Given lifes' variables, I would never recommend that every woman should lean in regardless of circumstances. There have been times when I chose not to lean in. 
        In the summer of 2006, a tiny start-up called linkedin was looking for a new CEO, and Reid Hoffman (linkedins founder) reached out to me. I, of course thought it was a great opportunity, and after 5 years in the same position at google, I was ready for a new challenge. But the timing was tricky. I was 37 years old and wanted to have a 2nd child. I told Reid the truth: regrettably, I had to pass because I did not think I could handle both a pregnancy and a new job. 
         Reids reaction was incredibly kind and supportive. Hetried to talk me into it, even volunteering to work full time at the company to support me during that period, but it was hard to see a path through.
        For some women, pregnancy does not slow them down at all, but rather serves to focus them more and provides a firm deadline to work toward.        My childhood friend Elise Scheck looks back fondly on being pregnant, saying she has never felt so productive. She not only worked her usual hours as an attorney but organized her house and put 5 years of photos into albums.
        For others (like me), pregnancy is very difficult, making it impossible to be as effective as normal. I tried writing emails while hovering over the toilet, but the situation did not lend itself to effective multitasking. Because I had already been through this with my first pregnancy, I knew what I was in for.
        I turned down Reids offer and got pregnant - and extremely nauseated - a few months later any regrets I had about not taking that job evaporated when, about 7 months after my daughter was born, Mark offered me the opportunity to join facebook. The timing was still not ideal. As many people had warned, and I quickly discovered to be true; having 2 children was more than double the work of having one. I was not looking for new challenges but simply trying to get through each day. 

        *our bodies energy supplication grows the more active we are, those without out energy, that potential we have to be 'our best selves' diminishes too, thus it is not 1 person divided by 2 kids but 1 constantly tiring person divided by 2 nurtured kids - think empty tank of gas on an increasingly larger engine.

        Still, Dave and I recognized that if I waited until the timing was exactly right, the opportunity would be gone. My decision to take the job was personal, as these decisions always are. And there were days in my first six months at facebook when I wondered whether I would make the right choice. By the end of my first year, I knew I had....for me.
        The birth of a child instantly changes how we define ourselves. Women become mothers. Men become fathers. Couples become parents (*cousin become married - Simpsons joke). Our priorities shift to follow the new established fundamentals, though some people are fully prepared for this happening, while others are shocked sober.
Parenting may be the most rewarding experience, but it may also be the hardest and most humbling. *George Carlin actually defended the opinion that parenting is the easiest thing possible, paraphrasing; 'thats why 'so many stupid mother fahkkrs have so many kids and drain this country dry from welfare and child services, and those stupid idiots are all of you who paid to come to this stupid show to see the biggest idiot of them all complain about growing into an old fawk' - his words not mine.   

For me having kids was always an epic challenge.

        One of the immediate questions new parents face is who will provide primary care for child. The historical choice by popular vote has been the mother. Breast-feeding alone has made this both the logical and the biological choice. The advent of the modern-day breast pump has changed the equation (*I think only fresh breastmilk is good, old or REFRIDGERATED - nooooooooo, dont even get me started on formula or powdered).
        At google, I would lock my office door and pump during conference calls. People would ask 'hey what's that sound?', I would respond "What sound?". When they would insist that there was a loud beeping noise that they could hear on the phone, I would just say "Oh, there's a fire truck across the street.". I thought I was pretty clever until I realized that others on the call were sometimes in the same building and knew there was no fire truck. Busted.
        Despite modern methods, that can minimize the impact of biological imperatives, women still do the vast majority of child care. As a result, becoming a parent decreases workforce participation for women but not men. 43% of highly qualified women with children are leaving careers, or 'off-ramping', for a period of time.
        Women who are the most likely to leave the workforce are concentrated at opposite ends of the earning scale, married to men who earn the least and the most. In 2006, only 20% of mothers whose husbands earnings landed in the middle (between 25th and 75th percentiles) were out of the labor force. In contrast, a whopping 52% of mothers with husbands in the bottom quarter, and 40% of mothers with husbands in the top 5%, were out of the labor force. Obviously, their reasons for staying home are vastly different. Mothers married to the lowest-earning men struggle to find jobs that pay enough to cover child care costs, which are increasingly unaffordable. 
        Over the past decade, child care costs have risen twice as fast the median income of families with children. The cost for two children (an infant infant and a four-year-old in my case) to go to a day care center is greater than the annual median rent payment in every state in the United States of America.
        Women married to men with greater resources leave for a variety of reasons, but one important factor is the number of hours that their husbands work. When husbands work 50 or more hours per week, wives with children are 44% more likely to quit their jobs than wives with children whos husbands work less. Many of these mothers are those with the highest levels of education. 
        In a 2007 survey * - this paragraph is to broken to keep. The paragraph compares how many graduates stayed employed. The fault is that the data is selected from various years to help point to an imaginary rabbit. While the ending statement (page 99 of the original book) is that yale and harvard male graduates cause women to exist important leadership roles.
        While it is hard to predict how an individual will react to becoming a parent, it is east to predict societies reaction (*wait what?). When a couple announces that they are having a baby, everyone says:

"Congratulations!". To the man, just that, congratulations, a pat, on the back, a beer from the fridge.

And,

"Congratulations! what are you planning on doing about work?". To the women.

        The broadly help assumption is that raising their child is her responsibility. In more than 30 years, this perception has changed very little. A survey of the Princeton  class of 1975 found that 54% of the women foresaw work-family conflict compared to 26% of the men. The same survey of the Princeton class of 2006 found that 62% of the women anticipated work-family conflict compared to only 33% of the men.
Three decades separate the studies and still nearly twice as many women as men enter the workforce anticipating this stumbling block. 
Even in 2006, 46% of the men who anticipated this conflict expected their spouse to step off her career track to raise their children. Only 5% of the women believed their spouse would alter his career to accommodate their child.
        Personal choices are not always as personal as they appear. We are all influenced by social convention, peer pressure, and familial expectations.
On top of these forces, women who can afford to drop out of the workplace often receive not just permission but encouragement to do so from all directions.

        Imagine that a career is like a marathon - a long, grueling, and ultimately rewarding endeavor. Now imagine a marathon where both men and women arrive at the starting line equally fit and trained.

The gun goes off.

The men and women run side by side. Shoulder to shoulder.

The male marathoners are routinely cheered on "Lookin strong Bro!" or  "Kalabunga Dude.".

While the female marathoners get a different message "You know you dont have to do this!" or "You had a great start, you proved your point!" or "good start - but you probably wont finish.".

The farther the marathoners run the louder the cries grow for the men: "Keep Going! You've got this!". 

The women hear more and more doubts about their efforts. *This error needs to be mentioned, in this story the female marathoners were called runners on their second mention - it is a kind of 'fbi' tactic to super-impose the notion that one of these objects does not deserve to be held as equal - sorry for the psycadelic tangent.
        External voices, and often womens own internal voice, repeatedly question their decision to keep running. The voices can even grow hostile. As the struggle to endure the rigors of the race, spectators shout to the women "Why are you running, when your children need you at home?".
        Back in 1997, Debi Hemmeter was a rising executive and aspired to someday lead a major corporation like her role model - Brenda Barnes (*removed a bit of name-dropping to focus the accomplishment on Brenda and not on pepsi-cola) Even after starting a family, Debi continued to pursue her career at full warp.
Then one day when Debi was on a business trip, she opened her hotel door to find an USA today tabloid with the starting headline 'Pepsi chief trades work for family'. The subhead elaborated '22-year old veteran got burned out'.

In that moment, Debi said she felt her own ambitions shift.

        As Debi told me "It seemed like if this extraordinary woman couldn't make it work, who could? Soon after, I was offered a big job at a bank and I turned it down because my daughter was just a year old and I didn't think I could do it. Almost a decade later, I took a similar job and did it well, but I lost a decade.
I actually saved that clipping and still have it today. It's a reminder of what I don't want another generation to go through.". *sounds like the problem is freedom of press.
        If a female marathoner can ignore the shouts of the crowd and get past the tough middle of the race, she will hit her stride. Years ago, I met an investment banker in New York whose husband worked in public service.
She told me that over the years all of her female friends in banking quit, but because she was her familys' primary breadwinner, she had to stick it out. There were days when she was jealous and wished she could leave, days when there was just too much to do or too much crap to put up with. But she did not have that option.
Eventually, she landed in a position that had less crap and more impact. Now when she looks back, she is glad that even in the hard times, she continued her career.
        Today, she has a close relationship with her children and now that they have grown up and moved away, she is especially grateful to have a fulfilling job.
        Although pundits and politicians, usually male, often claim that motherhood is the most important and difficult work of all, women who take time out of the workforce pay a big career penalty. Only 74% of professional women will rejoin to full-time jobs in any capacity and only 40% will return to full-time jobs . Those who do rejoin will often see their earnings decrease dramatically.
        Controlling for education and hours worked, womens' average annual earnings decrease by 20% if they are out of the workforce for just 1 year. Average annual earnings decline by 30% after two to 3 years, which is the average amount of time that professional women 'off-ramp' from the workforce. If society truly valued the work of caring for children, companies and institutions would find ways to reduce these steep penalties. 
Our goals in society should be to provide zen perfection for our combined career and family responsibilities.
        All too often rigid work schedules, lack of paid family leave, and expensive or undependable child care derail womens best efforts. Governmental and company policies such as paid personal time off, affordable high-quality child care, and flexible work practices would serve families, and society, well.
         One miscalculation that I can point out is that some women drop out early in their careers because their salary barely covers the cost of child-care (and they have to do it instead). Child care is a huge expense, and it's frustrating to work hard just to break even. But professional women need to measure the cost child care against their future salary rather than their current salary. 
        Anna Fieler describes becoming a mom at 32 as "The time when the rubber hit the road.". Anna was concerned that her after-tax salary barely covered her child care expenses. She explained "With husbands often making more than wives, it seems like higher ROI to just invest in his career.". Ann though, thought about all the time and money she had already invested in her career and did not see how walking away made economic sense either. She ended up with what widely known as a 'lead of blind faith' and so, she stayed in the workforce, where years later her income is many times greater than when she almost withdrew.
         Wisely, Anna and other women have started to think of paying for child case as a way of investing in their families future. As the years go by, compensation often increases. Flexibility typically increases too, as senior leaders often have more control over their hours and schedules.
        What about men who want to leave the workforce ? If we make it too easy for women to drop out of the career marathon, we also make it too hard for men to just walk away. Just as women feel that they bear the primary responsibility of caring for their children, many men feel that they bear the primary responsibility of supporting their families financially.
Their self-worth is tied mainly to their professional success, and they frequently believe that they have no choice but to finish that marathon.
        Choosing to leave a child in someone elses' care and return to work is a difficult decision. Any parent who has done this, myself included, knows this, knows how heart wrenching it can be. Only a compelling, challenging, and rewarding job will begin to make that choice a fair contest. Even after a choice is made, parents have every right to reassess along the way.
        Anyone lucky enough to have options should keep them open. Do not enter the workforce already looking for the exist. Do not pump the brakes, accelerate. Keep a foot on the gas pedal until a decision must be made. That is the only way to ensure that when that day comes, there will be a real decision to make. 

                          8

                                         

                                         Make your partner

                          a

                    Real Partner

        Being a mother has been an amazing experience for me. Giving birth was not (*there are people that advocate laboring is pleasant experience) . After nine months of serious nausea, I could not wait to move on to the next phase.
Unfortunately, my son was in no such rush. When my due date arrived, my OB decided I should be induced. My parents and my sister, Michelle, joined me and Dave at the hospital. 
        Some say 'it takes a village it takes a village to raise a child, but in my case, it took a village to get the child out of me. My hours in labor went on...and...on....and on. For my supporters, exciting gave way to boredom. At one point, I needed help through a contraction but couldn't get anyones' attention because they were all on the other side of the room, showing family photos to my doctor. It has been a running joke in my family that it's hard to hold anyones' attention for too long. Labor was no exception to that rule.
        After 3 and a half hours of pushing, my son finally emerged, weighing 9 pounds, 7 ounces. Half of that weight was in his head.
        My sister is a pediatrician and has attended hundreds of deliveries. She kindly did not tell me, until much later, that mine was one of the hardest she had ever witnessed. It was all worth it when my son was pronounced healthy and the nausea that I had felt for 9 straight months vanished within an hour. The worst was over.
        The next morning, I got out of bed in my hospital room, took one step, and fell to the floor. Apparently I had yanked my leg back so hard during labor that I had puled a tendon. I was on crutches for a week.
       Being unable to stand added a degree of difficulty to my first week. Being unable to stand added a degree of difficulty to my first week of motherhood but also provided one unforeseen benefit: Dave became the primary caregiver four newborn.
        Dave, had to get up when the baby cried, bring him to me to be fed, change him, and then get him back to sleep.
Normally, the mother becomes the instant baby care expert. In our case, Dave taught me how to change a diaper when our son was 8 months old. If Dave and I had planned this, we would have been geniuses. But we dadn't and we aun't.
        In fact, we should have planned a lot more. When I was 6 months pregnant, a phd candidate interviewed me by phone for her dissertation on working couples. She began by asking "How do you do it all?" and I said

"I dont. I dont even have a child."
I suggested that she interviews someone who actually did.

She said "You're just a few months away from having a baby, so surely you and your husband have thought about who is going to pick up your child if he is sick at school? Who is going to arrange for child care?" and so on.
        I couldn't answer a single one of her questions. By the end of the call, I was in full panic, overwhelmed by how truly unprepared Dave and I were to handle these responsibilities. As soon as Dave walked in the door that night, I pounced. "Ohmigod!" I said "We are just a few months away from having a baby, and we have never talked about any of this!". Dave looked at me like I was crazy. "What?" he said "This is all we talk about.".
        In dissecting this discrepancy, Dave and I figured out that we had spent alot of time talking about how we would do things, but almost always in the abstract. So Dave was right that we had discussed parenthood often, and I was right that the discussion had not been that practical. Part of the problem was that was that our inexperience made it hard even to know what specifics to cover; we had very little idea what we were in for.
        I also think that we were in denial about the tremendous shift in our lives that was rapidly approaching. Dave and I were not even working in the same city when I got pregnant (although just to be clear, we were in the same place when I got pregnant - it wasn't artificial inseminations - though that is a thing). Dave had founded a company in L.A. and had to come to Northern California, where I lived and worked, but Daves' team remained in Los Angeles, where he lived and worked. 
        When we started dating, we decided to base our life together in the Bay area, so Dave began commuting, typically spending Monday through Thursday in Southern California and then flying North to spend weekends with me. This pattern continued ever after we were married.
       After the birth of our son, Dave began flying back and forth several times a week. It was great that we had the ability for him to commute, but it was far from ideal. Even though he was making an exhausting effort to be with me and our baby, he was still gone alot. Since I was with the baby fulltime, the great majority of child care fell to me. The division of labor felt uneven and it strained our marriage. We hired a nanny, but she couldn't solve all our problems; the emotional support and shared experience that a spouse provided cannot be bought.
      After a few months of parenthood, we had already fallen into the traditional, lopsided gender roles.
         We were not unique. In the last 30 years, women have made more progress in the workforce than in the home. According to the most recent analysis, when a husband and wife both are employed fulltime the mother does 40% more child care and about 30% more housework than the father. A 2009 survey found that only 9% of people in a dual-earner marriage, sai that they shared housework, child care, and breadwinning evenely. So while men are taking on more household responsibilities, this increase is happening very slowly, ad we are still far from parity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, same sex couples divide household tasks much more evenly.
        Public police reinforces this gender bias. The U.S. Census Bureau considers mothers the 'designated parent', even when both parents are present in the home. When mothers care for their children, it's 'parenting', but when fathers care for their children, it is deemed 'child care arrangement'.
        I have even heard a few men say that they are heading home to ''babysit' for their own fking child'. I have never heard a woman refer to taking care of her own children as 'babysitting'. A friend of mine ran a team-building exercise during a company retreat where people were asked to fill in their hobbies. Half of the men in the group listed 'their children' as hobbies. A hobby ? For most mothers, kids are not a hobby, showering is a 'hobby'.
        My friends Katie and Scott Mitic flip this pattern. Katie and Scott are both Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who work fulltime. About a year ago, Scott traveled to the East coast for work. He was starting a late-morning meeting when his phone rang. His team only heard one side of the conversations, "A sandwich, carrot sticks, a cutup apple, pretzels and a cookie". He hung up smiling and explained that his wife was asking what she should put in the kids' lunch boxes.

Everyone laughed.

        A few months later, Scott was back East with the same work colleagues. There were in a cab late that morning when Scotts phone rang. His team listened in disbelief as he patiently repeated the lunch bill all over again: "A sandwich, carrot sticks, a cutup apple, pretzels, and a cookie.". 
         When Scott tells this story, it is sweet and funny. But take this same story and switch the genders and it loses its charm. that is just the reality for most couples. Scott and Katie buck expectations with their division of household duties.
        There is an epilogue to their story. Scott went on a third trip and discovered that Katie forgot to make the kids lunches altogether. She realized her slipup midmorning and solved the problem by having a pizza delivered to the school cafeteria. Their kids were thrilled, but Scott was not. Now when he travels, he packs lunches in advance and leaves notes with specific instructions for his wife.
        There may be an evolutionary basis for one parent knowing better what to put in a childs' lunch. Women who breast-feed are arguably babys' first lunch box. Even if mothers are more naturally inclined toward nurturing fathers can match that skill with knowledge and effort. If women want to succeed more at work and if men want to succeed more at home, these expectations have to be challenged. As Gloria Steinem once observed "It is not about biology, but about consciousness.".
        We overcome biology with consciousness in other area. For example, storing large amounts of fats in our body was necessary to survive when food was scarce, so we evolved to crave it and consume it when it was available. 
In this era abundance, we no longer need large amounts of fats in reserve, so instead of simply giving in to these inclinations, we exercise and limit caloric intake. We use willpower to combat biology, or at least we try. So even if 'mother knows best' is rooted in biology, it need not be written in stone. A willing mother and a willing father are all it requires. Yes someone needs to remember what goes into the lunch box, but as Katie will attest, it does not have to be Mom.
        As women must be more empowered at work, men must be more empowered at home. I have seen so many women inadvertently discourage their husbands from doing their share by being to controlling our critical.
Social scientists call this 'maternal gatekeeping', which is a fancy term for,

        'Ohmigod, that's not the way you do it! Just move aside and let me!'.

        When it comes to children, fathers often take their cues from mothers. This gives a mother, great power to encourage or impede the fathers involvement. If she acts as a 'gatekeeper mother', and is reluctant to hand over responsibility or worse, questions the fathers efforts, he does less.
        When a married woman asks me for advice on coparenting with a husband, I tell her to let him put the diaper on the baby any way he wants as long as he is doing it himself. And if he gets up to deal with the diaper before being asked, she should smile even if he puts that diaper on the babys head..
Over time, if he does things his way, he will find the correct end. But if he is forced to do things her way, pretty soon she will be doing them herself.

        Anyone who wants her mate to be a true partner must treat him as an equal - and equally capable - partner. If that is not reason enough, bear in mind that a study found that wives who engage in gatekeeping behavior do 5 more hours of family work per week than wives who take a more collaborative approach. 
        Another common and counterproductive dynamic occurs when women assign or suggest tasks to their partners. She is delegating, and that is a step in the right direction. Sharing responsibility should mean sharing responsibility. Each partner needs to be in charge of specific activities or it becomes too easy for one to feel like he is doing a favor instead of doing his part.
        Like many pieces of advice, letting a partner take responsibility and do his share, in his own way, is easy to say and hard to do. My brother David, and my sister-in-law, Amy, were very aware of this tension when they first became parents. Amy said "There were many times when our daughter was more easily consoled by me, it is really hard to listen to your baby cry while your struggling husband with no breasts tries desperately and sometimes awkwardly to comfort her. 

David was insistent that rather than handing the baby to me when she was crying, we allow him to comfort her even if it took longer. It was harder in the short run, but it absolutely paid off when our daughter learned that daddy could  take care of her as well as mommy.".
         I truly believe that the single most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that partner is. I don't know of one woman in a leadership position whose life partner is not fully - and I mean fully - supportive of her career. No expectations. 
          Contrary to the popular notion that only unmarried women can make it to the top, the majority of the most successful female business leaders have partners. Of the 28 women who have served as CEOs of fortune 500 companies, 26 were married, 1 was divorced, and only 1 had never married.
Many of these CEO said they "could not have succeeded without the support of their husbands, helping with children, the household chores, and showing a willingness to move.".
         Not surprisingly, a lack of spousal support can have the opposite effect on a career. In a 2007 study of well-educated professional women who had left the paid workforce, 60% cited their husbands as a critical factor in their decision. 
These women specifically listed their husbands lack of participations in child care and other domestic tasks, with the expectations that wives should be the ones to cut back on employment as reasons for quitting.
        No wonder when asked at a conference about what men could do to help advance women leaderships, one professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter answered with - "The laundry.". Yup, tasks like laundry, food shopping, cleaning, and cooking are mundane and mandatory. Typically, these tasks fall to women.
        In January 2012, I received a letter from Ruth Change, the letter was concerning her dilemma. She had been offered a new job overseeing 75 doctors in 5 separate medical clinics. Her first instinct was to say no out of concern that she could not handled the expanded responsibility in addition to taking care of her family (she has 2 kids), but she had wavered to write me, 

"I heard your voice saying sit at the table, and I knew I had to accept the promotion. So that evening, I told my husband I was taking the job...and then handed him the grocery list.:. Sharing the burden of the mundane can make all the difference.
        My career and marriage are inextricably intertwined. During that first year Dave and I were parents, it became clear that balancing 2 careers and 2 cities was not adding up to one happy family. We needed to make some changes. But what? I loved my job at google and he felt enormously loyal to his Yahoo! team in Los Angelos.
        We struggled through the commuting for another long year of martial less-than-bliss. By then, Dave was ready to leave Yahoo!. 
He limited his job search to the San Francisco area, which was a sacrifice on his part, since more of his professional interests and contacts were in Los Angelos, he found a great solution to move a company from Portland to the Bay area.
        Once we were in the same city, it still took us some time to figure out how to coordinate our work schedules. Even though Dave and I are extraordinarily fortunate and can afford exceptional child care, there are still difficult and painful decisions about how much time our jobs require us to be away from our family and who will pick up the slack. 
We sit down at the beginning of every week and figure out which one of us will drive our children to school each day. 
We both try to be home for dinner as many evenings as we can. At dinner we go around the table and share the best and worst events from our day/s; I refrain from saying so, but my best is usually being home for dinner in the first place. If one of us is scheduled to be away, the other almost always arranges to be home. On weekends, I try to focus completely on my kids (although I have been known to sneak off a few emails from the bathroom of the local soccer field).
        Like all marriages, ours is a work in progress. Dave and I have had our share of bumps on our path to achieving a roughly 55 split. After alot of effort and seemingly endless discussion, we are partners not just in what we do, but in who is in charge. Each of us makes sure that things that need to get done, do indeed get done. Our division of household chores is actually pretty traditional. Dave pays bills, handles our finances, provides tech support. I schedule the kids activities, make sure there is food in the fridge, plan the birthday parties.
        Sometimes I'm bothered by this classic gender division of labor. Am I perpetuating stereotypes by falling into these patterns ? Bu I would rather plan a Dora the explorer party than, pay an insurance bill, and since Dave feels the exact opposite, this arrangement works for us. It takes continual communication, honesty, and alot of forgiveness to maintain a rickety balance. We are never at 50-50 at any given moment - perfect equality is hard to define or sustain - but we allow the pendulum to swim back and forth between us.
         In the coming years, our balancing act may get harder. Our children are still young and go to sleep early, which gives me plenty of time to work at night and even to watch what Dave considers to be truly bad TV. As the kids get older, we will have to adjust. Many of my friends have told me that teenage children require more time from their parents. Every stage of life has its challenges.
Fortunately, I have Dave to figure it out with me. He is the best partner I could imagine - even though he is wrong about my TV shows being bad.
         Having a true partner like Dave is still far too rare. While we expect women to be nurturing, we don't have the same expectations of men, as I have explained before. My brother, David once told me about a colleague who bragged about playing soccer the afternoon that his first child was born. To Davids credit, instead of nodding and smiling, he spoke up and explained that he didn't think that was either cool or impressive. This opinion needs to be voiced loudly and repeatedly on soccer fields, in workplaces, an in homes.
        My brother had a wonderful role model; my father, who was engage and an active parent. Like most men of his generation, my father did very little domestic work, but unlike most men of his generation, he was happy to change diapers and give baths. He was home for dinner every night, since his ophthalmology practice required no travel and involved few emergencies.
He coached my brothers and sisters sports teams (and would have happily coached mine if I had been the slightest bit coordinated.). He helped me with my homework regularly and was my most enthusiastic fan when I participated in oratory contests.
        Studies from around the world have concluded that children benefit greatly from paternal involvement. Research over the last 40 years has consistently found that in comparison to children with less-involved fathers, children with involved and loving fathers have higher levels of psychological well0being and better cognitive abilities. When fathers provide even just routine child care, children have higher levels of educational and economic achievement and lower delinquency rates. Their children even tend to be more empathetic and socially competent. 
These findings hold true for children from all socioeconomic backgrounds, whether or not the mother is highly involved.

        We all need to encourage men to lean in to their families. 

Unfortunately, traditional gender roles are reinforced not just by individuals, but also by employment policies. 

Most companies in the United States of America offer more time off for maternity than paternity leave, and men take far fewer extended breaks from work for family reasons. Our laws support this double standard. In the United States of America only 5 states provide any income replacement for the care of a new baby (which is a large problem in and of itself.). In 3 of these states, this benefit is only offered to mothers and is characterized as a pregnancy disability benefit. Only 2 states offer a paid family leave benefit that fathers can use. In general, father do not take much time off for a new child; a survey of fathers in in the corporate sector found that the vast majority took off 1 week or less when their partners gave birth, hardly enough time to start out as an equal parent. 

I am proud that even before I arrived, facebook offered equal time for maternity and paternity leave.

        When family friendly benefits like paternity leave or reduced work hours are offered, both male and female employees often worry that if they take advantage of these programs, they will be seen as uncommitted to their jobs. For good reason too. Employees who use these benefits often face steep penalties ranging from substantial pay cuts, to lost promotions to marginalization.
Both women and men can be penalized at work for prioritizing family, but men may pay an even higher price. When male employees take a leave of absence or just leave work early to care for a sick child, they can face negative consequences that range from being teased to, receiving lower performance ratings, to reducing their chances for a raise or promotion. 
         Fathers who want to drop out of the workforce entirely and devote themselves to child care can face extremely negative social pressures too. Currently, fathers make up less than 4% of parents who work fulltime inside the home, and many report that it can be very isolating. 
        My friend Peter Noone spent several years as a stay at home father and found that while people claimed to respect his choice, he did not feel welcomed into the social circles in his neighborhood. As a man at the playground or in the nots so tactfully name 'Mommy and Me' classes, strangers viewed him with a certain amount of distrust. The friendly and easy connections that the women made were not extended to him. Time and again he was reminded that he was outside of the norm.
      Gender-specific expectations remain self-fulfilling. The belief that mothers are committed to family than to work penalizes women because employers assume the women will not live up to expectation of professional dedication. The reverse is true for men, who are expected to put their careers first. 
We judge men primarily by their professional success and send them a clear message that personal achievements are insufficient for them to be valued or feel fulfilled. This mind-set leads to a grown man bragging on the soccer field that he left his postpartum wife and newborn at the hospital to go kick a ball.

        Making gender matters even worse, mens success is viewed not just in absolute terms, but often in comparison to 'their wives'. The image of a happy couple still includes a husband who is more professionally successful than the wife. If the reverse occurs, it is perceived as threatening to the marriage. People frequently pull me aside to ask sympathetically "How is Dave? Is he okay with you, you know, all your (whisperings) success?". 
Dave is far more self-confident than I am, and given his own professional success, these comments are easy for him to brush off. 
        More and more men will have to do the same, since almost 30% of the United States of Americas wives now outearn their husbands. As that number continues to grow, I hope the whispering stops. Dave and I can laugh off concerns about his supposedly fragile ego, but for many women, this is no laughing matter. Women face enough barriers to professional success. If they also have to worry that they will upset their husbands by succeeding, how can we hope to live in an equal world?
       When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys, just do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated, and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home.
         These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier. If you do not believe me, check out a fabulous little book 'porn for women'. One of the pages shows a man cleaning a kitchen while insisting, "I like to get to these things before I have to be asked." Another man in the book, gets out of bed in the middle of the night, wondering, "is that the baby? I'll get her/him".
        Kristina Salen told me that when she was dating, she wanted to see how much a boyfriend would support her career, so she devised a test. She would break a date at the last minute claiming there was a professional conflict and see how the guy would react. If he understood and simply rescheduled, she would go out with him again. When Kristina wanted to take a relationship to the next level, she gave him another test, she would invite the guy to visit her for the weekend...at her place in Sao Paulo.
It was a great way to find out if he was willing to fit his schedule around hers. The trials paid off. She found her Mr. Right and they have been happily married for 14 years. Not only is her husband, Daniel, completely supportive of her career, he is also the primary caregiver for their 2 children.
         Even after finding the right guy - or gal - no one comes fully formed. I learned from my mother to be careful about role definition in the beginning of a relationship. Even though my mother did most of the household work, my father always vacuumed the floor after dinner. She never had to persuade him to do this chore; it was simply his job from day one. At the start of a romance, it's tempting for a woman to show a more classic 'girlfriendly' side by volunteering to cook meals and take care of errands. And, suddenly, we're back in 1955.

If a relationship begins in an unequal place, it is likely to get more unbalanced when and if children are added to the equation. Instead, use the beginning of a relationship to establish the division of labor, just as Nora Ephrons dialogue in 'When Harry met Sally' reminds us:

Harry - " You take someone to the airport, it is clearly the beginning of the relationship. That's why I have never taken anyone to the airport at the beginning of a relationship.

Sally - " Why?"

Harry - " Because eventually things move on and you don't take that someone to the airport and I never wanted anyone to say to me 'how come you never take me to the airport anymore?'".

         If ya' want a 50-50 partnership, establish that pattern at the outset. A few years ago, Mr. Zuckerberg and his partner, now wife, Priscilla Chan, made a foundation to improve the Newark, New Jersey public school system and the 2 needed someone to run the foundation. 
        I recommended Jen Holleran, who had great experience with school reforms. Jen also had a set of 14 month old twins. She had also cut her hours at work by 2/3s since birth. Her husband Andy, is a child psychiatrist who was well involved with raising the kids when he was home. Still, once Jen lowered her workload, she ended up being responsible for all of the household work, including running errands, paying bills, cooking, and scheduling. 
        Jen wasn't sure she was ready to upset the current order by committing to a fulltime job with frequent travel. I urged her to set up the relationship dynamics she wanted sooner rather than later. Jen remembers my suggestion "if you want equal partnership, you should start now.".
        Jen and Andy discussed the opportunity and decided she should take the job because of the impact she could have. And who would pick up the slack? Andy would. He rearranged his work so he could be home with the boys each morning and night, and even more so when Jen travels. He now pays all the bills and squeezes in grocery runs as much as she does. Andy cooks and cleans more, knows the details of the schedule and is happy to be the number 1 - in demand parent of half the week. 
        A year and a half into this new arrangement, Andy told me that he loves his time alone with their boys and the increased role that he has in their lives. Jen loves her job and is glad that she and her husband now have a more equal marriage. "My time is now as valuable as his" she told me "as a result, we are happier.".
        Research supports Jens observation that equality between partners leads to happier relationship. When husbands do more housework, wives are less depressed, martial conflicts decrease, and satisfaction rises. When women work outside the home and share breadwinning duties, couples are more likely to stay together. In fact, the risk of divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half the income and a husband does half the housework. For men, participating in child rearing fosters the development of patience, empathy, and adaptability, characteristics that benefit all of their relationships.
         For women, earning money, increases their decision-making ability in the home, protects them in case of divorce, and can be an important security in later years, as women often outlive their husbands. Also - and many might find this the most motivating factor - couples who share domestic responsibilities have more sex (*hopefully with each other). It may be counterintuitive, but the best way for a man to 'make a pass' at 'his wife' might be to do the dishes. 

        I also feel strongly that when a parent stays at home, their time during the day should still be considered real work. Because it is. Raising children is at least as stressful and demanding as a paying job, it's the same amount of responsibility. It is unfair that parents are frequently expected to work long into the night. While parents who work outside the home get the chance to relax from their day job when they get back home. When the parent does come home, they should take on half the child care and house work. Also, most employed parents interact with other grown-ups all day long, while stay at home parents are often starved for adult conversation by evening. 
        I know one person whom gave up their career as a lawyer to be a stay at home parent and always insisted that when the other half, a TV writer, got home from work, asked "how was your day" and then began an entire account of their whole day at work. True partnership in our homes, does more than just benefit couples today; it also sets the stage for the next generation. The workplace has evolved more than the home in part because we enter it as adults, so each generation experiences a new dynamic. A simple abstract is that the home we make tend to be more rooted in our childhoods. 
        If my generation grew up watching our mothers do the house work, it would be easier to get stuck in these patterns, so I say the sooner we break the cycle, the faster we will reach greater equality. One of the reasons Dave is my true partner is because he grew up in a home where his father set an extraordinary example. Sadly, Daves father, Mel, passed away before I had a chance to meet him. Though, I think, clearly this was a man way ahead of his time. 

Mels mother worked (that's Daves grandma) side by side with her husband running the familys small grocery store, so Mel grew up accepting women as equals, which was unusual in those days.
As a single man, Mel became interested in the womens movement and read Betty Friedans 'the feminine mystique'. He was the one who introduced his wife (and Daves mother) Paula, to this feminist wake-up call in the 1960s. He encouraged Paula to set up and lead PACER, a national nonprofit to help children with disabilities. 
        A law professor, Mel often taught classes in the evening since he wanted the family to have at leas one meal together each day, he decided it would be breakfast and prepared the meal himself, complete with fresh-squeezed orange juice.
        A more equal division of labor between parents will model better behavior for the next generation. I have heard so many women say that they wished their partners helped more with child care, but since it's only a few more years until their kids are off to school, it is not worth the battle to change the dynamic. In my opinion, it is always worth the battle to change an undesirable dynamic. I also worry that these women will face the same dynamic when it comes time to care for aging parents. Women provide more than twice as much care not only for their own parents, but for their in laws as well. This is an additional burden that needs to be shared. Children need to see it being shared so that their generation will follow that example.
        In 2012, Gloria Steinam sat down in her home for an interview with Mrs. Winfrey. Gloria reiterated that progress for women in the home was trailed progress in the workplace, explaining "Now we know that women can do what men can do, but we don't know that men can do what women can do.". I believe they can and we should give them more chances to prove it.
        This revolution will happen one family at a time. The good news is that men in younger generations appear more eager to be real partners than men in previous generations. A survery that asked participants to rate the importance of various job characteristics found that men in their 40s most frequently selected 'work which challenges me' as very important, while men in their 20s and 30s more frequently selected having a job with a schedule that 'allows me to spend time with my family'. If these trends hold as this group ages, it could signal a promising shift.
        Wonderful, sensitive men of all ages are out there. The more women value kindness and support in their boyfriends, the more men will demonstrate it. Kristina Salen, my friend who devised the tests to screen her dates, told me that her son insists that when he grows up, he wants to take care of his children 'like daddy does'. She and 'her husband' were thrilled to hear this.         More boys need that role model and that choice. As more women lean in to their careers, more men need to lean in to their families. We need to encourage men to be more ambitious in their homes. We need more men to sit at the table...the kitchen table.

 9

The myth
              of
                 Doing
                         it all
  
        'Having it all.'. Perhaps the greatest trap ever set for women, was setting this phrase. Bandied about in speeches, headlines, bantered about at coffee tables and dinners, these three little words are intended to be aspirational but instead they expect something, and over time, most break and feel like they/we have fallen short. I have never met anyone, who has stated emphatically "Yes, I have it all.". Because no matter what any of us has - and how grateful we are for what we have -no one has it all.

        Nor can we have it all. The very concept of having it all flies in the face of the basic laws of economics and common sense. As Sharon Poczter explains - "The antiquated rhetoric of 'having it all' disregards the basis of every economic relationship: the idea of trade. All of us are dealing with the constrained optimization that is life, attempting to maximize our utility based on parameters like: career, kids, relationships, etc. While doing our best to allocate the resource of time. Due to the scarcity of this resource, therefore, none of us can 'have it all', and those who claim to are most likely lying to themselves and to everyone else.".
        Having it all is best regarded as a myth, like walking on water. And like many myths, it can deliver a helpful cautionary message. Think of Icarus, who soared to great heights with his man-made wings of wax. His father warned Icarus not to fly too near the sun, but Icarus ignored the advice. Having soared higher and higher , his wings melted, and he crashed to earth.
        Pursuing both a professional and personal life is a noble and attainable goal, up to a point. Women should learn from Icarus to aim for the sky, but keep in mind that we all have real limits.
        Instead of pondering the question 'can we have it all?', we should be asking the more practical question - 'can we do it all?". And again, I say no, *the only thing that does it all is God (and joke here - google). 
        Each of us makes choices constantly between work and family, exercising and relaxing, making time for others and taking time for ourselves. Being a parent means making adjustments, compromises, and sacrifices every day. For most people, sacrifices and hardships are not a choice, but a necessity. About 65% of married-couple families with children in the United States of America have 2 parents in the workforce, with almost all relying on both incomes to support their household. Being a single working parent can be even more difficult. About 30% of families with children are led by a single parent, with 84% of those led by a woman.
        Mothers who work outside the home are constantly reminded of these challenges. Tina Fey noted that when she and her co-star Steve Carell were promoting the movie 'Date night', reporters would grill Fey on how she balances her life, but never posed that question to Steve, who also had 2 children and a sitcom....As she wrote in 'bossypants'
"what is the rudest question you can ask a women? maybe it's how old are you, or how much you weigh, or when you and your twin sister are alone with Mr. Hefner, do you have to pretend to be lesbians?,
no the worst question is 'how do you juggle it all'?....
        People constantly ask me, with an accusatory look in their eyes - 'you're fucking it all up, aren't you? - their eyes say it.".
        Fey nails it. Employed mothers and fathers both struggle with multiple responsibilities, but mothers also have to endure the rude questions and accusatory looks that remind us that we're shortchanging both our jobs and our children. As if we needed reminding.         Like me, most of the women I know do a great job worrying that we don't measure up. We compare our efforts at work to those of our colleagues, usually men, who typically have far fewer responsibilities at home. Then we compare our efforts at home to those of mothers who dedicate themselves solely to their families. Outside observers reminding us that we must be struggling - and failing - is just bitter icing on an already soggy and expired cake.
        Trying to do it all and expecting that it all can be done exactly right is a recipe for disappointment. Perfection is the enemy. Gloria Steinem said it best "You can't do it all. No one can have two full-time jobs, have perfect children and cook 3 meals and be a multi-orgasmic 'till dawn....wonderwoman is the adversary of the womens' movement.".
        Dr.Laurie Glimcher, dean of Weill Cornell Medical College, said the key for her in pursuing her career while raising children was learning where to focus her attention. She goes on "I had to decide what mattered and what didn't and I learned to be a perfectionist in only the things that mattered.:. In her case, she concluded that scientific data had to be perfect, but reviews and other mundance* administrative tasks could be considered good enough at 95%. Dr. Glimcher also said she made it a priority to get home at a reasonable hour, adding that when she got there, she refused to worry about whether "the linens were folded or the closets were tidy. You can't be obsessive about these things that don't matter.".
        A few years before I became a mother, I spoke on a womens panel for a local business group in Palo Alto. One of the other panelists, an executive with two children, was asked the (inevitable) question about how she balances her work and her children.
She started her response by saying "I probably shouldn't admit this publicly...." and then she confessed that she put her children to sleep in their school clothes to save 15 precious minutes every morning.
At the same time, I thought to myself, Yup, she should not have admitted that publicly.
        Now that I am a parent, I think this woman was a genius. We all face limits of time and patience. I have not yet put my children to sleep in their school clothes, but there are morning when I wish I had. I also know that all the planning in the world cannot prepare us for the constant challenges of parenting. In hindsight, I appreciate my fellow panelists candor. And in the spirit of candor, I probably shouldn't admit this publicly either...
        Last year I was traveling with my children to a business conference. Several other Silicon Valley folk were attending too, and John Donahoe kindly offered us a ride on the eBay plane. When the flight was delayed for several hours, my main concern was keeping my kids occupied so they would not disturb the other adult passengers. I made it through the delay by allowing them to watch endless TV and eat endless snacks. Then just as the flight finally took off, my daughter started scratching her head.
        "Mommy my head itches!" she announced loudly, speaking over the headset she was wearing (as she continued watching more tv). I didn't think anything of it until her itching grew frantic and her complaints grew louder. I urged her to lower her voice, then examined her head and noticed small white things. 
I was pretty sure I knew what they were. 
        I was the only person bringing my children young children on this corporate plane - and now my daughter most likely had lice!
I spent the rest of the flight in a complete panic, trying to keep her isolated and her voice down, and her hands out of her hair, while furiously scanning the internet for pictures of lice.
When we landed, everyone piled into rental cars to caravan to the conference hotel, but I told them to go ahead without me; I just needed to 'pick something up'.
        I dashed to the nearest pharmacy, where they confirmed my diagnosis. Fortunately, we had avoided direct contact with anyone else on the plane, so there was no way for the lice to have spread, which saved me from the fatal embarrassment of having to tell the group to check their own heads. We grabbed the shampoo that I needed to treat her and, as it turned out, her brother too - and I spent that night in a marathon hair-washing session. I missed the opening night dinner, and when asked why, I said my kids were tired. Frankly, I was too. Even though I managed to escape the lice, I could not stop scratching my head for several days.
         It is impossible to control all the variables when it comes to parenting. For women who have achieved previous success by planning ahead and pushing themselves hard, this chaos can be difficult to accept. Psychologist Jennifer Stuart studied a group of Yale graduates and concluded that for such women "the effort to combine career and motherhood may be particularly fraught.
The stakes are high, as they may expect nothing less than perfection, both at home and in the work place. When they fall short of lofty ideals, they may retreat altogether - from workplace to home or vice-versa.".
        Another one of my favorite posters at facebook declares in big red letters "Done is better than perfect.". I have tried to embrace this motto and let go of unattainable standards. Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst. I agree completely with the advice offered by Nora Ephron in her 1996 Wellesley commencement speech when she addressed the issue of women having both a career and family. Emphron insisted "it will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don't be frightened: you can always change your mind. I know: I've had four careers and 3 husbands.".
        I was extremely fortunate that early in my career I was warned about the perils of trying to do it all by someone I deeply admired. Larry Kanarek managed the Washington D.C. office of McKinsey & company where I interned in 1994. One day, Larry gathered everyone together for a talk. 
He explained that since he was running the office, employees came to him when they wanted to quit. Over time he noticed that people quit for one reason only: they were burnt out, tired of working long hours and traveling. Larry said he could understand the complaint, but what he could not understand was that all the people who quite - every single one - had unused vacation time. 
Up until the day they left, they did everything McKinsey asked of them before deciding that it was too much.
        Larry implored us to exert more control over our careers. He said McKinsey would never stop making demands on our time, so it was up to us to decide what we were willing to do. It was our responsibility to draw the line. We needed to determine how many hours we were willing to work in a day and how many nights we were willing to travel. 
If later on, the job did not work out, we would know that we had tried on our own terms. 
        Counterintuitively, long-term success at work often depends on not trying to meet every demand placed on us. The best way to make room for both life and career is to make choices deliberately - to set limits and stick to them.
        During my first four years at google, I was in the office from 7am to 7pm every day at a minimum. I ran the global operating teams and thought it was critical that I stay on top of as many details as possible.
No one ever demanded that I work this schedule; typical of Silicon Valley, google was not the type of place to set hours for anyone. 
Still, the culture in those early days promoted working around the clock. When my son arrived, I wanted to take the 3 months of maternity leave google offered, but I worried that my job would not be there when I returned.
        Events leading up to my sons birth did not put my mind at ease. Google was growing quickly and reorganizing frequently. My team was one of the largest in the company, and coworkers often suggested ways to restructure, which usually meant that they would do more and I would do less. In the months before my leave, several colleagues, all men, ramped up these efforts, volunteering to 'help run things' while I was gone. 

Some of them even mentioned to my boss that I might not return, so it made sense to start sharing my responsibilities immediately.
        I tried to take Larry Kanareks' advice and draw my own line. I decided that I wanted to focus entirely on my new role as mother. I was determined to truly unplug. I even made this decision public - a trick that can help a commitment stick by creating greater accountability. I announced that I was going to take the full 3 months off.
        No one believed me. A group of my colleagues bet on how long I would be off email after giving birth, with not a single person taking "more than one week" as their wager. I would have been offended, except they knew me better than I knew myself. I was back on email from my hospital room the day after giving birth.
        Over the next three months, I was unable to unplug much at all. I checked email constantly. I organized meetings in my living room, during which I sometimes breast-fed and probably freaked several people out. I tried to set these gatherings for times when my son would be sleeping, but babies make their own schedules. I went into the office for key meetings, baby in tow. And while I had some nice moments with my son, I look back on that maternity leave as a pretty unhappy time.
Being a new mother was exhausting, and when my son slept, I worked instead of resting.
        The only thing worse than everyone knowing that I was not sticking to my original commitment, was that I knew it too. I was totally letting myself down, like fore real.
       3 months later, my non-leave maternity leave ended. I was returning to a job I loved, but as I pulled the car out of the driveway to head to the office for my first full day back, I felt a tightness in my chest and tears started to flow down my cheeks. 

Even though I had worked throughout my 'time off' I had done so almost entirely from home with my son right next to me. 
Going back to the office meant a dramatic change in the amount of time I would see him. If I returned to my typical 12 hour days, I would leave the house before he woke up and return after he was asleep. In order to spend any time with him at all, I was going to have to make changes....and stick to them.
        I started arriving at work around 9am and leaving at 5:30pm. This schedule allowed me to nurse my son before I left and get home in time to nurse again before putting him to sleep. I was so scared that I would lose credibility, or even my entire job, if anyone knew that these were my new in the office hours. To compensate, I started checking emails around 5am. Yup I was awake before my newborn. Then once he was down at night, I would jump back on my computer and continue my workday. I went to great lengths to hide my new schedule from most people.
        Camille, my ingenious executives assistant, came up with the idea of holding my first and last meetings of the day in other buildings to make it less transparent when I was actually arriving or departing. When I did leave directly from my office, I would pause in the lobby and survey the parking lot to find a colleague-free moment to bolt to my car. Given my awkwardness, we should all be relieved that I once worked for the United States of Americas treasury department and not the United States of Americas cleavage inspection agency.
        Looking back, I realize that my concern over my new hours stemmed from my own insecurity. Google was hard charging and hypercompetitive, it also supported combining work and parenthood - an attitude that clearly started at the top. 
Larry and Sergey came to my baby shower and each gave me a certificate that entitled me to one hour of babysitting. I never used the certificates.
        Susan Wojciki, who blazed a trail by having 4 children is one of googles earliest and most valuable employees. She brought her children to the office when her babysitter was sick, and just had a normal day about it.
So it goes without saying that, both my bosses, Omid and David Fischer, the most senior leader on my team, were steadfast supporters and did not allow others to take over parts of my job. 
         Slowly, it began to dawn on me that my job did not really require that I spent 12 full hours a day in the office. I became much more efficient - more vigilant about only attending or setting up meetings that were truly necessary, more determined to maximize my output during every minute I spent away from home. I also started paying more attention to the working hours of those around me; cutting unnecessary meetings saved time for them as well.
I tried to focus on what really mattered. 
Long before I saw the poster, I began to adopt the mantra "Done is better than perfect.". 
Done, while still a challenge, turns out to be far more achievable and often a relief. By the time I took my second maternity leave, I not only unplugged (mostly), but really enjoyed the time with both my children.
        My sister in law, Amy, a doctor, experienced almost the same evolution in attitude. Amy - "When I had my first child, I worked 12 hours days while trying to pump at work, I wanted to feel connected to my baby in the limited hours that I was home, so I made myself her sole caregiver many nights. 
I believed that others were demanding this of me - my bosses at work and my daughter at home. But in truth, I was torturing myself.". 
With the birth of her second child, Amy adjusted her behavior. Amy also said "I took 3 months off and handled my return to work in my own way, on my own terms. And despite what I had previously feared, my reputation and productivity weren't hurt a bit.".
        I deeply understand the fear of appearing to be putting our families above our careers. Mothers do not want to be perceived as less dedicated to their jobs than men or women without family responsibilities. We overwork to overcompensate. 
Even in workplaces that offer reduced or flextime arrangements, people fear that reducing their hours will jeopardize their career prospects. And this! is not just a perception problem!
        Employees who make use of flexible work policies are often penalized and seen as less committed than their peers. And those penalties can be greater for mothers in professional jobs. This all needs to change, especially since new evidence suggest working from home might actually be more productive in certain cases.
        It is difficult to distinguish between the aspects of a job that are truly necessary and those that are not. Sometimes the situations is hard to read and the lines are hard to draw. Amy told me about a conference dinner she attended with a group of fellow physicians, including one who had given birth to her first child several weeks earlier. About 2 hours into the meal, the new mom was looking uncomfortable, glancing repeatedly at her cell phone.
As a mother herself, Amy was sensitive to the situation. "Do you need to leave and pump" - Amy whispered to her colleague. The new mom sheepishly admitted that she had brought her baby and her mother to the conference. 
She was looking at her cell phone because her mother was texting her that the baby needed to be fed.

Amy encouraged that the new mom leave immediately. Once she left, the young mothers mentor, and older male physician, admitted that he had no idea that she had brought her baby. If he had known, he would have encouraged her to leave earlier. She was torturing herself unnecessarily. This is one instance where I would have recommended not to sit at the table.
        Technology is also changing the emphasis on strict office hours since so much work can be conducted online. While few companies can provide as much flexibility as google and facebook, other industries are starting to move in a similar direction. 
Still, the traditional practice of judging employees by face time (ahm, physical presence) rather than results, unfortunately persists. Because of this many employees focus on hours clocked in the office rather than on achieving their goals as efficiently as possible. A shift to focusing more on results would benefit individuals and make companies more efficient and competitive.
        In his latest book, general Colin Powell explains that his vision of leadership rejects 'busy bastards' who put in long hours at the office without realizing the impact they have on their staff. 
He explains that "in ever senior job I have had I have tried to create an environment of professionalism and the very highest standards. When it was necessary to get a job done, I expected my subordinates to work around the clock.
When that was not necessary, I wanted them to work normal hours, go home at a decent time, play with the kids, enjoy family and friends, read a novel, clear their heads, daydream, and refresh themselves. 
I wanted them to have a life outside the office. I am paying them for the quality of their work, not for the hours they work. 
That kind of environment has always produced the best results for me.". It is still far too rare to work for someone as wise as general Powell.
        A related issue that affects many Americans is the extension of working hours. In 2009, married middle income parents worked about 8 and a half more hours per week than in 1979. This trend has been particularly pronounced among professionals and managers, especially men.
A survey of high-earning professionals in the corporate world found that 62% work more than 80 hours per week. Technology, while liberating us at times from the physical office, has also extended the workday.
A 2012 survey of employed adults showed that 80% of the respondents continued to work after leaving the office, 38% checked email at the dinner table, and 69% (gigity) cant go to bed without checking their inbox.
         My mother believes that my generations is suffering greatly from this endless work schedule. During her childhood and mine, a full time job meant 40 hours a week - Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm. She tells me over and over "There's too much pressure on you and your peers. It's not compatible with a normal life.". This however, is the new normal for many of us.
        The new normal means that there are just not enough hours in the day. For years, I attempted to solve this problem by skimping on sleep, a common but often counterproductive approach. I realized my mistake partially from observing my children and seeing how a happy child can melt into a puddle of tears when the poor kid is shy a couple hours of sleep.
         It turns out that adults aren't much different.
Sleeping four or five hours a night induces mental impairments equivalent to a blood alcohol level above the legal driving limit.
 * I the editor can stay awake for weeks, with 2 hours of rest at times, but, I do feel like I am detached from the human world as there is no-one else in that consciousness. I will watch the world go by, and the three days that go by to me are just one. If I am busy doing stuff, I will have accomplished three days of work in one. And yes, with no drugs, medication, or bs. 
         Sleep deprivation usually makes people anxious, irritable, confused, and can even cause hallucinations. If I could go back and change one thing about how I lived in those early years, I would force myself to get more sleep.
        It is not only working parents who are looking for more hours in the day; people without children are also overworked, maybe to an even greater extent. When I was in business school, I attended a women in consulting panel with three speakers:
2 married women with children, and 1 single woman without children.
After the married women spoke about how hard it was to balance their lives, the single woman interjected that she was tired of people not taking her need to have a life seriously. 
She felt that her colleagues were always rushing off to be with their families, leaving her to pick up the slack!
She argued her point "My coworkers should understand that I need to go to a party tonight - and this is just as legitimate as their kids soccer game - because going to a party is a great way that I might actually meet someone and start a family so I can have a soccer game to go to one day!". 
I often quote this story to make sure single employees know that they, too, have every right to a full life.
        My own concerns about combining my career and family rose to the forefront again when I was considering leaving google for facebook. I had been at google for 6 and a half years (*I think Sheryl mentioned how long she worked before shifting these jobs plenty of times already, but hey, what's one more?), so she had very strong leaders in place for each of her teams after six and a half years.
By then google had more than 20,000 employees and business procedures that ran smoothly and allowed me to make it home for dinner with my children almost every night. 
Facebook, on the other hand, had only 550 employees and was much more of a start-up. Late night meetings and all-night hackathons were an accepted part of the culture. I worried that taking a new job might undermine the balance I had worked hard to achieve.
        It helped that Dave was working as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture capital firm, so he had almost complete control of his schedule. He assured me that he would take on more at home to make this work for our family.
        My first 6 months at facebook were really hard. I know I'm supposed to say 'challenging' but 'really hard' (gigity) is more like it. alot of the company followed Mr. Zuckerbergs' lead and worked night-owl engineering hours.
I would schedule a meeting with someone for 9am and the person would now show up, assuming that I meant 9pm.
I needed to be around when others were and I worried that leaving too early would make me stand out like a sore - and old - thumb.
I missed dinner after dinner with my kids. Dave would tell me that he was home with them and that everyone was fine. But I was not.
        I thought about Larry Kanareks' speech back at McKinsey and realized that if I didn't take control of the situation, my new job would prove unsustainable. I would resent not seeing my family and run the risk of becoming the employee who quit with unused vacation time. I started forcing myself to leave the office at 5:30.
        Every competitive, type-A fiber of my being was screaming at me to stay, but unless I had a critical meeting, I walked out that door. Once I did it, I learned that I could. I am not claiming, nor have I ever claimed, that I work a 40 hour week. 
Facebook is available around the would 24/7, and for the most part, so am I. 
The days when I even think of unplugging for a weekend or a vacation are long gone. Unlike my job at google, which was based almost exclusively in California, my facebook role requires alot of travel. 
As a result, I have become even more vigilant about leaving the office to have dinner with my children when I am not on the road.
        I will struggle with the trade-offs between work and home on a daily basis. Every women I know does, and I know that I'm far luckier than most. 
I have remarkable resources - a husband who is a real partner, the ability to hire great people to assist me both in the office and at home, and a good measure of control over my schedule.
I also have a wonderful sister who lives close by and is always willing to take care of her nice and nephew, occasionally at a moments notice. She's even a pediatrician. My kids are in loving hands, and more so they are in medically trained great and loving hands. 
       Still, not all people are close to their family, either geographically or emotionally. Fortunately, friends can be leaned on to provide this type of support for each other. 
        If there is a new normal for the workplace, there is a new normal for the home too. Just as expectations for how many hours people will work have risen dramatically, so have expectations for how many hours mothers will spend focused on their children.
In 1975, stay at home mothers spent an average of about 11 hours per week on primary child care (as defined to be routine caregiving and whatever activities that foster a childs' well being, such as a reading and fully focused play). 
Mothers employed outside the home in 1975 spent 6 hours doing these activities. Today, stay at home mothers spend about 17 hours per week on primary child care, on average, while mothers who work outside the home spend about 11 hours. 
This means that an employed mother today spends about the same amount of time on primary child care activities as a nonemployed mother did in 1975.
        My memory of being a kid is that my mother was available but rarely hovering or directing my activities. My siblings and I did not have organized playdates. 
We rode our bikes around the neighborhood without adult supervision.
Our parents might have checked on our homework once in awhile, but they rarely sat with us while we completed it. Today, a 'good mother' is always around and always devoted to the needs of her children.
Sociologists call this relatively new phenomenon 'intensive mothering', and it has culturally elevated the importance of women spending large amounts of time with their children.
Being judged against the current all-consuming standard means mothers who work outside the home feel as if we are failing, even if we are spending the same number of hours with our kids as our mothers did.
        When I drop my kids off at school and see the mothers who are staying to volunteer, I worry that my children are worse off because I am not with them full time. This is where my trust in hard data and research has helped me the most. Study after study suggests that the pressure society places on women to stay home and do 'what's best for the child' is based on emotion, not evidence.
        In 1991, the early child care research network, under the auspices of the national institute of child health and human development (maybe these are United States of America institutes too^=*), initiated the most ambitious and comprehensive study to date on the relationship between child care and child development, and in particular on the effect of exclusive maternal care versus child care. 
The research network, which comprise more than 30 child development experts from leading universities across the country, spent 18 months just designing the study.
They had tracked more than 1000 children over the course of 15 years, repeatedly assessing the childrens' cognitive skills, language abilities, and social behaviors. Dozens of papers have been published about what they found.
        In 2006, the researchers released a report summarizing their findings which concluded that "children who were cared for exclusively by their mothers did not develop differently than those who were also cared for by others".
They found no gap in cognitive skills, language competence, social competence, ability to build and maintain relationship, or in the quality of the mother-child bond.
Parental behavioral factors - including father who are responsive and positive, mothers who favor 'self-directed child behavior', and parents with emotional intimacy in their marriages - influence a childs' development 2 to 3 times more than any form of child care.
One of the findings is worth reading slowly, maybe even twice: "Exclusive maternal care was not related to better or worse outcomes for the children. There is thus, no reason for mothers to feel as though they are harming their children if they decide to work.".
        Children absolutely need parental involvement, love, care, time, and attention. But parents who work outside the home are still capable of giving their children a loving and secure childhood.
Some data even suggest that having 2 parents working outside the home can be advantageous to a childs development, particularly for girls.
         Although I know the data and understand intellectually that my career is not harming my children, there are times when I still feel ancious about my choices. A friend of mine felt the same way, so she discussed it with her therapist and, later, shared this insight: "My therapist told me that when I was worrying about how much I was leaving my girls, that separation anxiety is actually more about the mom than the kids. We talk about it as though it is a problem for children, but actually it can be more of an issue for the mom.".
        I always want to do more for my children. Because of work obligations, I have missed doctors appointments and parent teacher conferences and have had to travel when my kids were sick.
I haven't missed a dance recital yet, but it probably will happen though.
I once asked a mother at our school if she knew any of the other kids in the first grade class, hoping for a familiar name or two. 
She spent 20 minutes reciting from memory the name of every child, detailing their parents, siblings, which classes they had been in the year before, and their interests, a level of detail I missed.
So, how could she possibly know all this? Was I a bad mother for not knowing any of this? And why should it even bother me?".
         I knew the answer to that last question. It bothered me because like most people who have choices, I am not completely comfortable with mine. 
Later that same year, I dropped my son off at school on St. Patricks day.
As he got out of the car wearing his favorite blue t-shirt, the same 'know it all mother' pointed out "he's supposed to be wearing green today.". I simultaneously thought 'oh who the hell an remember that its Saint Patricks Day' and the other thought that 'I am a bad mom'.
        Guilt management can be just as important as time management for mothers. When I went back to my job after giving birth, other working mothers told me to prepare for the day that my son would cry for his nanny. Sure enough, when he was about 11 months old, he was crawling on the floor of his room and put his knee down on a toy.
He looked up for help, crying, and reached for her instead of me. It pierced my heart, but Dave thought it was a good sign. 
He reasoned that we were the central figures in our sons life, but forming an attachment to a caregiver was good for his development.
I understood his logic, especially in retrospect, but at the time, it hurt like hell.
         To this day, I count the hours away from my kids and feel sad when I miss a dinner or a night with them. Did I have to take this trip? Was this speech really critical for facebook?
Was this meeting truly necessary? Far from worrying about nights he misses, Dave thinks we are heroes for getting for dinner as often as we do.
Our different viewpoints seem inextricably gender based. Compared to his peers, Dave is an exceptionally devoted dad. Compared to many of my peers, I spend alot more time away from my children. A study that conducted in-depth interviews with mothers and fathers in duel-earner families uncovered similar reactions. The mothers were riddled with guilt about what their jobs were doing to their families. 
The fathers were not. As Marie Wilson noted "Show me a woman without guilt and I'll show you a man without guilt.".
        I know that I can easily spend time focusing on what I am not doing; like many, I excel at self-flagellation. Even with my vast support system, there are times when I feel pulled in too many directions. When I do dwell less on the conflicts and compromises, and more on being fully engaged with the task at hand, the center holds, and I feel content. I love my job and the brilliant and fascinating people I work with. I also love my time with my kids.
A great day is when I rush home from the craziness of the office to have dinner with my family and then sit in the rocking chair in the corner of my daughters room with both of my kids on my lap. 

We rock and read together, just a quiet (ok, not always quiet), joyful moment at the end of their day. They drift off to sleep and I drift (ok, run) back to my laptop.
         Its also fun when my two worlds collide. For a period of time, Mr. Zuckerberg hosted Monday-night strategy sessions at his house. Because I wouldn't be making it home for dinner, my kids came into the office. Facebook is incredibly family friendly, and my children were in heaven, entranced by pizza, endless candy, and the huge pile of Legos that the engineers kindly share with young visitors. It made me happy that my kids got to know my colleagues and my colleagues got to know them. 
Mark had been teaching my son how to fence, so they would sometimes practice with pretend foils, which was adorable. Mr. Zuckerberg also taught both my kids various office pranks, whish was slightly less adorable.
         I would never claim to be able to find derenity or total focus in every moment. I am so far from that. When I remember that no one can do it all and identify my real priorities at home and at work, I feel better, and I am more productive in the office and probably a better mother as well. 
Stanford professor Jennifer Aakers work shows that setting obtainable goals is a key to happiness. 
Instead of perfection, we should aim for sustainable  and fulfilling things. The right question is not "Can I do it all?" but "Can I do whats most important for me and my family?". The aim is to have children who are happy and thriving.
Wearing green t-shirts on saint Patricks day is purely optional.
        If I had to embrace a definition of success, it would be that success is making the best choices we can...and accepting them. Journalist Mary Curtis suggested that the best advice anyone can offer is "for women and men to drop the guilt trip, even as the minutes tick away. The secret is there is no secret - just doing the best you can with that you've got.
        In December 2010, I was standing with Pat Mitchell, waiting to go onstage to give my Ted talk. The day before, I had dropped my daughter off at preschool and told her I was flying to the East coast so I wouldn't see her that night. She clung to my leg and begged me not to leave. I couldn't shake that image and, at the last minute, asked Pat if I should add it to my speech. "Absolutely tell that story", said Pat, "other women go through this, and you'll help them by being honest that this is hard for you too.".
        I took a deep breath and stepped onstage. I tried to be authentic and shared my truth. I announced to the room - and basically everyone on the internet - that I fall very short of doing it all. Pat was right. It felt really good not just to admit this to myself but to share it with others. 

          Ten - Let us start
           talking about it

         Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go through life without being labeled by my gender. I dont wake up thinking, 'what am I going to do today as facebook female COO?', but that is often how I'm referred to by others. When people talk about a female pilot, a female engineer, or a female race car driver, the word "female" implies a bit of surprise.
Men in the professional world are rarely seen through this same gender lens.
         As Gloria Steinem observed "whoever has power takes over the noun - and the norm - while the less powerful get an adjective.". Since no one wants to be perceived as less powerful, alot of women reject the gender identification and insist, 'I dont see myself as a women; I see myself as a novelist or an athlete or a professional, or a fill-in-the-blank.'. They are right to do so. 
Noone wants their achievements modified. We all just want to be the noun. Yet the world has a way of reminding women that they are women, and the girls that they are girls - *because women want to make stacks girls just wanna have fun.
        *While it is also possible that the gender designation for nouns comes from languages that actually put a he or she pronoun on things like chairs, cars, forks or all likes of objects. For example, in Romanian, a chair is a boy, and if someone says 'give me him (dami ala)' it actually means 'give me that chair' - or 'your sitting on it (tu stai pa el)' translates into 'your sitting on him'. I have studied the syntax of genDerification - not genTerfication with my question of what category of roles does each sex play and what is the association that drives the popular culture of the people whom speak this way for the past 15 years.
At times I had to turn to mushrooms or alcohol just to forget some of the vast wealth of information I gathered, but today I can say that it simply is annoying that my chair has to be a boy when I'd rather being sitting 'on her lap' than 'his lap'.*
        In between my junior and senior years of high school, I worked as a page in Washington D.C. for my hometown congressperson - William Lehman. The speaker of the house (*of representatives) at the time was Massachusetts representative Tip O'Neil. Congressperson Lehman promised to introduce me to Tip before the summer ended, but as the days ticked by, it didn't happen. And it still didn't happen. Then, on the very last day of my session, he made good on his promise. 
In the hall outside the house of representatives floor, he pulled me over to meet speaker O'Neil. 
I was nervous, but Mr. Lehman put me at ease by introducing me in the nicest way possible, telling Tip that I had worked hard all summer. 
Mr. O'Neil then looked at me, reached over, and patted my head. He turned to Mr. Lehman and remarked 'she's pretty' (*I'd hit that). Then Tip turned his attention back to me and asked just one question: "Are you a pom-pom girl?".
*If Tip O'Neil was a legendary speakers, the legendary part was just to describe who big of an asshole he was.
      I was crushed. Looking back, I think his words were intended to flatter me, I hope.... (*but it definitely left a gaslighting egg in Sheryls' mind and due to social pressures she has to censor her raw opinion, me UDU, I dont, I'd rather kick a bastard in the balls than take an insult, but usually just dish one back.).
        In that moment, that he patted me on the head though, I felt belittled. I wanted to be recognized for the work I had done. I reacted defensively to the question if I am a pom-pom girl - "No! I study way to much for that.". Then a wave of terror struck me for speaking up to the 'man' who was 3rd in line for presidency of the United States of America. 
No one seemed to register my curt and not-at-all-clever response (*wtf!, it was a great response! see ! it seeded self-doubt!) - Tip just patted me on the head - again! - and moved along. Mr. Lehman beamed (whatever that means).
         Even to my teenage self, this seism seemed retro. Tip O'Neil was born in 1912, 8 years before women were given the right to vote (*so he was an arab), but by the time I met him in the halls of congress, society had (mostly) evolved (*except for the dinosaurs). It was obvious that a woman could do anything a man could do. 
My childhood was filled with firsts - Golda Meir in Israel, Geraldine Ferraro on the Mondale ticket, Sandra Day O'Connor in the supreme court, Sally Ride in space.
         Given all these stride, I headed into college believing that the feminist of the decades before, the radical 60's and the progressive 70's had done the hard work of achieving equality for my generation (*but the real gender issue is back home, since America is a country build by immigrants, the roots that grow in the motherland come back to grow every time they get cut until the motherland herself is cured of this 'disease'). Yet if anyone in those years called me a feminist, I would have quickly corrected that notion. This reaction is prevalent even today according to sociologist Marianne Cooper.
         Marianne, wrote an interesting article - 'The new F-word', in the article Marianne wrote about a college English professor, who observed something strange - so a true she said he said recollection of events - 
The college professor observed that in her 'introduction to feminist studies course, even though her students were committed to taking a full year to study the subject, non of them felt comfortable being called a feminist, let alone to use the word 'feminism.'. *But that is because of the distaint from 'ism's. Distaint in the urban dictionary means - to grow apart or rise above a bad reputation or disability. 
As the professor noted "it was as if being called a feminist was to suspect that some foul epithet had been hurled your way.".
         It sounds like a joke; Did you hear the one about the women taking a feminist studies class who got angry when someone called her a feminist? 
Yet when I was in college, I embraced the same contradiction. In one hand, I started a group to encourage more women to major in economics and government. In the other hand, I would deny being in any way, shape or form a feminist.
None of my college friends thought of themselves as feminists either.
         It saddens me to admit that we did not see the backlash against women around us. We accepted the negative caricature of a bra-burning, humor-less, man-hating feminist. This abstraction was not someone we wanted to emulate, in part because it seemed like she couldn't get a date.
Horrible, I know - the sad irony of rejecting feminism to get male attention and approval. In our defense, my friends and I truly, if naively, believed that the world did not need feminists anymore. We mistakenly thought that there was nothing left to fight for, we attained our goals.
        I carried this attitude with me when I entered the workforce.
I figure if sexism still existed, I would just prove it wrong. I would do my job and do it well.
What I didn't know at the time was that ignoring the issue is a classic survival technique. 
Within traditional institutions, success has often been contingent upon a women not speaking out, but by fitting in, more colloquially by being 'one of the guys.'.
The first women to enter corporate America dressed in manly suits with button-down shirts.
One veteran banking executive told me that she wore her hair in a bun for 10 years because she did not want anyone to notice she was a woman.
While styles have relaxed, women still worry about sticking out too much.
I know an engineer at a tech start-up who removes her earring before going to work so coworkers won't be reminded that she is - shhh- not a man.
       Early in my career, my gender was rarely noted (except for the occasional client who wanted to fix me up with his son). Manly suits were no longer in fashion, and I neither hid nor emphasized femininity.
I have never reported directly to a women - not once in my entire career.
There were higher-level women at the places I worked, but I wasn't close enough to see how they dealt with this issue on a daily basis.
I was never invited to attend a single meeting that discussed gender, and there were no special programs for women that I can recall.
That all seemed fine. We were fitting in, and there was no reason to call attention to ourselves.
        While gender was not openly acknowledged, it was still lurking below the surface. I started to see differences in attitudes towards women.
I started to notice how often employees were judged not by their objective performance, but by the subjective standard of how well they fit in.
Given that the summer outing at McKinsey was a deep-sea fishing trip and most company dinners ended with whiskey sipping and cigar smoking.
I sometimes struggled to pass the 'fitting in test'. 
One night, encouraged by the male partners, I puffed away on a cigar - just one of the guys. Except that the smoking nauseated me and I reeked of cigar smoke for days.
If smoking cigars was fitting in, I was sticking out.
        Others also seemed aware that I was not 'one of the guys'. When I was named the United States of Americas treasury departments chief of staff in 1999, several people remarked to me - "It must have helped that you were a woman.". 
It was infuriating. Their intent may not have been at all malicious, but the implications was clear: I had not gotten the job on merit. I also figured that for every person pointing out my 'advantage' to my face, there were probably a dozen others saying it less politely behind my back. 
I considered my possible responses. I could explain that the last time I checked there was no affirmative action for women at the United States of Americas treasury department. 
I could mention that my credentials lined up with those of the people wo had previously held this position. If there was enough time, I could recount centuries of discrimination against women. 
Or I could just slap the mother fucka right across the face with my Louie Viton. 
I tried all these options at least once. Okay, not the 'act a fool' one, but of the responses I did try, none of them did a thing.
        It was a no-win situation. I couldn't deny being a women; even if I tried, people would still figure it out. Defending myself just made me seem....defensive. 
My gut and the signals I received from others cautioned me that arguing the issue would make me sound like a strident feminist.
I still did not want to be labeled a feminist. I also worried that pointing out the disadvantages women face in the workforce might be misinterpreted as whining or asking for special treatment.
So, I ignored the comments. I put my head down and worked hard.

         Then, as the years ticked by, I started seeing female friends and colleagues drop out of the workforce. Some, had left by choice, others had left out of frustration, pushed out the door by companies that did not allow flexibility. 
The ones that left out of frustration were welcomed home by partners who weren't doing much to help with the house work - up keep - or being a parent to their child/children.
Others remained but scaled back their ambitions to meet outsized demands. I watched as the promise my generation had for female leadership dwindled. 
By the time I had been at google for a few years, I realized that the problem wasn't going away.
Even though the thought still scared me, I decided it was time to stop putting my head down and to start speaking out.           
        Fortunately, I had company. In 2005, my colleagues Susan Wojcicki and Marissa Mayer and I all noticed that the speakers who visited the google campus were fascinating, notable, and almost always male. In response, we founded 'women@google' and kicked off the new series with luminaries - Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, who were launching the womens' media center.
As a former aerobics instructor, I was excited to meet Mrs. Fonda - and sucked in my stomach the whole time. From what I knew about the womens' rights movement, I expected Gloria Steinem to be formidable and brilliant, which she was.
Mrs. Steinem was also very charming and funny as well as warm - the absolute opposite of my childish image of the humorless feminist.
        After the 'women@google' even, Mrs. Steinem invited me to speak at the womens' media center in N.Y. I said yes without hesitating.
The day before my talk, I headed to the airport with Kim Malone Scott, who ran googles publishing teams, so I figured he'd be an expert writer whos' brains to pick would be great benefit.
But on the flight over, by the time I had gotten through all my backlogged emails, it was almost midnight.
I turned to Kim for help and saw that she had fallen asleep. Long before facebook made it popular, I thought about giving her a poke. But I couldn't bear to wake her up.
Staring at the blank computer screen, I was at a complete loss. 
I had never spoken about being a woman in public before. Not once.
I had no talking points or notes to turn to. Then I realized how striking this was....and that I actually had quite alot to say.
        I began my talk the next day by explaining - that in business we are taught to fit in, but that I was starting to think this might not be the right approach. I said out loud, that there are differences between women and men (*the subject is a womens talk thus women and men, as the subject goes first and the iteam it is comparing/contrasting afterwards - same for the whole rest of the book, the book is about women equality not mens difference to women...focus...), the differences between women and men that I wanted to specify were the behavioral difference. Both how they are perceived by others and the individuals' acts. 
I admitted that I could see these dynamics playing out in the workforce, and that, in order to fix the problems, we needed to be able to talk about gender without people thinking we were crying for help, asking for special treatment, or about to sue.
Alot poured out of me that day.
        Then I returned to Northern California and put the conversation on hold - tabled it.
        In the following 4 years. I gave 2 talks on women in the workplace, both behind closed doors and to professional womens' groups at nearby Stanford.
Then one day, Pat Mitchell called to tell me that she was launching TEDwomen and invited me to speak on the subject of social media. 
I told her I had another subject in mind and started pulling together a talk on how women can succeed in the workforce (a talk that TED later named "why we have too few women leaders"). 
I became excited very quickly (gigity), and just as quickly, I learned that noone else shared my excitement.
Friends and colleagues alike - both female, male, sis, or trans, (*LBGT+) - warned me that making this speech would harm my career by instantly typecasting me as a feminist COO and not a real business executive. In other words, I wouldn't be blending in.
        I worried they might be right. Speaking at ted would be different from my previous keynotes. Although I would be addressing a sympathetic room, the talk would be posted on the web, where anyone could watch, and judge, and criticize.
Inside facebook, few people noticed my 'TEDtalk' and those whom did, responded positively.
But outside of facebook, the criticism started to roll in. One of my colleagues from the United States of Americas treasury called to say that 'others' - no not him, of course - were wondering why I gave more speeches about womens' issues than about facebook. 
I had been at facebook for almost 3 years and given countless speeches on rebuilding marketing around the social graph and exactly one speech on gender.
Someone else asked me, "So is this your thing now?".
         At the time, I did not know how to respond. Now I would say yes. I made this 'my thing' because we need to disrupt the status quo.
Staying quiet and fitting in may have been all the first generations of women who entered corporate America could do; in some cases, it might still be the safest path. But this strategy is not paying off for women as a group only individually. 
Instead we need to speak out, identify the barriers that are holding women back, and find solutions.
        The response to my talk showed me that addressing these issues openly can make a difference. Women forwarded the video to their friends, colleagues, daughters, and sisters.
I began receiving emails and letters from women all over the world who wanted to share their stories of how they gained the courage to reach for more opportunities, sit at more tables, and believe more in themselves.
         One of my favorite letters came from Sabeen Virani Dhanani, a consultant based in Dubai and the only woman in an office of more than three hundred employees. She responded to my story about the executive, who could not point me to the womens' bathroom.
Virani pointed out that the womens' bathroom did not even exist when she was working for a client in Saudi Arabia. Sabeen described how, during the first week on the project, the client took her team out to dinner, but she couldn't join because the restaurant did not allow women - at all - ever (*fuck Saudi Arabia). 
Worse, some of the 'men' if we can call them 'men' were openly hostile to Sabeen. *Of course for Sabeen Virani Dhanani to step into the light like this could mean that she gets put in prison or worse, killed, those arabs' are crazy, they just smoke meth and ride camels all day.
Other colleagues ignored her. 
But rather than give up and go to work for a friendlier client, Virani decided that she could demonstrate to everyone that women are competent professionals. *Well no, acknowledging that the question of weather women are competent or not proves that the problem exists, arab psychology is extremely insecure.
In the end, Virani won her coworkers over and the client converted a bathroom into a womens' bathroom just for her.
She sent me a picture of her standing in front of a door with a printed sign that read imply and powerfully "Toilets for women only".
        It was also enormously gratifying that men reacted positively to the talk too. Professor Dr. John Probasco told me that my story about women being more reluctant than men to raise their hands rang true for him.
He decided to do away with the old hand-raising system during his classes. Instead he started calling on male and female students evenly. 
He quickly realized that the women knew the answers just as well as - or even better than - the men. 
In one day he increased female participation.
By making one small change to his behavior, he changed a much larger dynamic *dominance dynamics!.
       Major changes can result from these kinds of 'nudge techniques', small interventions that encourage people to behave in slightly different ways at critical moments. 
The simple act of talking openly about behavioral patterns makes the subconscious conscious. 
For example, google has an unusual system where engineers nominate themselves for promotions, and the company found that women nominated themselves more slower than men.
The google management team shared this data openly with the female employees, and the womens' self-nomination rates rose significantly, reaching roughly the same rates as mens'.
        All the feedback from ted convinced me that I should keep speaking up and encouraging others to do the same. It is essential to breaking the logjam. Talking can transform minds, which can transform behaviors, which can transform institutions.
         I know it is not easy. Anyone who brings up gender in the workplace is wading into deep and muddy waters.
The subject itself presents a paradox, forcing us to acknowledge differences while trying to achieve the goal of being treated the same * and most important forces us to acknowledge our ignorance of either 'the women world' or 'the mens' world'.
Women, especially those at junior levels, worry that raising gender issues makes them appear unprofessional or as if they are blaming others.
I have listened to women vent frustration over being undervalued and even demeaned on a daily basis at work. When I ask if they have aired any of these complaints to their superiors, they've responded 'oh no! I couldn't'. 
There is much fear that speaking up will make the situations worse or even result in being penalized or fired. It seems safer to bear the injustice.
         For men, raising this subject can be even harder. A male friend who runs a large organization once confined in me, "It is easier to talk about your sex life in public than to talk about gender.". 
The fact that he would not got on record with this quote shows he meant it.
Vittorio Colaeo told me that he showed my ted talk to his senior management team because he shares my belief that women sometimes hold themselves back.
He also believed the message was easier to hear from the lips of a woman.
His point is valid. If a man had delivered the same message or even gently pointed out that women might be taking actions that limited their options, he would have been pilloried.
        Shutting down discussion is self-defeating and impedes progress. We need to talk and to listen, to debate and refute and then to instruct and learn and evolve. Since the majority of managers are men, we need them to feel comfortable addressing these issues directly with female employees.
When a women sits on the side of the room, a man needs to be able to wave her over to the table and explain why! So she will know to sit at the table next time.
        Ken Chenault, is a leader on this front. Ken openly acknowledges that in meetings, both men and women are more likely to interrupt a woman and give credit to a man for an idea first proposed by a woman.
When he witnesses either of these behaviors, he stops the meeting to point it out.
Coming from the top (gigity), this really makes employees think twice. 
A more junior person can also intervene in the situation when a female colleague has been interrupted.
They can gently tell the group 'before we move on, I'd like to hear what ----whomever--- has to say' as opposed to 'what in the jimity crickets, hold the presses a minute and let me tell ya something hear now folks'.
This action not only benefits the senior person, but can raise the stature of the junior person as well.
Since speaking up for someone else displays both confidence and a communal spirit. The junior then comes across as both competent and nice.
         At facebook, I teach managers to encourage women to talk about their plans to have children and help them continue to reach for opportunities. I give men the option of quoting me if the words don't feel right coming out of their mouths. Still this approach is a bit of a crutch and it does not translate to other companies.
It would be preferable if everyone had permission to talk about this subject both publicly and behind closed office doors.
         One stumbling block is that many people believe that the workplace is largely a meritocracy, which means we look at individuals, not groups, and determine that differences in outcomes must be based on merit, not gender.

In a nutshell the workplace is more like;
Men at the top of companies are remain unaware of the benefits they enjoy simply because they are men, and this can make them blind to the disadvantages associated with being a women. 
Women lower down also believe that men at the top are entitled to be there, so these women try to play by 'the rules', the women toil harder to advance rather than to raise questions or voice concerns about the possibility of a bias.
As a result, everyone becomes complicit in perpetuating an unjust system.
        At the same time, we must be careful not to inject gender into every discussion. I know a male CEO who is enormously dedicated to hiring and promoting women.
When a female employee kicked off a negotiation by insisting that she should have a higher title and that she was under leveled because she was a woman, it immediately put him on the defense. She was speaking her truth, but in this case, her truth was an accusation with legal ramifications. 
As soon as she framed the issue in those terms, the CEO had no choice but to put their friendly talk on hold and call in human resources.
It might have served her better to explain how she was contributing to the company and ask for the promotion first.
        Even today, mentioning gender in work situations often makes people visibly uncomfortable.
To their credit, many institutions have worked hard to sensitize people to these issues, especially sexual harassment.
But while human resources seminars can raise consciousness and help protect employees, they have also raised the specter of legal action, which can create real barriers to these conversations.
The federal and state laws that are designed to protect employees against discrimination specify only that an employer cannot make decisions based on certain protected characteristics such gender, pregnancy, and age.
But companies usually take the policy a step further and teach managers not to ask anything related to these areas. Anyone making even a benign inquiry such as 'are you married?' or 'do you have kids?' can later be accused of basing a personnel decision on this information.
As a result, a manager who is trying to help a female employee by pointing out a gender-driven style difference could be charged with discrimination for doing so.
        The first time I asked a prospective employee if she was considering having children soon, I understood that doing so could expose me and my company to legal risk. 
Unlike many women, I was in a position to evaluate that risk and chose to take it.
The laws that protect women and minorities and people with disabilities, among others, from discrimination, are essential, and I am not suggesting they ever be circumvented.
I have also witnessed firsthand how they can have a chilling effect on discourse, sometimes even to to the detriment of the people they are designed to defend.
I don't have a solution to this dilemma and will leave it to public policy and legal experts to solve.
I do think this is worth some serious attention so we can find a way to deal with these issues in a way that protects but doesn't suppress.
        Most people would agree that a gender bias exists...in others. We, however, would never be swayed by such superficial and unenlightened opinions. Except.
We are.
Our preconceived notions about masculinity and femininity influence how we interact with and evaluate colleagues in the workplace. 
A 2012 study found that when evaluating identical resumes for a lab manager position from a female and male student, scientists of both sexes gave better marks to the male applicant. Even though the students had the same qualifications and experience, the scientists had deemed that the female student is less competent and offered her a lower starting salary and less mentoring.
Other studies of job applicants, candidates for scholarships, and musicians auditioning for orchestras have come to the same conclusion: gender bias influences how we view performance and typically raises our assessment of men while lowering our assessment of women. 
Even today, gender-blind evaluations still result in better outcomes for women. Unfortunately, most jobs require face to face interviews.
         All of us, myself included, are biased, whether we admit it or not. Thinking that we are objective can actually make this even worse, making what social scientists call 'a bias blind spot'.
This blind spot cases people to be too confident about their own powers of objectivity so that they fail to correct for bias.
When evaluating identically described girls and boys as candidates for the job of police chief, respondents who claimed to be the most impartial actually exhibited more bias in favor of the boys! This is not just counterproductive but deeply dangerous. Evaluators in the same study actually shifted hiring criteria to give men an advantage.
When a male applicant possessed a strong educational record, that quality was considered critical to the success of a police chief.
But when the educational record weaker, the quality was rated as less important. 
This favoritism was not show to the female applicants. If anything, quiet the reverse happened.
When a woman possessed a particular skill, ability, or background, that quality tended to carry less weight.
The infuriating take away from this study is that 'merit' can be manipulated to justify discrimination.   

 AAAA
        'Social scientists' are uncovering new examples of bias all the time. In 2012, a series of studies compared men in more 'modern' marriages (whose partners worked outside the home full-time) to men in more 'traditional' ones (whose wives worked at home).
The research wanted to determine if a mans home arrangement affected his professional behavior. It did.
Men in 'traditional' marriages viewed the presence of women in the workforce less favorably. 
They also denied promotions to qualified female employees more often and they were more likely to think that companies with a higher percentage of female employees ran less smoothly.
The research speculated that 'traditional' married men are not overtly hostile toward women but instead are 'benevolent sexists' - holding positive yet outdated views about women.
Another term I have herd is 'nice guy misogynist'. 
So these men might even believe that women have superior strengths in certain areas like moral reasoning, to help raise kids - and perhaps less equipped to succeed in business.
In all likelihood, men who share this attitude are unaware of how their conscious and unconscious beliefs hurt their female colleagues.
        Another bias arises from our tendency to want to work with people who are like us.
Innovisor, an interesting consulting firm, conducted research in 29 countries and found that when people select a colleague to collaborate with, people were significantly more likely to choose someone of the same gender. 
Yet diverse groups often perform better. Armed with this information, managers should take a more active role in mixing and matching when assigning teams.
Or at the very least, managers should point out this tendency to give employees the motivation to shake things up.
        My own attempts to point out gender bias have generated more than my fair share of eye rolling from others. At best, people are open to scrutinizing themselves and considering their blind spots; at worst, they become defensive and angry. 
One common instance of bias crops up during job performance evaluations. 
When reviewing a women, the reviewer will often voice the concern 'while she is really good at her job, she is just not as well liked by her peers'.
When I hear language like that, I bring up the Heidi/Howards study and how success and likeability are negatively correlated for women. I ask the evaluator to consider the possibility that this successful wowman* may be paying a gender-based penalty.
Usually people find the study credible, nodding their heads in agreement, but then bristle at the suggestion that this might be influencing the reaction of their management team.
They will further defend their position by arguing that it cannot be gender related because - AHA!- both men and women have problems with that particular female executive.
The success and likeability penalty is imposed by everybody.
        Of course, not everyone deserves to be well liked, just because they are doing great to handle their roles. Some people are disliked for behaviors that they would do well to change.
In a perfect world, they would receive constructive feedback and have the opportunities to make those changes.
Still, calling attention to this bias forces people to at least think about it, even if it is for 4 minutes while they are on the toilet. If people can question if this is a real problem or a perception problem its gonna get the ball rolling.
I think, we should also give women something men usually get automatically - the benefit of the doubt.

*pause for appllause*
        In turn, women might also want to give their bosses the benefit of the doubt. Cynthia Hogan took a break from working to work on her responsibility as a parent back in 1996. A few years later, she planned to go back to work, but her second child was born prematurely and that changed everything. But, yet for a full 12 years she kept receiving calls from her boss to 'come back to work'. 
"My first reaction was that I no longer owned any clothes other than yoga pants!" Cynthia remarked, but her larger concern was whether she could manage the long hours and still see her family.
She put it beautifully - "I knew that whether this would work depended on 2 men. So first I asked my husband if he could step in and take on more of the responsibility for the kids. He said 'of course, it's your turn' and then I told the vice-president elect that I really wanted to have dinner with my kids most nights. His response was, 'well you have a phone and I can call you when I need you after dinnertime'.
        Cynthia believes that the lesson of her story is 'Don't be afraid to ask', even if it seems like a long shot. Being offered a senior job, especially after being at home for so long, presented her a great opportunity.
Many people would have accepted such a great job opportunity without trying to carve out the time they needed for their families.
Others would have turned it down, assuming that having dinner at home most nights was not something they were not willing to negotiate about.
Being forthright led to the opportunity.
        Every job will demand some sacrifice. The key is to avoid unnecessary sacrifice(s). This is especially hard since our work culture values complete dedication. We worry that even mentioning other priorities makes us less valuable as employees.
I have faced this too. As I described, once I had children, I changed my working hours to be home for dinner. But only fairly recently did I start talking about this change. While the impact of my actually leaving work early was negligible, admitting that I went home at 5:30 turned out to be a kind of a big deal.
        I first openly discussed my office hours at the launch of facebook women, an in-house resource group. The initial meeting, run by Lori Goler and facebooks head of engineering, Mike Schroepfer, was open to any facebook employee. 
During the Q&A, I was asked the (inevitable) question about how I balanced my job and family.
I talked about leaving work to have dinner with my children and then getting back online after they went to bed.
I said that I was sharing my schedule because I wanted to encourage others to personalize their schedules too. Even though I had planned in advance to discuss this, I felt nervous. 
Years of conditioning had taught me never to suggest that I was doing anything other than giving 100% to my job. It was scary to think that someone, even people working for me, might doubt my diligence or dedication.
Fortunately, it did not happen. A few people at facebook thanked me for mentioning it, but that was it.
         A few years later, producer Dyllan McGee interviewed me for her 'makers' video series. We spoke on a wide range of subjects, including my daily work schedule. The video was posted to the web and was instantly the subject of heated debate.
Thanks to social media (servers me right) everyone had an opinion about my leaving the office at 5:30.
I got flowers with an anonymous thank-you note. Mike Callahan, told me that several of the more senior women in his legal department said my admission struck a chord and they were going to follow my example.
Author Ken Auletta said that I could not have gotten more headlines if I had murdered someone with an ax. While I was glad to jump-start the discussion, all the attention gave me this weird feeling that someone was going to object and fire me.
I had to reassure myself that this was absurd. Still, the clamor made me realize how incredibly hard it would be for someone in a less-senior position to ask for or admit to this schedule.
We have a long way to go before flextime is accepted in most workplaces (*and island time will still remain an island dream). But, yea, it will happen only if we keep raising the issue.
        The discussions may be difficult, but the positives are many. We cannot change what we are unaware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.
        Even a well-established institution like Harvard business school can evolve rapidly when issues are addressed head-on. Historically at HBS,  American male students have academically outperformed both female and international students.
When Nitin Nohria was appointed dean in 2010, he made it his mission to close this gap. He began by appointing Youngme Moon as senior associate dean of the MBA program, the first woman to hold that position in the schools 100+ history.
He also made a new position for Robin Ely, an expert on gender and diversity. 
        Associate dean Moon, working with profesor Frances Frei, spent the 1st year rigorously examining the schools culture. They visited each classroom and discussed the challenges that women and international students faced.
Then they used that knowledge to make what dean Nohria calls ' a level of mindfulness.'. Without calling for major overhauls, they tackled the soft stuff - small adjustments students could make immediately, like paying more attention to the language the kids used in class. There was also laid out another communal definition of leadership: "Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.". 
The students were held responsible for the impact their behavior had on others.
Those students that violated this principal, or even hosted an event where that principal was violated, were held accountable.
The second year, there were more initiatives taken; there was introduced small group projects to encourage collaboration between classmates who would not naturally work together. There was also a year long field course added, which played to the strengths of the students who were less comfortable contributing in front of large classes.
        By commencement at the school, the performance gap had virtually dropped. All students were represented proportionally in the honors awarded. There was another benefit too.
In a result many considered surprising, overall student satisfaction went up. In this instance, by making a more equal environment, everyone was happier.
All of this was accomplished in just 2 years.
        Social gains are never handed out. They must be seized.
Leaders of the womens' movement - from Susa. B. Anthony to Jane Addams to Alice Paul to Bella Abzug to Flo Kennedy to so many others - spoke out loudly and bravely to demand the rights that we now have.
Their courage changed our culture and our laws to the benefit of us all. Looking back, it made no sense for my college friends and me to distance ourselves from the hard-won achievements of earlier feminists.
        We should have cheered their efforts. Instead we lowered our voices, thinking the battle was over, and with this reticence we hurt ourselves.
        Now I proudly call myself a feminist. If Tip O'Neil were alive today, I might even tell him that I am a pom-pom girl for feminism.
I hope more women, and men, will join me in accepting this distinguished label. 
Currently, only 24% of women in the United States of America say that they consider themselves feminists. Yet when offered a more specific definition of feminism - " A feminist is someone who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes" - the percentage of women who agree rises to 65%.
That is a big move in the right direction.

        Semantics can be important, but I don't think progress aspires our willingness to apply a label to ourselves. I do think progress aspires our willingness to speak up about the impact gender has on us. We can no longer pretend that biases do not exist, nor can we talk around them. As Harvard has demonstrated (a few paragraphs up), the result of making a more equal environment will not just be better performance for our organizations, but quite likely greater happiness for all of us.

         Working together                                      Eleven
        Toward Equality                                        Eleven


        I began this book by acknowledging that women in the developed world are better off than ever, but the goal of true equality still eludes us. So, how do we move forward?
First, we must decide that true equality is long overdue and will be achieved only when more women rise to the top of everything. 
Then we have to do the hard work of getting there. All of us. We have to understand and acknowledge how stereotypes and biases cloud our beliefs and perpetuate the status quo.
Instead of ignoring our differences, we need to accept and transcend them.
        For decades, we have focused on giving women the choice to work in or out of the house.
We have celebrated the fact that women have the right to make this decision, and rightly so. 
We have to ask ourselves if we have become so focused on supporting personal choices that we're failing to encourage women to aspire to leadership.
        It is time to cheer on girls and women to want to sit at the table, seek challenges, and lean in to their careers.
        Today, despite all of the gains we have made, people still lack much choice. Basically, until women have supportive employers and colleagues as well as partners who share family responsibilities, they don't have real choice. As well, until men are fully respected for contributing inside the home, they don't have a real choice either. Equal opportunity is not equal unless everyone receives the encouragement that makes seizing those opportunities possible. Then, we can focus more on achieving our full potential(s).
        None of this is attainable unless we pursue these goals together. Women need support from men and, I wish it went without saying, women need to support women too. Stanford professor Deborah Gruenfeld makes the case: "We (women) need to look out for one another, work together, and act more like a coalition. 
As individuals, we have relatively low levels of power.
Working together, we are 50% of the population and therefore have real power.".
As obvious as this sounds, women have not always worked together in the past. In fact, there are many discouraging examples where women have actually done the opposite.
        We are a new generation and we need a new approach. In the summer of 2012, my former google colleague Marissa Mayer was named CEO of Yahoo!. Like several of her friends and the Yahoo! board, I knew that she was heading into her 3rd trimester of pregnancy.
Of course, many men take big jobs when their wives are weeks away from giving birth, and noone raises it as an issue, but Marissa's condition quickly became headline news.
She was heralded as the first pregnant CEO of a fortune 500 company. Feminists cheered.
Then Marissa let it be known: "My maternity leave will be a few weeks long, and I'll work throughout it.".
Many feminists stopped cheering. Since taking such a short leave is not feasible or desirable for everyone, they argued that Marissa was hurting the cause by setting up unreasonable expectations.
        So was this one giant leap forward for womankind and one baby step back? Of course not. 
Marissa became the youngest CEO of a fortune 500 company....while pregnant. 
She decided how she would manage her career and family and never did she claim their her choices should apply to anyone else but herself.
If Marissa had cut yahoo!s' maternity leave to 2 weeks for all employees, then concern would have been in order - she did not do that - but, she was still roundly criticized. Even a European cabinet member weighed in. Like any individual, Marissa knows best what she is capable of, given her particular circumstances.
As a journalist, Kara Swisher also noted, 'Marissa had a husband who can actually take care of the child, and no-one seems to remember that.".
Women who want to take 2 weeks off....or 2 days...or 2 years...or 20 years deserve everyones full support.
         As Marissas' experience demonstrates, women in powerful positions often receive greater scrutiny. Since the majority of leaders are men, it is not possible to generalize from any one example. The dearth of female leaders causes 1 woman to be viewed as representative of her entire gender.
People also often discount and dislike female leaders, with critical generalizations.
It leads to clear unfairness towards individuals, and even helps reinforces the stigma that successful women are unlikeable.
A personal and perfect example occurred in May 2012, when a forbes' blogger posted an article entitled 'Sheryl Sandberg is the Valleys 'IT' girl -
Just like Kim Polese once was.'.
The author began the comparison by describing Kim, an early tech entrepreneur , as a 'luminary' in the mid-1990s, who never really earned her success, but was 'in the right place at the right time (and was) young, pretty and a good speaker'. The blogger then argued 'I think Polese is a good cautionary tale for... Sheryl Sandberg.", Ouch.
        Kim and I had never met or spoken before this incident, but she defended both of us.
In a published response, Kim described reading the blog post and how her immediate thought was - how sad.
"How sad that as an industry and a society we haven't advanced over the past 2 decades when it comes to views on women & leadership. As with all the past lazy, stereotype-ridden articles like this one, it gets all the facts wrong." After correcting the facts, she continued, "views like these are all too commonplace, and a part of a pervasive pattern that belittles, demeans and marginalizes women as leaders.".
So many other readers joined her in calling the post sexist that the blogger posted an apology and retraction.
        I was grateful for Kims' vocal support. The more women can stick up for one another, the butter*. Sadly, this does not always happen. It seems to happen even less when women voice a position that involves a gender-related issue.
The attacks on Marissa for her maternity leave plans came almost entirely from other women. This has certainly been my experience too. Everyone loves a fight - and they really love a catfight. The media will report endlessly about women attacking other women, which distracts from the real issues. 
When arguments turn into 'she said / she said'  we all lose.
        Every social movement struggles with dissension within its ranks, in part because advocates are passionate and unlikely to agree on every position and solution. Betty Friedan famously and foolishly refused to work with - or even to shake hands with - Gloria Steinem. They both did so much to further womens' rights. Now, imagine if they had been able to work together? Would they have furthered the cause more
        There are so many of us who care deeply about thee matters. We should strive to resolve our differences quickly, and when we disagree, stay focused on our shared goals. This is not a pleas for less debate, but for a more constructive debate. In Marissas' case, it would have been great to keep the focus on her breakthrough achievements. 
Thanks to her high-profile appointment, other companies might consider hiring pregnant women for big jobs, and expectant mothers might be more inclined to apply for them. By diminishing Marissas' accomplishment, the attacks diminished us all.
       It is a painful truth that one of the obstacles to more women gaining power has sometimes been women already in power.
Women in the generations ahead of me believed, largely correctly, that only one woman would be allowed to ascend to the senior ranks in any particular company. In the days of tokenism, women looked around the room and instead of bonding against an unfair system - *hating the game instead of the player, they often viewed one another as competition. Ambition fueled hostility, and women wound up being ignored, undermined, and in some cases even sabotaged by other women.
         In the 1970s, this phenomenon was common enough that the term 'queen bee' was used to describe a woman who flourished in a leadership role, especially in a male-dominated industries.
The 'queens' usually used their position to keep other female 'worker bees' down.
For some, it was simple self-preservation. For others, it reflected their coming-of-age in a society that believed men were superior to women.
In this sense, 'queen bee' behavior was not just a cause of gender discrimination but also a consequence of that discrimination. Queen bees internalized the low status of women and in order to feel worthy themselves, wanted only to associate with men.
Often, these 'queen bees' were rewarded for maintaining the status quo and not promoting other women.
        Unfortunately, this 'there can be only one' attitude still lingers today. It makes no sense for women to feel that we are competing against one another anymore, but some still do.
In certain instances, women question their female colleagues' level of career commitment, aggressiveness, and leadership abilities.
One study found that female professors believed that male phd students were more committed to their careers than female phd students, even though a survey of the students found no gender difference in their reported levels of commitment. 
Other research suggests that once a woman achieves success, particularly in a gender-biased context, her capacity to see gender discrimination is reduced.
         It's heartbreaking to think about one woman holding another back. As former secretary of state Madeleine Albright once said "There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.".
The consequences extend beyond individual pain.
Womens' negative views of female coworkers are often seen as an objective assessment - more credible than the views of men. Thus when women voice gender bias, they legitimize it. Obviously, a negative attitude cannot be gender based if it comes from another women, right ?...WRONG.
Often without realizing it, women internalize disparaging cultural attitudes and then echo them back. As a result, women are not jut victims of sexism, they can also be perpetrators.
        There is hope that this attitude is changing.
A recent survey found that 'high-potential women' working in a business want to 'pay it forward', and 73% have reached out to other women to help them develop their talents. 
Almost all of the women I have encountered professionally have gone out of their way to be helpful. When I was a lowly summer intern at McKinsey, I met Diana Farrell, a star consultant, at a company-wide conference in Colorado. Diana had just spoken at a panel that I attended and we bumped into each other afterward - where else? - in the womens' room. 
We ended up having a talk that continued beyond the sinks, and she became a close friend and trusted advisor. Years later, she was one of the few who encouraged me to join google.
        The more  women help one another, the more we help ourselves. Acting like a coalition truly does produce results. In 2004, 4 female executives at Merrill Lynch started having lunch together once a month. There talked story, about their accomplishments or frustrations. They brainstormed about business.
After lunches, they would all go back to their offices and tout one anothers' achievements. Since they couldn't brag about themselves, they figured to brag about each other and their colleagues.
Their careers flourished and each one rose up to the ranks to reach managing director and executive officer levels. The 'queen bee' was banished, and the hive became stronger.
        I know that not every woman will encounter this kind of positive female support, and oddly yet, we often expect it. Most women don't assume that men will reach out and help, but with our own gender, we assume there will be a connection.
We imagine women will act communally and maybe we do so out of our own bias. Once in my career, I felt that a senior woman treated me poorly. 
She would complain about me and my team behind my back but would not discuss any concerns she had with me, even when I asked directly. When I first met her, I had high hopes that she would be an ally.
When she turned out to be not just unhelpful but actually spiteful, I was not just disappointed; I felt betrayed.
        Sharon Meers' explained to me that this feeling of betrayal was predictable. People do in fact, demand more time and warmth from women in the workplace. We expect greater niceness from women in the workplace.
We expect greater niceness from women in the workplace. Since we expect them to be nicer, we may have more reason to get upset when they do not conform to our expectations. Sharon explains "I think that is a big part of the protest about executive women being 'mean' to other women, I think it's about a double standard we have when we look at female versus male superiors.".
        I now recognize that, had this senior woman been a man and acted the same (the one that would complain about me), I still would have been frustrated, but I would not have taken it so personal.
It is clearly time to drop the double standard.
Gender should neither magnify nor excuse rude and dismissive treatment. We should expect professional behavior, and even kindness, from everyone.
        Any coalition of support must also include men, many of whom care about 'gender inequality' as much as women do. In 2012, Kunal Modi wrote an article imploring men to 'man up on family and workplace issues.'. Kunal had a good point "for the sake of American corporate performance and shareholder returns, men must play an active role in ensuring that the most talented young workers (often women...) are being encouraged to advocate for their career advancement....so men, lets get involved now - and not in a patronizing manner that marginalizes this as some altruistic act on behalf of our mothers, wives, and daughters - but on behalf of ourselves, our companies, and the future of our country.".
         So, I applaud Kunals' message, especially his focus on active engagement. Men of all ages must commit to changing the leadership ratios. They can start by actively seeking out qualified female candidates to hire and promote. 
If qualified candidates cannot be found, then we need to invest in more recruiting, mentoring, and sponsoring so women can get the necessary experience.
         An 'us versus them' crusade will not move us toward true equality. Nor will an 'us versus us' crusade, which professor Joan Williams calls the 'gender wars'. These wars are being waged on many fronts, but the 'mommy wars', which pit mothers who work outside the home against mothers who work inside the home, attracts the most attention.
As professor Williams goes on to say - " These mommy wars are so bitter because both groups' identities (gigitities) are at stake because of another clash of social ideals; that the ideal worker is defined as someone always available for work, and that of the 'good mother' is defined as always available to her children. Thus! - ideal-worker women need to prove that, although they weren't always there, their children are fine, fine, fine....Women who have rejected the ideal-worker norm and settled for a slower career (or no career) need to prove that their compromise was necessary for the good of their families.
So we have each group of women judging the other, because neither group of women has been able to live up to inconsistent ideals.".
        Professor Williams is absolutely right. One of the conflicts inherent in having choice is that we all make different ones. There is always an opportunity cost, and I do not know any woman who feels comfortable with all her decisions. As a result, we inadvertently hold that discomfort against those who remind us of the path not taken.
Guilt and/or an insecurity can make us second guess ourselves and, in turn, resent on another.
          In a letter to 'the atlantic' (*small case as it refers to a book/journal and not a place/ocean) in June 2012, Debora Spar wrote about this messy and complicated emotion, exploring why she and so many successful women feel so guilty.
She decided that: "it is because women have been subtly striving all their lives to prove that we have picked up the torch that feminism provided. That we haven't failed the mothers and grandmothers who made our ambitions possible.
Yet, in a deep and profound way, we are failing. 
Because feminism was not supposed to make us feel guilty, or prod us into constant competitions over who is raising children better, organizing more cooperative marriages, or getting less sleep.
It was supposed to make us free - to give us not only choices but the ability to make these choices without constantly feeling that we'd somehow gotten it wrong.".
         Stay-at-home mothers can make me feel guilty and, at times, they even intimidate me. There are moments when I feel like they are judging me, and I imagine there are moments when they feel like I am judging them. But when I push past my own feelings of guilt or insecurity, I feel grateful.
These patterns - mostly mothers - constitute a large amount of the talent that helps sustain our schools, nonprofits, and communities.
Remember that mom who pointed out that my son should be wearing a green tee-shirt? She is a tireless volunteer in the classroom and our community. So many people benefit from her hard work.
        Society has long undervalued the contributions of those who work without a salary. My mother felt this slightly keenly.
For 17 years, she worked more than full-time as a mother and on behalf of Soviet jewry. She understood that the compensation for her efforts was making a difference in the lives of persecuted people halfway across the world, but many people in her own neighborhood did not consider her work to be as important as a 'real job' *perhaps because hers was not local? She was still regarded as 'just a housewife'-undercutting the very real but unpaid work of raising children and advocating for human rights.
        We all want the same thing: to feel comfortable with our choices and to feel validated by those around us. So let us start by validating one another. Mothers who work outside the home should regard mothers who work inside the home as real workers.
Mothers who work inside the home should be equally respectful of those choosing to work outside of the home.
        A few years ago on a visit to the United States of Americas naval academy, I met an extraordinary woman who was about to join the United States of Americas submarine 'force' as one of its first female officers. She was nervous about her new role and aware that there were risks in being an officer and not a gentleman. 
I asked her to let me know how it went.
A year later, she followed up with a heartfelt email - "Truthfully I was prepared for opposition and the possibility of being discounted, but that didn't happen at all. I was respected the moment I stepped on board and I can truly say that I am a valued part of the crew.". 
Unfortunately, she told me that she encountered resentment from another source - the navy wives. At an onshore 'welcome dinner', the wives of her colleagues pounced and accused her of being a 'bra-burning feminist out to prove a point'. They had forced her to defend her career choice, reputation, and personal life.
She added, "I was shocked! Talk about uncomfortable! I did my best to answer their questions and stand my ground. Eventually they backed off and started in on my husband!".
         We must work harder to rise above this. The gender wars need an immediate and lasting peace. True equality will be achieved only when we all fight the stereotypes that hold us back. Feeling threatened by others' choices pulls us all down. *Depression is actually our friends and familys' expectations of us conflicting with out desires for our lives.
Instead, we should funnel our energy into breaking this cycle. 
        Sharon Meers' tells a story about a school parents night she attended in which the children introduced their parents'. Sharons' daughter Sammy pointed at her father and said "this is Steve, he makes buildings, kind of like an architect, and he loves to sing. Then Sammy pointed at Sharon and said "this is Sharon, she wrote a book, she works full-time, and she never picks me up from school.".
To Sharon credit, hearing this account did not make her feel guilty. 
Instead, she said, "I felt mad at the social norms that make my daughter feel odd because her mother doesn't conform to those norms.".
        The goal is to work toward a world where those social norms no longer exist. If more children see fathers at school pickups and mothers who are busy at jobs, kids will envision more options for themselves as grown ups. Expectations will not be set by gender but by personal passion, talents, and interests.
       I am fully aware that most women are not focused on chasing social norms for the next generation but simply trying to get through each day. 40% of employed mothers lack sick days and vacation leave, and about 50% of employed mothers are unable to take time off to care for a sick child.
Only about half of women receive any pay during maternity leave. These policies can have severe consequences; families with no access to paid leave often go into debt and can fall into poverty.
Part-time jobs with fluctuating schedules offer little chance to plan and often stop short of the 40 hour week that provides basic benefits.
        Too many work standards remain inflexible and unfair, often penalizing women with children. Too many talented women try their hardest to reach the top and bump up against systemic barriers. Many others pull back because they do not think they have a choice. All of this brings me back to Leymah Gbowees' insistence that we need more women in power.
When leadership insists that these policies change, they will. Google put in pregnancy parking when I asked for it and it will remain there. 
        We must raise both the ceiling and the floor.
 My mother had fewer choices than I, and with my fathers support, she has always worked hard. During my childhood, she chose to be a devoted mother and volunteer. When I left for college, she went back to school to study teaching English as a second language. She taught full-time for 15 years and felt that teaching was her calling. My mother told me "at one point, I was asked to become the administrator for the entire school, I said no, preferring to stay in the classroom and work with my students. I was exactly where I wanted to be.".
          In 2003, my mother left the workforce to take care of her ailing parents. She was sorry to leave her teaching career, but family has always been her top priority. After my grandparents passed away, my mother re-entered the workforce and she founded 'ear peace: save your hearing' a non profit to prevent noise induced hearing loss in young people (so anti-couchella?*-I dig). 
At the age of 65, she has returned to her love of teaching, running workshops and speaking to students from elementary to high school.
         My mother has leaned in her entire life. She raised her children, helped her parents spend their final years in dignity and comfort, and continues to be a dedicated and loving wife, mother and grandmother. She has always contributed to her community and the world. She is my inspiration.
        My mother wants to see society achieve true equality. She sees the barriers that women still face, but she also sees new opportunities. She believes that what I have achieved, and much more, is possible for many others.
I agree. And more important, so many women that I have encountered agree. 
Filled with energy, optimism, and self-confidence, they are scrambling along that jungle gym and moving toward their long-term dream.
        It is up to us to end the self fulfilling belief that 'women cant do this, women cant do that.". Throwing up our hands and saying 'it can't be done' ensures that it will never be done.
         I have written this book to encourage women to dream big, forge a path through the obstacles, and achieve their full potential. I am hoping that each woman will set her own goals and reach for them with gusto. I am hoping that each man will do his part to support women in the world, and with gusto. 
As we start using the talents of the entire populations, our institutions will be more productive, our homes will be happier and the children growing up in those homes will no longer be held back by narrow stereotypes.
          I know that for many women, getting to the top of their organization is far from their primary focus (and I've explained it many times, but since this is the last chapter, lets summarize!). My intention is not to exclude them or ignore their valid concerns. 
I believe that if more women lean in, we can change the power structure of our world and expand opportunities for all.
More female leadership will lead to fairer treatment for all women. Shared experience forms the basis of empathy and, in turn, can spark the institutional changes we need.
         Critics have scoffed at me for trusting that once women are in power, they will help one another, since that has not always been the case. I am willing to take that bet. The first wave of women who ascended to leadership positions were few and far between, and to thrive, many focused more on fitting in that helping others.
The current wave of female leadership is increasingly willing to speak up. The more women attain positions of power, the less pressure there will be to conform, and the more they will do for other women. 
Research already suggests that companies with more women in leadership roles have better work-life policies, smaller gender gaps in executive compensation, and more women in midlevel management. 
        The hard work of generations before us means that equality is within our reach. We can close the leadership gap now. Each individuals success can make success a little easier for the next.
We can do this - for ourselves, for one another, for our daughters, for our sons. If we push hard now, this next wave can be the last wave. In the future, there will be no female leaders.
There will be just leaders.
        When Gloria Steinem marched in the streets to fight for the opportunities that so many of us now take for granted, she quoted Susa B. Anthony, who marched in the streets before her and concluded "our job is not to make young women grateful. It is to make them ungrateful so they keep going.".
The sentiment remains true today. We need to be grateful for what we have but dissatisfied with the status quo. This dissatisfaction spurs the charge for change. We must keep going.
        The march toward true equality continues. It continues down the halls of governments, corporations, academia, hospitals, law firms, nonprofits, research labs, and every organization, large and small. We owe it to the generations that came before us and the generations that will come after to keep fighting.
I believe women can lead more in the workplace. 
I believe man can contribute more in the home, and I believe that this will create a better world, one where half our institutions are run by women and half our homes are run by men.
        I look toward the world I want for all children - and my own. My greatest hope is that my kids will be able to choose what to do with their lives without external or internal obstacles slowing them down or making them question their choices. 
If my son wants to do the important work of raising children full-time, I hope he is respected and supported. 
That if my daughter wants to work full-time outside her home, I hope she is not just respected and supported, but also liked for her achievements.
        I hope they both end up exactly where they want to be. And when they find where their true passions are, I hope they both lean in - all the way.


           🔮💎Lets keep talking💎🔮

        Our goal is that this book in not the end of the conversation but the beginning. We invite you to continue the discussion by joining the Lean-in Community at leanin.org and facebook.com/leaninorg.
        We also encourage you to start or join a lean in circle at leanin.org/circles Circles are small peer groups that meet regularly to learn and grow together using free videos and activities provided by our team.
There are circles in more than 100 countries, and they are changing lives - members are taking on new challenges and asking for what they deserve.
       Women and men of all ages are welcome. Let us keep supporting one another. Lets lean in together.   

 

         

     

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