Sheryl Sandberg - Lean In

It might seem odd that I would choose to read this whilst at home, on maternity leave, spending most of each day nursing a tiny baby. In fact, it was yet another bookclub pick - thanks Bibliofillies! - but it is also a book I've been curious about since it came out, even though I am rarely drawn to non-fiction. And actually, I think now is the perfect time to read it. Maternity leave is a wonderful time for reflection and soul searching. The experience of bringing new life into the world, of taking a break from your career and spending time at home, focusing energy on the physical task of nurturing young children rather than the intellectual tasks of a workplace, puts everything else in your life into perspective and allows you to observe it more objectively.

I will come right out and say it: I am a feminist. I make no apologies for my use of a word that has garnered all kinds of (largely undeserved) negative connotations. I believe in women making it in this world - however they choose to define 'making it'. This is even more true, and more poignant, now that I have a daughter. I loved Sheryl Sandberg's infamous TED talk (find it here), but a friend of mine, one of the Bibliofillies, was not impressed. "Nothing I haven't heard before," she commented. Nothing new. And fair enough - Sandberg draws heavily on statistics and case studies, so yes, most of the facts she presents in her talk, and in more detail in Lean In, are not new. But somehow the way she puts it all together, her collation of information, the simplicity of her message when she boils the facts right down - to me, it sounds fresh. It has made me re-think a few things. In fact, I have found it the most inspirational book on women in the workplace that I have ever read.

After several very bad experiences in law firms, and after watching Australia's first ever female prime minister get hammered by the press, I had decided I never wanted to make partner in a law firm, I never wanted to be general counsel of a corporation, and in fact I never wanted to make it to any public leadership position. It's not worth it, I thought. Success of that nature would require me to fight every day of my life against particularly nasty individuals who believed I had no right to be doing what I was doing, because I am a woman.

But Sheryl Sandberg has made me sit back and rethink this. That was the wrong message to take away from those experiences, I now realise. I am a woman with a certain degree of intelligence and privilege, who has obtained a number of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. For any woman, but especially for women like me, who have had opportunities thrust at them, shying away from leadership positions just because the road might sometimes prove hard is not the right thing to do. With opportunity comes responsibility. And to turn down opportunity because of a perceived systemic bias against women gives the wrong voices too much power. It ensures that the culture created by those voices will continue to dominate. It does other women no favours at all.

The first chapter of Lean In is subtitled What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid? This hit me, hard, because of course, without realising it, I was charting a course steered by fear. Sandberg points out that:

"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. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter."

She recounts a speech to female University graduates in which her advice was that as they started their adult lives they should "Start out by aiming high." And of course we should - all of us should, male and female.

In the following chapters, Sandberg parcels out succinct pieces of advice, often using her personal experiences to illustrate the authenticity of that advice. She recounts a story of women attending a meeting who chose to sit on the chairs lining the side of the room when there were insufficient places at the conference table for all attendees, rather than confidently grabbing one of those spots for themselves. Sandberg points out that this behaviour did not help those women with how they were regarded in the workplace, it did not create an impression of competence or equality. She says that we should always feel confident enough to sit at the table - both literally and figuratively - rather than take a back seat out of misguided notions of diplomacy or benevolence.

She talks about using our natural qualities so that they work for us rather than against us in the workplace - we don't have to be liked by everyone, but also we don't have to behave like men to get ahead (she even says it's ok to cry at the office). And one of my favourite pieces of advice in Lean In is to think of your career as a jungle gym rather than a ladder. It's rare for people to start down one career path and follow it linearly, through promotion after promotion, until they ultimately reach the pinnacle of their profession. It's more likely, Sandberg says, that success will come from looking more flexibly at one's career, from being open to opportunities even when at the time they may seem like sideways moves. A jungle gym, not a ladder. And isn't this realistic, these days? It is no longer the case that people who start out at one company then stay with that same company until retirement. Things have changed, opportunities might come from the most unlikely places. Sandberg also suggests that the right career choices inevitably move with the market: pick the company with the highest growth. Follow market growth, Sandberg says, even if the role seems less significant, and your career will grow too.

More practical advice from Sandbrg is to be honest in the workplace, to speak up truthfully even if it is easier or seems more diplomatic to remain silent or to sugar-coat something, and to seek the same honesty from your co-workers, even if it's hard to hear some of the truths you thus invite.

And the key career advice from Sandberg, the heart of the book: don't start leaning back from the workplace in preparation for a life you may one day lead, before you are actually leading that life. Don't make career decisions that take into account the baby you have yet to fall pregnant with, the husband you have yet to meet. I feel ashamed to admit that I am guilty of this. When I was seriously considering making a significant change in my career, had indeed taken several steps down that path - several successful, exciting steps - I let some advice I received influence me and I decided not to follow that path after all because doing so might interfere with my ability to meet someone and start a family during my thirties. Now that I have my family I don't regret the decision I made, because had I behaved differently back then my life now would surely be different too. But certainly I regret having made a decision to lean back from my career before I really needed to. I don't think that was the right basis for my decision. I'm sure that, had I followed that career path, I still would have eventually found a way to create a fulfilling family life.

The advice in Lean In is compelling because Sandberg herself is a woman who has clearly succeeded at the highest level. In the latter chapters of the book she talks about how it was possible for her to achieve this professional success while raising children, and the answer lies in her domestic set-up. It is most important, says Sandberg, to ensure your spouse is a true partner - someone who contributes equally to your family. When looking for a life partner, she says, her advice to women is "to date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But 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." She cites statistics that I found most interesting, indicating high levels of happiness for women who juggle multiple roles, as long as they have support at home, and which also show that children benefit enormously - thrive, in fact - from having fathers who are genuinely involved in domestic duties. Of course, finding a partner like this might be easier said than done, but Sandberg's point is that women should insist upon it. Only by doing so is it likely to become the norm. Men, she says, must learn to 'lean in' to their domestic lives, just as women must lean in to their professional lives, accepting opportunities and achieving leadership positions. Only then will it gradually become as acceptable for women to hold the top jobs - in politics, corporations, and so on - as it is for men.

For Sandberg the concept of 'having it all' is "the greatest trap ever set for women." It is intended to be aspirational, says Sandberg, but in fact it makes us all feel bad. She says that the very concept "flies in the face of the basic laws of economics and common sense... it is best regarded as a myth." She says that the more pertinent goal is doing it all, and even that is an impossibility. Women with both careers and families worry continuously about measuring up (no one needed to tell me that!), but Sandberg says that we measure ourselves against the wrong yardsticks: "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." And on and on - we compare our bodies to those who are paid to dedicate themselves solely to looking a particular way (models, or athletes). She quotes Gloria Steinem, who famously said: "You can't do it all. No one can have two full-time jobs, have perfect children and cook three meals and be multi-orgasmic 'til dawn... Superwoman is the adversary of the woman's movement." I know all of this, I have heard it before, but isn't it something we should hear again and again?  As I sit here writing, I am also jiggling with one foot the baby rocker in which my seven week old daughter lies. I have gotten up intermittently during the writing of this post to tidy a room, start preparing dinner, and put away the laundry my husband has folded, all the while calculating the hours left until I need to pick up my 20 month old from daycare, where he spends two days a week. I have kept the computer on in front of me whilst trying simultaneously to get some reading done of our new bookclub book, and checking Facebook and my email each several times, when I am actually trying (in and around the writing of this blog) to finish writing cover letters and a synopsis of my book so that I can submit it to publishers. I managed to get a run in this morning, but am still unsatisfied by my post-pregnancy weight (although at seven weeks postpartum I don't know why I am putting this pressure on myself). I want the house to be perfect before our landlady inspects tomorrow, I want to give my daughter a bath, I want to have dinner sorted for my son before he gets home this evening (and I want him to eat it!) and I want dinner to be prepared for myself and my husband by the time I put my son to sleep later tonight. Mainly, I want to post this before today is over. And all the while, I am fitting in the regular feeds Lulu requires, which become ever more frequent as evening approaches. Of course I am falling short on all counts. At night, when I get up to breastfeed Lulu, I will also be trying to get some reading in on my Kindle, but my brain won't be up to processing much; and when I get back into bed, my brain will be just active enough to keep me awake worrying about everything: how much more there is to do for our move overseas later this year, my lack of progress on the next book, whether the kids are each getting enough attention, whether my son is eating a balanced enough diet and getting enough stimulation, about my parents, about our finances... the list is endless. All this and I'm not even working at the moment (though this, of course, is yet another cause of stress). All this and I am one of the lucky ones - I have help, and I have a true partner in Bibliohubby.

We cannot have it all, or do it all, at the same time. It should be a mantra women repeat over and over to themselves. Sandberg cites Nora Ephron (RIP, smart, funny woman), who, in a 1996 commencement address, said: "It will be a little bit 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 three husbands." Sandberg says that at Facebook one of the posters up on the walls says "Done is better than perfect." And she stresses that what we need to lose, all of us women, is GUILT. That tricky, pervasive mother guilt that afflicts us all. Sandberg says that "guilt management can be just as important as time management for mothers." She says that while she looks at the number of nights spent away from her children and berates herself for this failure, her husband celebrates the fact that they eat dinner together as a family as often as they do, and that these conflicting viewpoints are indicative of our problematic and counter-productive female guilt. But she also says that it can be fun when our various roles collide - when we bring our children to the office and they get to see where we work, for example. She says Facebook is family-friendly and it was a positive thing for both her work and her family life that her kids got to know her colleagues. I agree - I remember as a child visiting my mum at the clinic where she worked as a doctor, and I remember how normal it seemed that she was on call several nights a week, and might disappear at midnight without notice. My mother says that when she stopped working, I said to her (in all my youthful wisdom): "But you've been a doctor as long as I've known you!". I grew up proud of my mother, not at all concerned by the number of hours she was away from the house. Of course, I was lucky to have a father who stayed at home longer in the mornings to prepare our breakfast and pack us lunches for the day before going to work himself. This meant he got home later at night, but my mum got home earlier - that's how they balanced it. And that is Sandberg's point, too - we have to decide what's important to us and then find a way to make that happen, and be ok with letting the rest of it go. We need to find what works for us. She points to a Stanford professor's research which shows that setting obtainable goals is the key to happiness. Striving for perfection is not (again, I'm not sure why it require Stanford level research to prove this!).

Sandberg says that many women shy away from talking about all of this, especially the bits about the difficulties of being a woman in the workplace and being a feminist, because they perceive that it will do them a disservice to raise it and to be seen as 'one of those'. But the point she makes, with which I wholeheartedly agree, is that the reverse is true: the only way to effect change, and to work with other people (not just women) to create that change or even just to get through it all in good company, is to talk about it. It's been said before, but feminism is not a dirty word.

Everyone will take different things from this motivational read, but these are my take-home points: I should not be afraid, any longer, to succeed at work, I should grab opportunities even if they come out of left field, I should rely on my husband to be a true partner, I should be ok with achieving some goals, the ones I set for myself, and not others, and, above all, I should embrace the mess. 'Cuz that's life.

Overall assessment: 4 out of 5

Pros: This is without question the best book I have read about working mothers. Note, however, that this is not necessarily saying a lot - I don't read a lot of non-fiction and I hardly ever read self-help, though I'm not sure this book fits into that category. I do read feminist writing, though, and I think we can safely categorise this as a feminist text for our generation's working woman. Aside from the fabulous Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman, and my idol Tina Fey's Bossypants, this is the most influential feminist read I have picked up in a long time.

Cons: This is a book for working women. Parts of it - particularly the partnership chapter, and the chapter on the myth of doing it all - will also speak to women who are stay-at-home mums, and Sandberg is sympathetic to any choice a woman makes for her life. But really, the readers who will get the most out of this are working mothers. Also, even though I am (most of the time) a working mother, my choices are different to those that Sandberg has made. When I read about her decision to willingly sacrifice being present at all of her children's dance recitals and parent-teacher conferences and so on, it initially made me uncomfortable. But when I kept reading I recognised that she is not calling on everyone to make those same decisions - they are simply the ones she has made for herself and her family. And all of us have that choice to make.