Book Review-Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
In the book Lean In: Women, Work, and the will to lead; Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook’s chief operating officer and one of the Fortune’s most powerful women in Business examines the reasons as to why the progress of women in attaining leadership roles has halted. She explains the main causes, and provides compelling, basic solutions that can enable women to attain their total potential. In this book, Sandberg goes into detail on these issues of women, work, and the will to lead. She combines personal anecdotes, compelling research and hard data to cut through the layers of bias and ambiguity surrounding the choices and lives of the working women. She depicts her own mistakes, decisions, and struggles to make the suitable choices for her career, her family and herself.
Additionally, Sandberg offers practical advice on negotiation methods, mentorship, and developing a satisfying profession, encouraging women to create boundaries and leave the “having it all” myth. She outlines the particular steps women can adopt to combine career achievement with personal gratification and highlights how men can gain by helping women at home and in the workplace. Sandberg’s main argument that women’s progress in attaining leadership roles has stopped is comparable to the current real world’s situation.
The current situation has continued despite the fact that the number of women students has increased in the higher learning institutions. For instance, in the United States, women have formed nearly a half of the college graduates. However, men still occupy the majority of leadership positions in various industries and the government. Although the Sandberg’s book on Lean In can be argued to be heaping so much blame on women, the book is a stirring call to action and a blueprint for personal growth, particularly for women.
In this book, Sandberg covers the topic of women's leadership fairly well. She covers this topic through encouraging women to behave more as men. For instance, she cites her long-time adviser Larry Summers, who used to advise his wife who was a tax lawyer, to “bill as a boy”. According to Sandberg, the view of her mentor is that men usually consider every time spent as hours for the bill including even the time spent for showering.
Sandberg continues to write that Larry’s wife and her female colleagues, nevertheless, would opt that they were not perfect on a particular day. Therefore, they would decrease the hours they use at their desk to serve the clients. Sandberg notes that this is one of the ways through which exceptionally trained women are scaling down in their professions due to their own wrong choices.
In encouraging women, Sandberg is also keen to pay respect to women who distract careers because of the children. However, her warning to them is explicit: If they have to do it too early, there is no thinking twice. She adds that the time to think twice is only in case a break is required or in case, a baby arrives and not before or not certainly years in advance.
According to Sandberg, the years and months, resulting in having babies are not the appropriate opportunities to lean back, but the important opportunity for women to lean on. She continues to point out that the cost of caring for children is so huge. For example, she writes that the cost of caring for only two children is bigger than the average yearly rent in any state in America. However, paying for the cost of caring for children can be a means for women to invest in the future of their families.
How the Author Covers the Various Aspects of the Topic
Even though Sandberg has covered the topic of women's leadership fairly well in her book, she can be criticized for not covering all aspects of the topic in a balanced way. For instance, by the time she is describing the discomforts of guilt as a mother working outside the home that is evident in most of her emotional passages; it is not possible to forget that she, like many of her female friends that she quotes, is wealthy and married women with a huge support system. Therefore, she could have included one or more stories about one or more successful women who are more likely to have been born from a poor background. Or at least, more who did not graduate from prestigious higher learning institution like her.
Sandberg also rarely mentions the many single mothers in the workplace. However, she advises women on how to find a supportive spouse, who in her book, is always a male. Hence, ambitious lesbians might not benefit from her book and thus, will have to find their tutorial elsewhere. Sandberg writes that when women are searching for a life partner, her advice to all of them is to date all the boys, namely the cool boys, the bad boys, the crazy boys and the commitment-phobic boys but they should not marry them. Also, her decision to focus mainly on the women’s internal struggles has drawn criticism that she does little to provide solutions for the institutional problems that present the most obvious obstacles to developing more female leaders.
A detailed review of the Lean In discloses that Sandberg is totally aware of the obstacles women continue to face in their course to power. Nevertheless, she simply prefers to ignore them and thus she does not help so much in assisting women to attain leadership positions. Addressing these obstacles fully by Sandberg would enable women to have a more substantial stake in the decision-making processes that shape and ultimately smash the current obstacles.
The Approach of the Author towards the Subject
Sandberg’s approach to the subject is more descriptive than analytical. She describes how many women have reacted to the substantial challenges that they face in their course of careers by selecting to be self-limiting. She also describes how women react when faced with various critical turning points that can affect their ability to attain the highest leadership levels. She construes that a large percentage of women step back rather than taking her suggestions to lean on. Sandberg supports her argument by telling some tales that are convincing.
For instance, Sandberg tells the story about herself asking a private equity fund’s senior partner for directions to the restroom for women. Combined with a pinch of humor, the story provides a strong dose of reality concerning the state of gender equality in the 21st century. Other tales, such as her discovery that her daughter had lice while they were guests on the private plane owned by eBay, indirectly, offer more talking points regarding the growing concern over economic inequality in America and the rest of the world.
Contradictory Opinions
Although Sandberg provides good arguments regarding the topic, some of her arguments contradict those of other leading business businesspeople. A good example is the current Google Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt. Whereas Sandberg debated the merits of working for the nascent tech giant, Schmidt stated that the only deciding factor for selecting where to work is whether or not the company would rapidly grow. Sandberg, on the contrary, is of the opinion that when a company grows quickly, there are more things to be done than there are people to do them. However, Schmidt summarized the assumption by saying that if one is offered a seat on a rocket ship, he or she does not ask what seat but just get on it.
Recommending the Book
Despite the criticisms, many of the core arguments in Lean In have genuine merit for workers of both genders. Sandberg tackles the importance of stretching one’s abilities by taking assignments that, while not directly labeled as a promotion, provide better opportunities to expand a person’s skills. The book is important for understanding the problem of too many women either choosing to get off the rocket just as their countdowns near lunch or, worse yet, never get on at all. Sandberg spends a good part of the book trying to resolve the conflict between career and family that she feels stop many future female leaders in their paths.
Whereas some of her arguments are debatable, there is adequate content in Lean In to make it a worthwhile for being read by both women and men. Therefore, it is worth recommending the book to those who have not read it, especially for the students studying business since they will learn more from the book regarding leadership as well as a tug-of-war between career and family.
Work Cited
Sandberg, Sheryl. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Knopf Doubleday, 2013.
