Women Aspiring to Leadership

In Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.” Her point, in a nutshell, is that notwithstanding the many gender biases that still operate all over the workplace, excuses and justifications won’t get women anywhere. Instead, believe in yourself, give it your all, “lean in” and “don’t leave before you leave” — which is to say, don’t doubt your ability to combine work and family and thus edge yourself out of plum assignments before you even have a baby. Leaning in can promote a virtuous circle: you assume you can juggle work and family, you step forward, you succeed professionally, and then you’re in a better position to ask for what you need and to make changes that could benefit others.

No one who reads this book will ever doubt that Sandberg herself has the will to lead, not to mention the requisite commitment, intelligence and ferocious work ethic. Sandberg has been the chief operating officer of Facebook since 2008. At 43, she has already had a storied career: research assistant to Lawrence Summers at the World Bank; management consultant at McKinsey; chief of staff to Summers at the Treasury Department; and six and a half years at Google, where she rose to the post of vice president of global online sales and operations. She has also made it to the top of the notoriously male-dominated world of Silicon Valley. 

Sandberg is right to say that it is easier to handle work-family conflicts from as high a position on the career ladder as possible, but if in fact it’s the tipping points that tip women out of the work force, or at least prevent them from rising, then no amount of psychological coaching will make a difference.

That is the real debate here, and it’s an important one. Sandberg puts her finger on it when she writes: “For decades, we have focused on giving women the choice to work inside or outside the home. . . . But 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.”

Young women might be more willing to lean in if they saw better models and possibilities of fitting work and life together.

In the March 11, 2013 edition of BusinessWeek magazine, Allsion Pearson, author of "I Don't Know How She Does It," writes:

"Unaccountably, Sandberg claims that young women who know they want to be a mother make the mistake of taking their foot off the work accelerator years in advance.  My own findings suggest that, far from leaning back, young women are so focused on reaching senior level before they allow themselves the luxury of getting pregnant that they frequently ignore the clanging bell of the biological clock.  Involuntary childlessness was the heartbreaking result--a major trend for professional women, and Sandberg doesn't even mention it.

A banker mom of three who wrote to me said, 'In my office, you'd get more sympathy if you came out as a cocaine addict than if you admit you've got kids.  The firm has a program for drug addicts, but unfortunately motherhood is a lifelong and incurable condition.'"

Source: "Yes, You Can" by Anne-Marie Slaughter in The New York Times, March 10, 2013

 Sheryl Sandberg: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

 Allison Pearson: I Don't Know How She Does It

 John Agno: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women

 John G. Agno: Women and Time

 John G Agno: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge.

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Comments

[Congrats!YourBlogischosenforth]

I couldn't message you through your contact form so had to post a comment here.

[Candice]

I absolutely agree that you need to attempt your career goals and then determine how a family will fit in later on when it becomes an issues. Once you have already acheived your career goals it may not be as unmanageable as you might think to add in a family to your career life.

[Roxana Del Cid]

I agree that the ideal way to climb the corporate ladder is to focus on career goals and then focus on family, however what happens when a woman such as my self has a family first, Does this put me at a disadvantage for a leadership role? or does this give me an advantage since I have been raising children and running a household successfully managing a budget, handling multiple things at once etc. I think leadership should not be defined depending on when a woman has a family but whether she can be an effective leader regardless of her situation. Men have families and nobody questions their ability to be a leader.