About the Author: Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer at Facebook. Prior to Facebook, she was vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google and chief of staff at the U.S. Treasury Department.
She lost her dear husband recently in an accident while exercising.
The blurb says: Thirty years after women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States, men still hold the vast majority of leadership positions in government and industry. This means that women’s voices are still not heard equally in the decisions that most affect our lives. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg examines why women’s progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled, explains the root causes, and offers compelling, commonsense solutions that can empower women to achieve their full potential.
Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and is ranked on Fortune’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business and as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2010, she gave an electrifying TEDTalk in which she described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which became a phenomenon and has been viewed more than two million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto.
In Lean In, Sandberg digs deeper into these issues, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to cut through the layers of ambiguity and bias surrounding the lives and choices of working women. She recounts her own decisions, mistakes, and daily struggles to make the right choices for herself, her career, and her family. She provides practical advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career, urging women to set boundaries and to abandon the myth of “having it all.” She describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women in the workplace and at home.
Written with both humor and wisdom, Sandberg’s book is an inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth. Lean In is destined to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can.
What I Felt About The Book:
I have to confess that I read other one first because I thought that I would be able to connect more with her being from same culture. I was so wrong as I was smiling and nodding to almost everything. While Sheryl has directed the book towards women and the need of them to be top or executive or senior positions across the world, a major part of book if read properly would also solve leadership issues of both sexes.
Sheryl has divided the book in 11 chapters each of them having instances from her own life and those of her near ams dear ones. She has also done a detailed homework in collecting various research/studies results and eye opening facts and figures.
I found her style of writing simple and clear and the book looked like she is standing in front of me and telling all those golden words.
There were few sections I simply loved reading:
Sit at the table: reaction of Sheryl to her fifth ranking in Forbes most powerful women list - I might consider revealing that a spoiler, thus you need to read if you want to know it.
Make your partner a real partner: The answer to question what men could go to help advance women's leadership by Harvard a Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter as "The Laundry" need to be displayed in all offices in bold letters.
The inequality imposed by laws when it comes to maternity and paternity leaves definitely need to be brought up more. Imagine 12 weeks for mothers and rarely 15 days for father - both are equal parents. I am glad some one brought this topic up.
The advice to girls for dating all; the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic guys, the crazy boys - marrying/settling with the one who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious and this want equal partners gets a big high-five from me.
What I did not like about the book:
1. Too much concentration about having a baby and being a working mother - I agree that it's a major issue to be talked about, but the whole book need not run around this.
2. Too many statistics - this might be my personal opinion: I really got bored many times reading those statistics and skipped them.
3. Too many footnotes and references:
Frankly speaking, a major part of book looked like a good quality research work for some study. At the same time, kudos to Sheryl for sorting all that data under right sections.
Below are some words from the book which made me pick my phone and type them again:
** A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.
** Please ask yourself: What would I do if I weren't afraid?
** Success feels better when shared with others.
** When you want to change things, you can't please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren't making enough progress.
** If you are offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask what seat. You just get on.
** Letting the other side make first offer is often crucial to achieving favourable terms.
** 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.
** We need more men to sit at the table... The kitchen table.
** Trying to do it all and expecting that it all can be done exactly right is a recipe for disappointment.
** Perfection is the enemy.
** ...success is making the best choices we can ... and accepting them.
All-together, Sheryl has done a pretty decent job and has been quite successful in proving her point of view. At the end, I did not regret reading it and might recommend to someone who looking to collect data for some speech on women related topics.
Title: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Author: Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell
Language: English
