I just finished reading Sheryl Sandberg's new book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. It was so fascinating I could hardly put it down. Sandberg pulls back the curtain on life at the top for women in corporate America. And while she is rigorous about appreciating the many gains women have made, she is frank about data that shows how under-represented women are at the top of the corporate ladder.
Rather than blame, Sandberg takes an unflinching look at the ways that women continue to sabotage their own success by making choices based on their own fears and false beliefs. She shares the persistent feelings of self-doubt that she encountered in college and how she has continued to face down these doubts as she has seen them surface. She shares fascinating stories of other women executives who have faced doubt and a lack of self-confidence in the course of building their careers.
She offers a very honest look at the choices she made when her first child was born and she was an executive at Google. While she intended to take maternity leave when her son was born, her fears of losing influence caused her to work from home during her entire leave. By the time her second child was born, she was more secure and confident, and was able to take a full maternity leave without checking in with her office at all, and no negative consequences to her position.
While there a consistent emphasis on research studies and data to back up every assertion in the book, what I found most fascinating is Sandberg's willingness to share stories of women executives, her own as well as others, that demonstrate how often a women's main barrier to corporate success is her own belief system.
Our culture, beginning in our earliest childhood experiences, molds women for care-taking roles and invisibility. Often successful women have become adept at "making it in a man's world" by developing masculine energy: the energy of competition, analysis, linear thinking, goal attainment, and left-brained perception of circumstances. The price paid is often a lack of development of feminine energies: creative, intuitive, collaborative and relational energies. This leads eventually to burn out and a lack of fulfillment. The "is that all there is" experience becomes pervasive.
I believe we are facing challenges in the world that reflect this imbalance. Technology has given us every advantage in terms of business development, but at the price of polluted air, fouled water, the breakdown of our global financial systems, burned out adults, troubled children, and broken homes.
As a culture we need to move more into balance now. I believe that women leaders have a key role to play in this transition. By honoring their own needs for achievement in the workplace and finding ways to bring the strength and creativity of their feminine energies into contemporary problem-solving, they will forge new pathways to greatness for themselves and the corporations for which they work.
With the help and support of their husbands (who have accessed their own feminine energies) they will raise children who have seen both masculine and feminine energies modeled in their mother and their father. These children will grow up to create a more balanced, harmonious world.
As new more balanced business structures evolve to meet the needs of the marketplace, culture itself will evolve. While this will surely take many generations, we as women can start right here, right now, to see the deeper truth of who we are and access our feminine energies. As we do so we break through the barriers of false beliefs that act as a glass ceiling to our ability to achieve our highest potential.
One decision at a time we can restore balance to our lives and take a stand for greater harmony in our world. It is time for us to own the power that comes from the realization of our true being and allow that power to inform our choices. I stand with Ms. Sandberg in calling on women to embrace their heart's desires, go for their dreams, and consistently Lean In.
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