My previous posts in this series have touched on the core issues that Sheryl Sandberg addresses in her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. If you're interested in these issues, I encourage you to read the book and read the criticism as well.
In this post I want to cover some of the other things I found valuable or interesting from the book. Even if you disagree with Sandberg's core thesis, she was a key leader at Google and Facebook. You may not like Google or Facebook, but it's undeniable that they are two of the most successful companies of all time. Sandberg's track record demonstrates that she's an effective leader. Here are some random insights not necessarily tied to the central theme of the book that influenced or that aligned with my experiences and thinking.
Sandberg tells us that "A study that looked at the starting salaries of students graduating with a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University found that 57 percent of the male students, but only 7 percent of the female students, tried to negotiate for a higher offer." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 45) Is this another example of a lack of confidence or not wanting to come off as self-promoting? It may be.
I was deep into my own career before I ever bothered to negotiate for a higher salary. I had a co-worker tell me about his hiring process at our employer. He explained that he'd asked for $5K more than he was offered. I don't know what this represented in terms of his base pay, but I'm guessing it was around three percent. The company agreed to his request on the spot. A conversation lasting less than five minutes resulted in a three percent raise that paid out during all the years he worked for the company. If they'd said no, he would have accepted the original offer.
Sandberg tells us of her own experience negotiating with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, she tells Mark, "'Of course you realize that you're hiring me to run your deal teams, so you want me to be a good negotiator. This is the only time you and I will ever be on opposite sides of the table.' Then I negotiated hard." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 46)
I love her strategy. She's demonstrating the skills that Mark was hiring her for during the hiring process. Even if you're not going to run deal teams in a role you're interviewing for, you may be able to position your negotiation process in similar terms.
On career progression -- it's a jungle gym, not a ladder
Another tale from the book that I enjoyed was about Lori Goler, a senior director of marketing at eBay who reached out to Sandberg saying
"I want to apply to work with you at Facebook... So I thought about calling you and telling you all of the things I'm good at and all of the things I like to do. Then I figured that everyone was doing that. So instead, I want to ask you: What is your biggest problem, and how can I solve it?" (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 52-53)
Sandberg tells us that her problem was recruiting and that Goler had no experience in recruiting, but agreed to a less senior position to learn those skills, "she was willing to trade seniority for acquiring new skills." (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 52-53)
"The most common metaphor for careers is a ladder, but this concept no longer applies to most workers. As of 2010, the average American had eleven jobs from the ages of eighteen to forty-six alone. This means that the days of joining an organization or corporation and staying there to climb that one ladder are long gone... Pattie Sellers, ... conceived a much better metaphor: 'Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 53)
People want to show ever increasing responsibility and titles that reflect that in their resumes, which is completely reasonable, but this is also a good way to "paint" oneself into a corner career-wise. There are benefits to lateral moves with different experiences. My own career has been a bit of a jungle gym. I've been in deep technical roles for most of my career, then moved to technical lead roles where I was doing technical work and directing others, but not really managing them, but it gave me some management exposure. I then moved back into a technical role with some sales engineering exposure where I got to do deep technical work that was also customer facing, then I moved into a technical manager role directing a team of people doing technical work with some sales engineering. After doing that for a few years, I went back into an individual contributor role doing deep technical work, and now I'm in a technical manager role.
These experiences don't have titles showing consistent upward progress. Going from a senior director title to a principal engineering title was more of a jungle gym style lateral move than an up the ladder move, but I think I'm better for it. That move gave me a deeper understanding of the detection engineering space and a chance to get back into software development.
Consider the story above about Lori Goler who left her senior director role at eBay to work for Sandberg at Facebook in a role with a more junior title recruiting people. That move gave her an opportunity to learn an entirely new skillset. I see that today Goler is the Head of People at Meta. I'd say that jungle gym move paid off for her.
"Seeking out diverse experiences is useful preparation for leadership." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 62)
On being liked v being effective
"Less than six months after I started at Facebook, Mark and I sat down for my first formal review. One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back... If you try to please everyone, you aren't making enough progress." (Sandber, 2013, p. 51)
Great insight here from Zuckerberg. It reminds me of a section of Phil Fisher's book, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits where Fisher talks about how to evaluate companies for investment. One of the things he looks at is the relationship between management and labor. He wants the relationship to be good obviously, but tells us that an "absence of conflict may not mean a basically happy relationship so much as fear or the consequences of conflict." (Fisher, 1958, p. 66)
If you're universally loved, you may not be making enough progress.
On evaluating and choosing opportunities
When Sandberg was thinking of joining Google, she had a spreadsheet where she was tracking pros and cons.
"Eric responded with perhaps the best piece of career advice that I have ever heard. He covered my spreadsheet with his hand and told me not to be an idiot (also a great piece of advice). The he explained that only one criterion mattered when picking a job -- fast growth. When companies grow quickly, there are more things to do than there are people to do them. When companies grow more slowly or stop growing, there is less to do and too many people to not be doing them. Politics and stagnation set in, and everyone falters... 'If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask what seat. You just get on.'" (Sandberg, 2013, p. 58)
On joining Facebook as COO when other companies were offering to hire her as CEO: "As I did when I joined Google, I prioritized potential for fast growth and the mission of the company above title... I have seen both men and women miss out on great opportunities by focusing too much on career levels." (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 60-61)
Consider this statement in light of the ladder v jungle gym discussion above.
I'm currently working at my third startup. All of them have been very rewarding places to work, offering diverse opportunities for fast growth. I've had offers to join startups in their infancy, but at this point in life, with college tuitions and a mortgage, I'm too risk averse to be employee number three (maybe one day). As Sandberg says, "The cost of stability is often diminished opportunities for growth." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 61) The good news is that you can join startups at different points in their growth curves and get a good mix of growth and stability. You can even experience tremendous growth in large establish companies, if you find the right team and management.
On leadership, power, and getting things done
"It is hard to visualize someone as a leader if she is always waiting to be told what to do." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 35)
I'm reminded of what Steve Jobs said, “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” (Jobs, 2011) When I hire people for roles on my team, one thing I'm always trying to gauge is their capacity for self-direction and the innovative ideas and execution that they will bring to the team.
Sandberg quotes Alice Walker: "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 63) One of my favorite restaurants in my hometown has this on a poster on the wall. It's worth regular reflection.
"Asking for input is not a sign of weakness but often the first step to finding a path forward." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 71)
"... true leadership comes from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed... leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 91)
Related, to the above, but not directly to leadership and power: "Another one of my favorite posters at Facebook declares in big red letters, 'Done is better than perfect.'" (Sandberg, 2013, p. 125)
"Counterintuitively, long-term success at work often depends on not trying to meet every demand placed on us." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 126)
"It is difficult to distinguish between the aspects of a job that are truly necessary and those that are not." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 130)
These previous two quotes echo Jobs:
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” (Jobs, 2011)
On Facebook culture: "The company operated by moving quickly and tolerating mistakes..." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 74)
On communication, feedback, and performance
"Another way I try to foster authentic communication is to speak openly about my own weaknesses." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 85)
Always own your mistakes openly, especially when you're a leader. It sets the right example, shows others that mistakes are part of the process of failing forward.
Think what you will about Mark Zuckerberg. I love this story from Sandberg's book:
"When people are open and honest, thanking them publicly encourages them to continue while sending a powerful signal to others," which she follows with this powerful example, "At a summer barbecue four years ago, an intern told Mark that he should work on his public speaking skills. Mark thanked him in front of everyone and then encouraged us to extend him a full-time job offer." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 86)
Zuckerberg could have gone a very different direction with that feedback, but he had the presence of mind to consider that the feedback was warranted and recognized that the intern had the courage to speak his mind.
"... being open to the truth means taking responsibility for mistakes." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 84)
"Authentic communication is not always easy, but it is the basis for successful relationships at home and real effectiveness at work. Yet people constantly back away from honesty to protect themselves and others. This reticence causes and perpetuates all kinds of problems: uncomfortable issues that never get addressed, resentment that builds, unfit managers who get promoted rather than fired, and on and on." (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 77-78)
"... someone's performance is assessed by someone else's perception." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 78)
"It is nearly impossible to know how our actions are perceived by others. We can try to guess what they're thinking, but asking directly is far more effective." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 81)
"One thing that helps is to remember that feedback, like truth, is not absolute. Feedback is an opinion, grounded in observations and experiences, which allows us to know what impression we make on others. The information is revealing and potentially uncomfortable, which is why all of us would rather offer feedback to those who welcome it." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 83)
"Truth is better served by using simple language." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 79)
"When communicating hard truths, less is often more." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 80)
"restating the other person's point before responding to it." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 80)
"relecting someone's viewpoint clarifies the disagreement and becomes a starting point for resolution. We all want to be heard, and when we focus on showing others that we are listening, we actually become better listeners." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 81)
"... people rarely seek enough input." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 81)
Sandberg tells the story of her first week working for Robert Rubin, secretary of the Treasury, she was invited to a meeting about restructuring the IRS. Being new and not knowing much about the subject, she did not take a seat at the conference room table,
"Toward the end of the meeting, Secretary Rubin suddenly turned and asked, 'Sheryl, what do you think?' I was stunned silent -- my mouth opened but nothing came out. When he saw how shocked I was, Secretary Rubin explained why he had put me on the spot: 'Because you're new and not fully up to speed on how we do things, I thought you might see something we were missing... Rubin sent a powerful message... about the value of soliciting ideas from every corner..." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 82)
Whenever someone new joins my team, I try to emphasize that they should ask questions and offer suggestions precisely because they are new. Their fresh perspective may help us see things that we've been overlooking.
"... the traditional practice of judging employees by face time rather than results unfortunately persists. Because of this, many employees focus on hours clocked in the office rather than on achieving their goals as effectively as possible." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 130)
Quoting General Colin Powell: "... I am paying them for the quality of their work, not for the hours they work." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 131)
"Instead of perfection, we should aim for sustainable and fulfilling." (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 138-139)
On feminism
"A feminist is someone who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 158)
That's how I've always defined it too and that's pretty close to the dictionary definition. Hard to see how any rational person could not be a feminist.
The last word
"We should expect professional behavior, and even kindness, from everyone." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 165)
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