What does “lean in” mean for you?

This month The Savvy Reader Book Club is reading Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Today is the first in a series of posts I plan on writing though out the month inspired by the book.

What was Sheryl Sandburg's motivation behind Lean-In?

When Sheryl Sandburg graduated from college in 1991 and from business school in 1995 her entry-level colleagues were a balanced mix of male and female. She saw that her senior leaders were almost entirely male, but she thought that was due to historical discrimination against women. She thought it was only a matter of time before her generation took their fair share of leadership roles. But with each passing year fewer and fewer of her colleagues were women. More and more often she was the only woman in the room. 

She feels the problem is two-fold:

External barriers erected by society
Blatant and subtle sexism, discrimination and sexual harassment.
Too few workplaces offering flexibility and access to child care and parental leave.
Men having an easier time finding mentors and sponsors who are invaluable for career progression.  
Men are promoted based on potential while women are promoted based on past accomplishments.

Self-imposed internal barriers:
Lacking self-confidence.
Not raising our hands.
Pulling back when we should be leaning in.
Internalizing internal messages we get throughout our lives – the messages that say it’s wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, and more powerful than men.
We lower our expectations of what we can achieve.
We continue to do the majority of the housework and childcare.
We compromise our career goals to make room for partners and children who may not even exist yet.
Compared to our male colleagues, fewer of us aspire to senior positions.

Sheryl’s argument is that getting rid of the internal barriers is critical to gaining power.

In the introduction of Lean-in she writes:

I am writ­ing this book for any woman who wants to increase her chances of mak­ing it to the top of her field or pur­sue any goal vig­or­ously. This includes women at all stages of their lives and careers, from those who are just start­ing out to those who are tak­ing a break and may want to jump back in. 

This book makes the case for lean­ing in, for being ambi­tious, in any pursuit. (pgs. 9-10) 

She then promises to provide adjustments and differences we can make within ourselves to reduce self-imposed internal barriers in subsequent chapters.

I recently watched a news program where a group of women were talking about leaning-in. Every one of them felt they couldn’t possibly lean-in to their careers more than they currently were doing. They were completely tapped out. After reading most of this book I can’t help but wonder if they’d actually read the book themselves or if they were just responding to the hype. I also wonder if they had thought about what leaning-in actually means to them.

For me leaning-in no longer means doing whatever it takes to get the corner office. (Actually I have a corner office – it is kind of small though - but it does have a window with a view of our back parking lot.) I also make a decent salary, but am not paid nearly as much as a man would be paid in a similar position. At this stage of my life I don’t want to lean into my career. I want to lean-in to my life. I want to a second career that is more meaningful and less time consuming than the one I have now. 
 

The example from the book that resonated with me the most is the one where Larry Kanarek manager of the Washington D.C. office of McKinsey and Company gathered his employees together for a talk.

He explained that since he was running the office, employees came to him when they wanted to quit. Over time, he noticed that people quit for one reason only: they were burnt out, tired of working long hours and traveling. Larry said he could understand the complaint, but what he could not understand was that all the people who quit- every single one- had unused vacation time. Up until the day they left, they did everything McKinsey asked of them before deciding that is was too much.

Larry implored us to exert more control over our careers. He said McKinsey would never stop making demands on our time, so it was up to us to decide what we were willing to do. It was our responsibility to draw the line. We needed to determine how many hours we were willing to work in a day and how many nights we were willing to travel. If later on, the job did not work out, we would know that we had tried on our own terms.  

Counterintuitively, long-term success at work often depends on not trying to meet every demand placed on us. The best way to make room for both life and career is to make choices deliberately - to set limits and stick to them. (pg. 126)

Wow did that hit home. I am one of those people who doesn't use all of my vacation time. Even with my recent bunion surgery I worked from home four of the eight days I was out of the office. At the end of this year I will probably have at least two weeks of unused vacation – ouch. One of my fellow male managers called me out on this. He said I work so much that it is now expected. He strongly encouraged me to break this cycle and begin taking care of myself. He uses all of his four weeks of vacation each year, upper management complains when he is out of the office, but he does it anyway. He does make himself available for questions via phone and email while he is out, but he doesn’t actually sit down and work.

For me leaning-in has to involve setting limits and learning to stick to them without feeling guilty

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Are you reading this book? What are your thoughts so far? What does “lean-in” mean for you?